You know what would be a nice way to end your difficult and productive work week? How about by watching a man painstakingly build a like 8/10-scale replica of a Ford F-150 Raptor for his dad? Out of wood. Fittingly for an F-150, the project seems to have taken 150 days, and was executed by the remarkably talented Vietnam-based woodworker Trương Văn Đạo who runs the YouTube channel ND Woodworking Art. Even better, this truck actually drives!
The truck uses a solid rear axle with an integrated electric motor/differential unit that looks an awful lot like what my Changli ultra-cheap EV uses. The axle is bolted to leaf springs that are in turn bolted to a square-tube chassis that Đạo fabricated from scratch. Here, just watch the video:
Holy crap, right? That’s absurdly impressive. Look how great that looks! It must be heavy as hell, and I can’t imagine that thing can move that fast, but still, who cares – it’s remarkable. It all appears to be done with hand tools and eyeballing and sketching, no fancy CAD or CNC machines at all, at least that I can see here. It’s rolling wooden sculpture, like a Henry Moore that you can haul bags of peat moss in.
The lights are confusing me; I think they’re too small to be actual F-150 units, so what are they? My best guess is they come from one of the Chinese low speed electric vehicles that are made to look like an F-150, something like one of these:
Also, look at how the steering wheel is being made from a photo and a cylinder of wood, carefully carved and shaped:
It’s astounding.
Đạo has a lot of experience building these sorts of electric wooden vehicles, which he’s built for his kids before, as you can see here:
Look a that! I bet it feels just wonderful to run your hand down the curve of that fender. And look at this Audi concept car, complete with lots of lights and opening panels:
That one has wooden tires, even!
This is an odd fringe subset of DIY automotive work. It’s about as DIY as it gets, since the only pre-made components are the small electric motors and some suspension elements, and lighting and electrical bits. Oh, and sometimes wheels and tires. But that’s it!
This straddles an interesting line between furniture and sculpture and vehicle, and I’m absolutely here for it. Great work, Mr. Đạo.
Mmmm, F-150 looks with F-650 weight. I’m going to go ahead and guess the 8mph action shots at the end of the video were the top speed.
I plane can’t believe what I saw.
Well, at least he got on YouTube. But otherwise a quite stupid idea.
But I’m glad we’re not getting exposed to some of the fake “renovation” videos, where they ruin the stuff first themselves, like pouring hydrocloric acid on an old BMW or burying old tools for months, in order to make it look real renovation worthy (and cool). Stupid people on Facebook tend to share that crap. So thanks..
Now if you wanta be takin it to the street, check out The Splinter.
Toecutter will want the Tryane II
American Pole & Timber
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Torch: “So how do you remove the batteries when they need to be replaced?”
Đạo: “Chainsaw. What else?
Torch: *packs bags and moves to Vietnam*
If this was Tesla building these there would be so many fender benders caused by the protruding wooden nose.
“I’m a real self driving car!”
“Back in the toy box with you Pinocchio.”
Definitely his best yet! The different wood colors work great for this.
It occurs to me this now may be his full time job.His youtube channel has 2.6 million youtube subscribers should provide a nice income
Yeah this takes it to a new level, and I agree that this is his probably his full time gig now.
Vinfast needs to hire this guy, and fire everyone else.
Beat me to it!
I am amazed that he is using 8/4 solid wood, probably Padauk. That stuff is heavy (and expensive, at least in the US). Steering wheel is even thicker, could be 16/4.
Also, the dust is nasty. He needs a better mask.
Running the chainsaw barefoot is a nice touch too
Yeah, I kept thinking about the weight of the wood.
In the immortal words of The Beach Boys, wood and it be nice.
As a (very) novice woodworker, this is incredible.