SCX10ii Maiden Crawl 1973 Ford Bronco Axial Proline

Maiden crawl with my Axial SCX10ii kit. I have not done any tuning and the magnetic body mounts I made are not holding like I want (notice the body noise lol). I tried to use only 4 ring magnets and 4 steel finishing washers, but it's obvious I'll have to remove the washers and add 4 more magnets with a thin plastic spacer between. I may even build a styrene interior with better magnetic mounts. Currently only the front bumper LEDs are connected. Frame, shocks, and all other basic parts are stock at this time. I may upgrade the shock towers or add an aluminum brace first. No plans for a rear bumper unless I find one that is about 7.5" in width and a lower mount bracket; as I'm not a fan of cutting of the lexan body bumper and i don't like it sticking out too far past the sides of the body. Electronics are all budget as this is my first RC crawler and I'm not sure what I like yet.

Overall the kit was fun to put together and everything feels pretty high quality. The parts bags and instructions were well organized and easy to follow. Pretty much felt like putting together a Lego Technic set except with lots of tiny screws! The 73 Bronco body from ProLine called for a 12" wheelbase... but I had some tire rub after fully assembling everything, so i swapped out the suspension links for the 12.3" ones and it appears to have mostly solved that problem. I forgot about the window masks and made my own with painters tape (d'oh!). I used the headlight and tail light decals as masks because I want to add LED's to the interior for that scale light look. I first did the body trim with a Testors black paint pen. Not my best work, but way better than anything I could've done with a paint brush! I then masked off the hood and fenders for plasti-dip black accents. My original idea was to spray the outside for that bedliner body paint look, but I figured I could do that later to hide scratches. So i just painted the inside. Plastidip went on well and has a nice glossier than semi-gloss appearance from the outside. Next coat was Tamiya PS-23 Gun metal which went on very well in several light coats. Wear a mask with this stuff!! its noxious and very very cloudy in the air!
The rear tail lights I painted last with Testors candy apple red spray paint... It shot out of the can like a fire hose. Absolutely no way of spraying light coats lol. It dried well and the paint itself looks good, but I would't want to use this to paint large areas or anything with detail.

The beadlock wheels are budget, but look really nice and were easy to assemble with no stripped screws. The only issue I ran into was the axle hub screw length was too long for the center caps so i had to buy 7mm hex nut extensions. Then I ran into the next dilemma: the lock nut flange was too wide for the center cap cutout... problem solved in a few minutes with a 3/4" counter sink bit.
I had some trouble mounting the roof rack square, it's slightly off center and angled by about 1.5mm... But for a cheap eBay rack it's pretty nice. I'm actually really excited about the front bumper as I couldn't find a style that I liked and one that would fit the width of the Bronco body without too much overhang on the sides. Why don't all the aftermarket bumper companies include width and height measurements? I kept finding cool looking bumpers, but without any dimensions... So i took a chance on this eBay bumper (that included detailed dimensions in the product description) and it fits perfectly!!!

So that's my build and I hope i don't break this thing too quickly lol!!!

Parts list as follows:
Axial SCX10ii Raw Buildrs Kit
ProLine Racing 1973 Ford Bronco Body
Black Plasti-Dip and Tamiya PS-23 Gun Metal Grey
RCLions 1.9" Beadlock Wheels (Amazon)
Injora 114mm Rubber Rocks Tyres (Amazon)
Atomik RC alloy 7mm hex nut axle extension (Amazon)
Lafeina RC car LED kit (amazon)
Steel roof rack 4 LED combo (eBay)
Aluminum TRX-4 Land Rover Defender front bumper (eBay)
FlySky FS-GR3E 3 channel receiver
Turnigy GTX3 transmitter
JRelecs 540 45T 4 pole brushed motor and WP-1060 60a waterproof ESC combo (Amazon)
Power HD LW-20MG waterproof digital servo (Amazon)
5000mah 50C 2s Lipo hardcase battery with HXT 4mm bullet connectors.