Big Rock Big Rock Custom Body, LEDs & more

[chevyrumble]

Update #1: LED Kit
I have only been a member of the forum here for a little while, but figured I would start this thread since I am working on a custom painted body, LED package, and a few other modifications to my Big Rock. A while back now I started fallowing a few different YouTube channels that focus on the RC Hobby. Not long after I purchased my Arrma Nero Big Rock and pretty much immediately decided that I needed to customize it to make it mine and to be at least a little bit different. After searching for RC LED kits online I ended up in contact with Dan over at http://mytrickrc.com/. After talking with him a couple of time we put together an LED light package for my Big Rock that I really think is going to make my truck very different. The biggest issue with putting LEDs on a Big Rock body is that no one has light buckets that fit. Fortunately for me while talking to him about the LED's, Dan told me that he has a 3D printer and that he could print me some light buckets if I had a body that he could use to make the models from. So I gave him my unpainted clear body and he was able to make me some really great light buckets that even include a halo light bar under the head lights. As of now I have fully tested the LED setup on the truck, but have not yet installed them my newly painted body. I will be doing that soon and posting more about this installation once I do. For now I figured I would get started by listing what all the LED package is made up of. There is also a picture below of all the parts I have listed here.

LEDs:

• 4x Super Bright White LEDs (Head Lights)
• 8x 3mm White LEDs (6 are for the front halo's & 2 are reverse lights)
• 3x 5mm Amber LEDs (front marker lights)
• 7x 3mm Red LEDs (Tail/Brake lights)

Light Bars:

• 1x 6 inch Attack Series Light Bar
• 1x 2 inch Attack Series Light Bar

LED Controllers:

• 1x Dragon LED Controller
• 1x UF-7 LED Controller

Light Buckets:

• 2x Head light and running light buckets
• 2x Halo light inserts (printed from a translucent media)
• 2x Read Tail/Brake/Reverse light buckets
• 1x Tail/Brake light bar

I know this light package is probably a little bit of over kill, but oh well at least I am having fun putting it all together.

Also anyone looking to put LEDs on their Nero, Big Rock, or Fazon with a Diff Brain... I have found that the reverse light work, but not all the time. Dan and I spent over an hour trying to figure out why the reverse light don't turn on some of the time. All we could come up with is that the signal that Arrma installed receiver is sending to tell the truck to go in reverse is slightly different than the signal that most other receivers send. I know that Arrma has put a lot of work into the electronics of this truck to make Diff Brain work and if you have looked at the way it's wired for some reason the motor channel is actually wired through the Diff Brain. I have chosen not use any of these LEDs as turn signals so I do not know if the LED controllers are working with the steering channel correctly or not, but I am guessing that they should work. That is the one channel that does not go through the Diff Brain. All the other features of both my LED controllers are working great. The Dragon controller even piggy backs on channel 3 and allows me to change modes by rotating the diff control switch on the transmitter from all unlocked to all locked and back to all unlocked. However if I move the diff control switch one notch at a time the Dragon controller does nothing and Diff Brain does it's work. I will try and show how this works once I get everything fully installed on the body.

Here are some pictures of the LEDs and the light buckets. Once I get them installed on my newly painted body I will post more pictures and updates of how it goes.

Big Rock Full LED Kit

• chevyrumble
• Feb 16, 2017
• 3

And it starts... I now have all the LEDs, controllers, and light buckets ready to install. If...

Big Rock Front LED Light Buckets

• chevyrumble
• Feb 3, 2017
• 2

3D printed light buckets for my Nero Big Rock. Designed and printed by MyTrickRC.com.

Big Rock Rear LED Light Buckets

• chevyrumble
• Feb 3, 2017
• 1

3D printed light buckets for my Nero Big Rock. Designed and printed by MyTrickRC.com.

Big Rock Light Buckets w/ running lights on

• chevyrumble
• Feb 5, 2017
• 2

Had a little bit of a set back getting the body painted so here is a picture of the light...

Big Rock Light Buckets w/ head lights on

• chevyrumble
• Feb 5, 2017
• 1

Had a little bit of a set back getting the body painted so here is a picture of the light...

 

[338federal]

That was nice. I want it too

 

[chevyrumble]

Update #2: Body Paint
Well after more time that it probably should have taken the paint on my custom Big Rock body is finally done. And I need to start off with a couple of shout outs because the idea for this body came from by love of old TV shows an X-Maxx body that PitDawg Hydro did for DJ Medic over at RCSparks Studio. PitDawg and Medic thank you for the idea and I hope you don't mind, but I just had to do one of my own. For anyone who doesn't know these guys PitDawg Hydro is painter the does incredible custom paint work on RC's. DJ Medic is a vlogger who runs the RCSparks YouTube channel and posts all kind of really great video's about the RC hobby. I will put links to both websites at the bottom of this post. If you search his channel for XMaxx you will be able to see the body that inspired me to do this one for my Big Rock.

A couple of notes first, I am pretty new to the RC hobby, and this is the first RC body I have ever painted. I did spray paint about 90% of this body. In fact that is part of why it took so long to finish. I used custom vinyl stickers as paint masks and came to find out that getting the fine details of this paint job to come out were a lot harder than I thought they would be. The grill is a sticker that I designed and had printed specifically to fit the front of this body. It was reverse printed and is actually stuck on the inside of the body so that any external damage will not scratch or mark the sticker. The lettering on the roof is also two stickers, the flag is painted. On my first attempt I tried to use paint masks and paint the lettering on, but the masks for the white outline were so small that when I went to take them off it was also pealing off the darker paint I had already put on. I ended up having to completely remove all the paint from around the lettering and start over. After that I designed another custom sticker with the white outline and the blue lettering and had it printed like I did for the grill. All of the orange is paint. The lettering like the grill is reverse printed and is stuck to to the inside of the body and then I painted the orange over it. The flag on the roof and the numbers on the doors are all painted. The vinyl mask stickers for those worked pretty well. You can't really see it in these pictures, but the stars on the roof are not very clean. As long as you stand a couple feet away from it this body looks great, but if you get up close to it you can see that it was painted by an amateur. At least it was a good learning experience and now I know what to differently for my next one. Also how much time do you really spend right up close with your RCs. Most of the time they are 10-100 feet away from you cause you are having a good time with them.

The light bars are the first part of my LED kit to be installed. I would have installed more, but I am waiting on some mirror chrome paint to paint the light buckets. In the pictures above you can see that I have painted them with a semi-gloss sliver, but the paint I used didn't really give me the finish I was looking for. So I am going to try some chrome paint I found online. Once that come in and I get a coat or two on the light buckets I will post another update with the new custom body fully complete and the lights all working on the truck.

Here are the links:
PitDawg Hydro: http://www.pitdawghydro.com
RCSparks Studio: http://www.rcadventures.com/

And here is what you really want to see, pics of the body....

 

[Cheez]

Good job!

 

[TheMrAsh]

That's an amazing project you has going there! The lights are great, awesome work by those guys as well.

My concern is this, knowing the kind of speed it's capable of and this the amount of damage incurred from it those lights are going to be hard to maintain.

Again, your project is awesome and the lights are unbelievable, but be extremely careful when out driving that monster .

 

[chevyrumble]

That's an amazing project you has going there! The lights are great, awesome work by those guys as well.
My concern is this, knowing the kind of speed it's capable of and this the amount of damage incurred from it those lights are going to be hard to maintain.
Again, your project is awesome and the lights are unbelievable, but be extremely careful when out driving that monster .

Yea, I am a bit worried about damaging the new body and light bars, but I don't plan on jumping it with this body on. I still have the stock body. I will run the truck and bash it with this body, but hopefully I can keep it under control and on it's wheels. I have also been toying with the idea of building some sort of roll bar for the body. I am still trying to finish up a couple of other things first, but if I ever to get around to adding a roll bar it will be another update to this thread for sure.

 

[TheMrAsh]

Again, beautiful job so far and the lights are are work of art!
I have seen the skeletal body for some trucks out there, but in my opinion they're ugly, but functional.
Don't know if they make them for the Nero/Big Rock.

 

[chevyrumble]

Update #3: Rocker Arms & Ride Height
Ok so rocker arms were not originally part of my plan for this thread, but since I had to put the LEDs on hold for a few days (I am waiting on some parts) I figured I would at least post an update on this project. Along with the body work I have been doing, I have also been making some changes to the chassis of this truck. Awhile back I found the "Many's RCGargage68" YouTube channel and all of his video's about the Big Rock. Including the way to modify the skid plates in order to raise the truck and allow the suspension to have more travel. Most of the video are not in English, but this is a great channel and he has a lot of video's dedicated to the Big Rock. Here is a link to one of the video's that describes the process for modifying the skid plates.

After altering the skid plates and lengthening the push rods my truck now sits up quite a bit higher and I feel that it really looks like a proper Monster Truck. Below there are a couple of pictures of my skid plates, as of right now I only have pictures of them on the tuck. After finishing the skid plate modification I noticed that the shocks still had a bit more length that could possibly raise the truck even more except that the shock spring retainers were hitting the rocker arms. (see picture 4 below) So I started looking at the GKA and Hot Racing rocker arms. Both looked very well made and a lot of people here on the forums seemed to be very happy with the GKA arms. However, the GKA arms looked to me like they might have the same issue with hitting the shock spring retainers so I ended up ordering the Hot-Racing rocker arms and just got them installed today. So far I am very happy with them They seem to allow for a bit more clearance of the shock spring retainers and might be giving me a little more suspension travel over all. The install was not to bad, but does require that you either completely dissemble the entire back end of the truck or get out your Dremel and modify the body post mount that sits directly over the rear rocker arms. There is no way to remove the rear rocker arms with out either removing or modifying the body post mount that is right above them. The last picture below is a close up view of one of the rear rocker arms and the mount that I cut back so that the rocker arms could be removed and the new arm installed. I am very happy with the way these came out and the way they look on my truck. I did get longer screws to mount the shocks and push rods to these rocker arms. They came with 18mm screws and I put 20mm screws on instead. I didn't like the way the lock nuts and washers fit with the 18mm screws, I wasn't convinced that they were all the way on the screw and I didn't want to over tighten them. On the 20mm screws they fit all the way on the screws and I am sure everything is good now.

More to come soon, keep an eye on this thread to see the body and LEDs finally get put together in the next week or so. They are about 90% done, but we had to do a slight redesign on the 3rd brake light so that I could mount it to the body and not have to worry about it falling off.

 

[TheMrAsh]

ChevyRumble,
It looks like you've been busy, I have seen these two mods before, but never really heard how they performed long term.

The stance along with travel should be increased, I believe the mod always referred to offering additional shock travel rather than stance.

I saw this mod on the forums and bought these shock dampers / spring cups (Hobao hyper shock dampers #90049) they really make a difference in the clearance of the shock ends to the rocker post.

I tried to contact your guys about the lights, but got no response back. I'm interested in the Head Lights and Tail Lights, how are you exactly are you attaching the lights to the body?

I'm putting my BR back together today and hope to have it out and running to see if the Punch setting helps with the control of my rig.

Keep updating your project, really interested in how the suspension and lights perform.

Here's a picture of the Spring Damper Shock cups, you can see they are longer and allow more travel without hitting.

 

[chevyrumble]

ChevyRumble,
It looks like you've been busy, I have seen these two mods before, but never really heard how they performed long term.

The stance along with travel should be increased, I believe the mod always referred to offering additional shock travel rather than stance.

I saw this mod on the forums and bought these shock dampers / spring cups (Hobao hyper shock dampers #90049) they really make a difference in the clearance of the shock ends to the rocker post.

I tried to contact your guys about the lights, but got no response back. I'm interested in the Head Lights and Tail Lights, how are you exactly are you attaching the lights to the body?

Thank you for the information. After finishing my post last night I was looking around at the other Nero, Big Rock, Fazon posts and read threat titled "The suspension fix.OFNA 23049". I know that a few people have commented about using these Hobao spring retainers, in fact Many from Many's RCGarage had told me that he used them also. I had not understood why everyone was switching to them. Last night reading the threads I finally realized that they were fixing the clearance issue that I was noticing with the stock rockers and spring retainers. I immediately ordered a set last night. As for the LEDs, I plan on gluing the light buckets to the body. They should hold up for normal bashing, but I won't be doing any big air jumping with the LEDs and custom body. This week I was planning on posting an update showing the light buckets and LEDs fully installed, but the 3rd brake light that Dan from MyTrickRC made for me needs a little more work to be able to mount it to the body so he has the body and LEDs right now. I know that Dan is really busy right now because he is preparing to move to a new building in the next few weeks.

 

[armoaoa]

Update #2: Body Paint
Well after more time that it probably should have taken the paint on my custom Big Rock body is finally done. And I need to start off with a couple of shout outs because the idea for this body came from by love of old TV shows an X-Maxx body that PitDawg Hydro did for DJ Medic over at RCSparks Studio. PitDawg and Medic thank you for the idea and I hope you don't mind, but I just had to do one of my own. For anyone who doesn't know these guys PitDawg Hydro is painter the does incredible custom paint work on RC's. DJ Medic is a vlogger who runs the RCSparks YouTube channel and posts all kind of really great video's about the RC hobby. I will put links to both websites at the bottom of this post. If you search his channel for XMaxx you will be able to see the body that inspired me to do this one for my Big Rock.

A couple of notes first, I am pretty new to the RC hobby, and this is the first RC body I have ever painted. I did spray paint about 90% of this body. In fact that is part of why it took so long to finish. I used custom vinyl stickers as paint masks and came to find out that getting the fine details of this paint job to come out were a lot harder than I thought they would be. The grill is a sticker that I designed and had printed specifically to fit the front of this body. It was reverse printed and is actually stuck on the inside of the body so that any external damage will not scratch or mark the sticker. The lettering on the roof is also two stickers, the flag is painted. On my first attempt I tried to use paint masks and paint the lettering on, but the masks for the white outline were so small that when I went to take them off it was also pealing off the darker paint I had already put on. I ended up having to completely remove all the paint from around the lettering and start over. After that I designed another custom sticker with the white outline and the blue lettering and had it printed like I did for the grill. All of the orange is paint. The lettering like the grill is reverse printed and is stuck to to the inside of the body and then I painted the orange over it. The flag on the roof and the numbers on the doors are all painted. The vinyl mask stickers for those worked pretty well. You can't really see it in these pictures, but the stars on the roof are not very clean. As long as you stand a couple feet away from it this body looks great, but if you get up close to it you can see that it was painted by an amateur. At least it was a good learning experience and now I know what to differently for my next one. Also how much time do you really spend right up close with your RCs. Most of the time they are 10-100 feet away from you cause you are having a good time with them.

The light bars are the first part of my LED kit to be installed. I would have installed more, but I am waiting on some mirror chrome paint to paint the light buckets. In the pictures above you can see that I have painted them with a semi-gloss sliver, but the paint I used didn't really give me the finish I was looking for. So I am going to try some chrome paint I found online. Once that come in and I get a coat or two on the light buckets I will post another update with the new custom body fully complete and the lights all working on the truck.

Here are the links:
PitDawg Hydro: http://www.pitdawghydro.com
RCSparks Studio: http://www.rcadventures.com/

And here is what you really want to see, pics of the body....
View attachment 6710 View attachment 6711 View attachment 6712 View attachment 6713 View attachment 6714 View attachment 6715 View attachment 6716

great job brother i have diff brain nero what is the suspension difference and are they bigger body posts thinking of doing the big rock body as in buy a clear shell and paint it ....once again great job

 

[chevyrumble]

great job brother i have diff brain nero what is the suspension difference and are they bigger body posts thinking of doing the big rock body as in buy a clear shell and paint it ....once again great job

According to some other people there are a couple of differences. Drive shaft, shock rods are longer, and uses difference rod ends. If you want more information about the differences take a look at the "Big Rock/Standard Differences" thread, I will put a link to it below.

If you want to put a Big Rock body on a standard Nero you will need to do some work to it though. The body mounts are totally different, you could buy the body mounts for the Big Rock and install them on your Nero though I am not sure how much extra that would cost. The clear Big Rock body is already kind of expensive to start off with. You would probably need to get the following parts:

• AR320361 - Front & Rear Body Mount Set
• AR320357 - Body Post Set
• AR320355 - Middle Roll Hoop Set (optional)

You probably don't have to get the Middle Roll Hoop, but without it if you land on the roof you will for sure ruin your body. Take a look at the exploded view of the Big Rock to see the parts, you might also need to get some of the screws that go along with the Big Rock body mount set, they could be difference than the screws that are currently on your Blue Nero. Vas from Aussie RC Playground did an unboxing video of the Big Rock and in the video also did a comparison of the Blue Nero, the Big Rock and the Fazon. I would suggest checking it out before you buy anything. There are some good shots of the Big Rock and you can clearly see the differences in the body mounts if you compare it to your truck. Also he puts all three on a table next to each other and you can see the difference in the stock stance. I have done some additional work to mine to raise it even more than the stock stance it came with. Unfortunately I don't have any before and after shots for comparison, but "Many's RCGarage 68" YouTube channel has a video that shows the difference between a stock Big Rock and a Big Rock that has been modified like mine to be taller. As I said in Update #3 I fallowed Many's instructions on how to modify the truck to raise it.

Big Rock/Standard Differences Forum thread: arrmaforum.com/threads/big-rock-standard-differences.2705/
Exploded View of the Big Rock: www.arrma-rc.com/interactive-exploded-view/AR106017
Aussie RC Playground - Big Rock Unboxing: www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6hBzARwNlA
Many's RCGarage 68 - Stock vs Raised Big Rock: www.youtube.com/watch?v=POt8FENaHaQ

 

[chevyrumble]

Update #4: Hobao Spring Retainers & Shock Shaft Ends
This is going to be a short update, but my Hobao shock kit arrived in the mail the other day and I was able to get the spring retainers and the shock shaft ends installed today. These have definitely resolved the issue of the the spring retainers hitting the rocker arms. These along with the Hot Racing Rocker Arms and I am pretty sure I have completely maximized my suspension travel as much as possible at this point. The only thing that might raise the truck a little more would be to find longer push rods, but doing that would also probably require modifying the upper arms so that the push rods don't rub on anything. At this point I like where my truck is at so I don't think I will be looking to do all that extra work. Here are a couple pictures of the new spring retainers and shock shaft ends. In the first picture the two shocks on the left have the new Hobao parts installed and the two shocks on the right are stock. The 2nd & 3rd pictures are of the front shocks installed on the truck.

 

[Jestone1]

Did you use the hpi rod ends as well to modify your ride height? Do you happen to know the HPI part number? Can't find int anywhere..

Thanks

 

[chevyrumble]

Did you use the hpi rod ends as well to modify your ride height? Do you happen to know the HPI part number? Can't find int anywhere..

Thanks

No, for push rods I still have the stock Arrma push rods and ends. I have not done any jumping with my truck yet. So far I have only run it on the street at my house and at a public park that is just a big grass field. So I have not had any problems with breaking rod ends. I am still looking for a place near me to do some more serious bashing and some jumping. I just got into the hobby and even though the Big Rock is a great truck straight out of the box, I am just the kind of person who has to customize anything that has 2 or more wheels. So I have been doing more to make the truck look and run the way I want than actually running it so far. I should be done with all the upgrades I want to do by the end of the month and as the weather starts getting better I will be running it more and fine tuning everything.

As for the HPI rod ends I don't know what the part number is. I do know that the new Arrma rod ends are now available. They stopped selling them for a couple months while they redesigned them because so many people complained. People are saying that the new Arrma rod ends are actually thicker. There is a short forum thread about them and confirmation from a couple people that they are actually different.
https://arrmaforum.com/threads/new-suspension-rod-ends.3333/

 

[Jestone1]

No, for push rods I still have the stock Arrma push rods and ends. I have not done any jumping with my truck yet. So far I have only run it on the street at my house and at a public park that is just a big grass field. So I have not had any problems with breaking rod ends. I am still looking for a place near me to do some more serious bashing and some jumping. I just got into the hobby and even though the Big Rock is a great truck straight out of the box, I am just the kind of person who has to customize anything that has 2 or more wheels. So I have been doing more to make the truck look and run the way I want than actually running it so far. I should be done with all the upgrades I want to do by the end of the month and as the weather starts getting better I will be running it more and fine tuning everything.

As for the HPI rod ends I don't know what the part number is. I do know that the new Arrma rod ends are now available. They stopped selling them for a couple months while they redesigned them because so many people complained. People are saying that the new Arrma rod ends are actually thicker. There is a short forum thread about them and confirmation from a couple people that they are actually different.
https://arrmaforum.com/threads/new-suspension-rod-ends.3333/

Thanks for answering I haven't had any problems with the suspension rod ends breaking, but I would like a more monster truck- like ride height. From what I get, certain HPI rod ends are longer... but they have so many rod ends and I don't feel like ordering all of them but thanks a lot!

 

[lonee]

@Jestone1
Take a look to Hobao spring holder. After mounting these maybe change the rockers.
I just put in the Hobao parts ans not issues with bended shock ends.

 

[chevyrumble]

Update #5: T-Bone Racing & Skid Plate Mod Closeup pictures
Got my T-Bone Racing Big Rock TBR XV4 Front Bumper in the mail yesterday and was able to get it installed on my truck today. Unfortunately, I only have my stick body right now for the pictures. My custom body is over getting a 3rd brake light fit. Anyway a couple of notes on the T-Bone front bumper. It looks awesome and is pretty easy to install. In the 4th picture below you can see that the support piece that gets attached to the stock bumper is a bit tight between the bumper and the front skid plate. Also because of the way it is designed when you tighten down the screws it pushes up on the very front of the stock bumper. This in-turn causes the body to sit higher. I ended up having to raise the front body mounts one hole each to fit the body on the truck after everything was installed. In picture #3 you can see what I mean about the bumper being pushed up in front. The picture clearly shows that the stock bumper is no longer level. I may just end up taking the stock bumper off. I am a bit concerned that if I hit the T-Bone bumper on anything it might force the stock bumper up and rip the body right off the body posts. The body and the bumpers on this truck fit so tightly together that and little movement would affect all of them at the same time. I guess my other option would be to raise the body posts another notch and allow the body to have more room to move between the mounts and the stock bumper.



It seems like there are some other people out there who are actually interested in also making their Big Rocks taller like I did with mine. I still would recommend take a look at the video that I posted in update #3, but I figured I would take a couple pictures of my skid plates and post them as well. To kind of show what the difference is. First 3 pictures of the front skid plates. The first picture shows my modified skit plates on the right and a stock front skit plate on the left. The second picture is the same image, but I have put red lines that show where I cut material away from my skid plate one the right and highlight over the same area on the left. Because of the angle I took these pictures it looks like the cut lines are not straight, but they really are. I guess I should have taken these from directly over top rather than off to the side. The 3rd picture is a close up of just the very front skid plate. Stock untouched on the left and my modified plate on the right.


The next 3 pictures are the same thing, but of the rear skid plates.

 

[chevyrumble]

Update #5: (continued) Ride Height
Had to make this a separate post because I could only upload 10 pictures per post. Here are a coupe of pictures that show how tall my truck is now.

 

[lonee]

Just upload into the gallery and put a link into the post....
Just my 2 cents.
But another question, why you lift up the car so much?
It is working against the design with will keep the gravity very low to the center.

Maybe just bigger wheels and stiffer springs had been an option....

The TB-Bumper is surely not bad, but ti seams to that it is a little to big in the diameter.
I would like to have the option with unmount the original, because my body is always flipping out of the bumper holder.
So I need an new designed bumper which I can mount in case of the original...

On the other hand: Well done job!

Regards,
lonee