It's time for some body modding! I got the Knight Customs Enduro Trailrunner rear bumper with jerry can and spare tire holders from their Shapeways 3D printing store. I also got body cutting scissors to cut my lexan body. It was my first time doing lexan body cutting. My cuts are still amateurish, but they turned out okay. I'm still not sure if I'm done trimming the body and the bumper.
The rear fender flares are still off. It's going to be a while until I put them back on permanently. I glued them in place because I was losing grommets, but gluing them made them hold super good. I wasn't able to loosen the glue, so I had to cut the grommets off while trying my best to keep as much as the pegs as I could. I plan on repainting this body, and that might be a problem with the rest of the body accessories. Especially the door handles. I might have to get a whole new body accessories kit. Yay.
For whatever reason, this inner corner part was originally solid and protruding inwards. I trimmed a lot of it out. Maybe I was meant to cut the body more upwards, but I didn't want to do that. Looking right below the license plate, I actually got the bottom of the trunk looking really good, especially right in that one spot below the license plate. I cut out two small grooves into the bumper to help the whole trunk area sit into the bumper more flush. That way any ugliness in my cuts gets hidden by the bumper.
I'm still not sure what I'm going to do here. I'll probably trim at least some of the body behind the bumper off from the side and the immediate corner.
Ditto on this side.
Here's the fender flare with some cut on the bottom towards the bumper. Obviously it will need to be cut more. I didn't bother cutting the other side, and I didn't take a photo of it, but it was definitely lower. I haven't glued the fender flare back in yet. This was only temporary.
Here it is with the rear "swingout" portion temporarily attached. I still need to screw it in. Unfortunately, it doesn't actually swing out. It just sits on two pegs and has that sort of look. However, that's not the most perplexing thing. There are in fact two things that perplex me. First, the little thing that protrudes towards the body. If you look closely, you can see two pieces hanging down from the swingout. That's a part you mount on the body. Apparently it's to stabilize the spare tire you're going to mount on the thing. It then secures with a body clip. I think it's silly, and I tried "hanging" a wheel from the spare tire portion. It seems stable enough. The second thing is how the spare tire mounts. The big center hole doesn't go all the way through, so you're obviously not going to stick a big screw through the back. I figured maybe it would be for a bolt with a hex head molding that would hold it in place so you could put a spare tire onto it and a wheel nut to hold it on. But there's no hole like that. Instead, there are three little holes surrounding the big hole. I guess that's for a 1/10 scale spare tire bracket? Does such a thing exist? I'll have to research it, but the page on the Shapeways store makes no mention of it. It does mention all of the screws you'll need to complete it, but it makes no mention of the spare tire holder hardware. Weird. Oh, I still have to paint the jerry can. Whatever.
