This is a project that I started a few weeks ago, that I've been wanting to do for as long as I can recall. Like everyone else in his 40s, I grew up loving the Dukes of Hazzard as a kid, and I've always wanted an RC General Lee, but never liked the options. The Kyosho Fazer got damned close, but that 70 front end looks all wrong. All of the good looking cars all use the 2005 toy grade hard body, which is hard to find affordably. I finally pulled the trigger on a Kyosho after I saw a video of a guy that built a new styrene grill for the Kyosho to replace the 70 front grill. I knew I could design a 3d printed grill. So then I bought the RJ Speed 69 body, which also needs a better grill. Then I found the Team Blue Groove 69 body, which looked really good in the pictures. And then, of course, I found a great price on one of those toy grade hard bodies.
So now I'm building four General Lees.
The plan all along was to do 2 cars, because I want to do some running videos, and to do them as authentically as possible, I wanted a hero car and a stunt car, so what's 2 more?
So far my efforts include printing some Vector wheels and designing a new grill assembly for the cars that need them. The grill assembly is still very much a work in progress, but they're showing some real promise.
As impressive as some of the RC General Lee videos on YouTube are, the one thing that they all lack is a good police car. In fact, that's something that's pretty lacking in RC in general. Most people just paint up a muscle car or a crawler into a cop car, but I wanted more. Ideally I would have liked a 77 Dodge Monaco, since that's what most people associate with Dukes police cars, but there aren't any options for that car, and I don't have the talent to make one. What I did find, was a 74 Monaco 3d model. Since a 75 Monaco was one if the cars used in season 1, that's what I decided to go with. I printed it in 4 sections, and printed the headlight and taillight lenses separately. I also tried making my own decals, and so far I'm really happy with those. This body is just taped together for mockup right now, but will be glued soon so that I can start doing the body work.
I also designed and printed a set of hubcaps for these plain steel-styled wheels. This is a pic of an early version, but I finally got them right on version 14.
That's about it for now, but I'll continue to update as I make progress.
So now I'm building four General Lees.
The plan all along was to do 2 cars, because I want to do some running videos, and to do them as authentically as possible, I wanted a hero car and a stunt car, so what's 2 more?
So far my efforts include printing some Vector wheels and designing a new grill assembly for the cars that need them. The grill assembly is still very much a work in progress, but they're showing some real promise.
As impressive as some of the RC General Lee videos on YouTube are, the one thing that they all lack is a good police car. In fact, that's something that's pretty lacking in RC in general. Most people just paint up a muscle car or a crawler into a cop car, but I wanted more. Ideally I would have liked a 77 Dodge Monaco, since that's what most people associate with Dukes police cars, but there aren't any options for that car, and I don't have the talent to make one. What I did find, was a 74 Monaco 3d model. Since a 75 Monaco was one if the cars used in season 1, that's what I decided to go with. I printed it in 4 sections, and printed the headlight and taillight lenses separately. I also tried making my own decals, and so far I'm really happy with those. This body is just taped together for mockup right now, but will be glued soon so that I can start doing the body work.
I also designed and printed a set of hubcaps for these plain steel-styled wheels. This is a pic of an early version, but I finally got them right on version 14.
That's about it for now, but I'll continue to update as I make progress.
