With the slow destruction of my old race body, the damage done to the very old temporary body, and the debut of the BRCR Summer Race Series “Treads Gone Wild”, it was high time for a new body. But, time was not on my side, so my original plan of a complex and amusing theme was out the window.
When I originally started to race the first Cow Body truck a few months back, it was a big hit at the track. Despite it’s very simple design, and the multitude of very nicely done air-brushed artwork on other trucks, the amazing acceptance was, to say the least, surprising!
Short Course racing takes it’s toll on these little Lexan bodies, so replacement is just part of the hobby. The neat part is that you are not stuck with a design forever. The bad part is that you can’t keep using your awesome design forever. I purchased a couple of new bodies on sale, and set them aside for the future. You never know when one will develop a catastrophic crack and need to be quickly replaced. With speeds of 30 MPH+, aerodynamics actually does matter.
“Cow Car 1” suffered a pretty nasty break in the rear mounting locations, and had to be retired about a month ago. But I was not ready with my new design concept, so I pulled an old Traxxis Slash body out of the dustbin of bodies past (for reference Traxxis is a good basher brand, but it does not have a reputation for real race performance). It was a musing for a while. People were shocked to see a crappy old Traxxis running so well and so smoothly on the track. LOL. Little did they know, at first, that it was covering arguably the best Short Course currently made, a Kyosho SC-R. But the body is pretty cheap to start with, and it was not long before the stresses of a very competitive race class took it’s toll too. Again, I was not ready with a new design.
After procrastinating for months, and with the start of a new Summer Race Series at our track “Treads Gone Wild“, despite my air-brushing skills being squarely in question, I had to come up with something fast! I literally had but a handful of hours to get a concept, design the pattern, lay it on the body and paint it up! Traxxis body was severely damaged in practice Friday night (so was the truck, but that’s another story), so I could not simple use the Traxxis body for the opening of the serious, and I had to fix the truck too. All in the matter of a few hours yesterday morning. Plus, it was the first warm sunny weekend day this year, so I also had to squeeze in some motorcycle riding. Had to act fast.
The “Cow Car” theme had stuck, racer announcers started to call me “Cow Car Dave”, and people expected to see me cowing it up. But I didn’t want to do the same old thing, again. Plus I wanted to experiment around with some design elements, like flames or tears. I spent some time looking at all the awesome designs in this RCTech air brushing thread, and It hit me. I could do both! So, I did!
In less than 3 hours, I knocked out this little gem, combining my first attempt at airbrushing rips, and adding drop shadows, but still sticking with the “Cow Car” theme (between “Cow Car 3”, shown here, and Cow Car 1, I also painted up a Cow Car for my daughter… more on that later.)
TA DA!
It’s pretty rough, and there are a lot of mistakes in it. Some of it because I was rushing, most of it because this is only the 2nd body I’ve tried to airbrush (the first body was “Cow Car 2”, in the middle).
A lot of people liked the design, and I do too. I got my rips, my neon color and stuck with the Cow theme. All in all, pretty good. But, now, I’m really starting to enjoy the air brushing thing, and I want to keep practicing, and paining more bodies, but, I have all the bodies I need for my race vehicles. I guess I could just go and buy more bodies, paint them up and maybe sell them for cost at the track, so that I can practice, and not go broke doing it.
Finally, here is the full family of Cows, 1, 2 and 3 (left to right).
