Monster Truck Madness – Rotten Apple Losi Mini LMT

Happy Thursday all!

In case you missed it, last week I posted my thoughts on the Losi Mini LMT. I liked it quite a lot.

As a lifelong, card carrying BIGFOOT fan, that Grave Digger body wasn’t gonna work for me though. I’m only half serious here- I’m someone who HAS to put their own style of body on an r/c truck, regardless of what it came with. If I’m using an RTR body, that means I’m not REALLY a fan of the rig!

Ok, so to apply my Rotten Apple livery to the baby LMT, I went with a Traxxas TRX-4M High Trail Ford F-150 body. I had seen some pics that the slightly longer wheelbase High Trail bodies (versus the standard TRX-4M) fit the LMT wheelbase perfectly, and this is true!

However, some modifications will need to be made- at least if you plan to use the stock cage/body mount like I did.

The first thing to know about the Traxxas body is that it’s a hard body i.e. not lexan. This means you will need to paint the outside. I’ll talk about this more when I discuss paint, but just know the body is gonna get scuffed and scratched a lot more easily than if you go with something lexan. It’s heavier than lexan, though with the small size it’s not too bad.

A huge plus of this being a hard body is that this looks VERY scale to a 1:1 monster. Mounting the unpainted Ford body on the LMT looks just like mounting a fiberglass body onto a full scale monster truck. Even the cuts and various little hacks into the body to make it fit look realistic.

So, to make it work I cut some out of the tailgate to fit the wheelie bar and some of the behind-the-grill plastic. Doing this, I could still put the grill and tailgate section into the body, but I’d have no clearance issues.

The hardest part of this was mounting the body, because you have to mate the cage to the new body by way of screws, not body posts. I centered the body as best I could, made some tiny marks with a body reamer to estimate the centerline of where the screws/holes needed to be, and then did some measuring to double check everything. I started with tiny holes and it looked good, so I went whole hog. Bam, the holes on top were perfect, and I could re-use the Grave Digger mounting grommets with no issue.

I had planned to put two more holes on the hood to use those mounts as well, but once I cinched the roof down I felt no more was needed. I did use a couple pieces of adhesive foam padding underneath the hood so to hold it snug with no bouncing. After it was mounted, it was time for paint.

For the body, I used Tamiya Light Gun Metal TS-42. (Note for hard bodies, DON’T use a poly carb paint). The body was already white so I didn’t prime it beforehand. The big thing I did do was put a clear coat on it after the main paint. There are various rattle can clears you can use- I used a Vallejo Gloss Varnish. Whatever you use, make sure you clear the finish because the body will scratch and chip very easily without a protective coat. On a monster truck that likes to jump, roll, and be upside down you will still have that happen, but it’ll be drastically less so with than without.

Once the paint was dry, it was time to finish the body by mounting the grill and other trim pieces, followed by the decals (thank you JB Scale Graphics and Michael Arndt!).

The result is what’s probably the best looking truck in my fleet. The Mini LMT looks incredibly scale with the hard plastic body/cage combo!

To finish this post off, after completing the Losi, I thought the body was cool enough that I figured I’d grab a TRX-4M High Trail F-150 RTR, and the mini crawler is a lot of fun so far!

Alright folks, that’s it for this week. Until next time, keep it on all 4’s!