Radio controlled cars and trucks can provide endless hours of fun. They come in all shapes and sizes (and price ranges), but a new YouTube video shows how you can make one at home with the smallest of vehicles. The video shows a 1/150 scale Tomy Tec Mitsubishi Fuso semi-trailer transformed into a homemade RC car.
Construction starts with dismantling the truck. The cabin and interior come out before the plastic axles are removed and replaced with metal axles. The plastic front tires are ground down and replaced with a rubber O-ring. The truck’s tiny cab houses the drive motor, battery and steering mechanism made of small aluminum plates.
The trailer also gets an upgrade that you can’t see. The covered rack houses a control panel and an even larger battery. Thin, delicate wires criss-cross inside the platform, connecting the microcontroller to the rest of the electronics. Beneath the cab of the truck is the charging port and a battery status light, which is a nice feature.
Another modification to the truck turned the artificial lights into real lights. The manufacturer replaced the support units with working LEDs, including the cab and trailer lights. Even the turn signals work, adding some realism to the small build.
Although the Tomy Tec truck is a small RC car, it is not the smallest ever produced. According Guinness Book of World Records, the smallest RC car ever measured 25 millimeters (0.98 inches) long. It was a 1/90 scale Smart car, which featured a battery with about 15 minutes of run time from a full charge.
The video ends with a demonstration, the Mitsubishi moving forward and backward with ease, and the swirl of the small electric motor sounds a bit like the clatter of a diesel engine. It’s great to see an endless source of creativity in the automotive community outside of the makes and models that roll off the assembly line. The car craze is everywhere.
