This 40mph 3D-Printed RC Car Now Lets You Drive It Like You’re Sitting Inside
The WR1 was already a genuinely impressive piece of work – a fully 3D-printable, 1/8-scale AWD rally chassis capable of hitting 40 mph, available for $35 in print files from curvlab.com. Version two takes it somewhere more interesting: you can now strap on a headset and drive the thing from a first-person perspective, with the onboard camera following wherever you look.
The YouTube channel curv lab dropped the V2 update video about a week ago, and the headline feature is the integration of the Walksnail Moonlight 4K camera and gimbal kit from CADDX FPV. The gimbal connects to Walksnail Avatar FPV goggles, and the head-tracking system translates your movements directly to the camera's pan and tilt. Turn your head left into a corner, and the camera swings left.
"The coolest thing about it, as opposed to a fixed camera, is when you're turning, you can look all the way through the corner," the creator explains in the video. The camera transmits at 4K with 22ms latency and a claimed range of 4 km – which, per the YouTuber, already outstrips the RC transmitter itself.
" Driving it from a first-person view is super intuitive and easy to get used to cuz it's just like driving a real car ," he says. And that tracks, given the system gives you a driver's-eye view of the front wheels and the road ahead, rather than the usual third-person chase perspective most RC driving involves.
Version Two Fixed What Community Feedback Exposed
The FPV system is the flashy addition, but a substantial portion of the V2 update addresses structural problems that showed up once the original files spread widely. "
By far the most commonly occurring issue in version one of the chassis were these vertical steering posts on the chassis plate snapping. This is a design flaw," he acknowledges. The fix was straightforward once identified: separate the posts as individual parts and print them lengthwise, eliminating the weak horizontal layer lines. The driveshaft – previously glued together from two halves – got the same treatment and is now a single piece printed in the correct orientation.
Both repairs were driven entirely by user feedback. The WR1 files have been downloaded by a large number of builders since launch, and that volume of real-world testing produced a crowdsourced stress report no single creator could replicate alone.
The V2 also introduces a universal body shell mounting system – an adjustable bracket with slots running along two axes that can accommodate virtually any 1/8-scale rally shell. Curiously, the original chassis already had the mounting holes for exactly this purpose, suggesting the creator anticipated the addition well before it was designed.
On the window problem: getting a see-through windshield out of a 3D printer turns out to be essentially impossible.
"As far as I've seen, there's no way to 3D print clear material such that it's clear enough for a camera system to see through," he notes. The solution, borrowed from a collaborator, is a two-sided 3D-printed thermoforming mold. You heat 1mm PET sheet to 250°F for three minutes, press it between the mold halves, and the result is a clear window the FPV camera can actually see through. A 2024 attempt at single-sided vacuum forming melted the molds entirely, so the two-sided compression approach is a real improvement.
The full WR1 V2 print file package – including the 67-page assembly guide – remains $35 at curvlab.com, with an estimated 17 hours of print time and about 90 minutes of assembly. For something that lets you drive a 40mph rally car from the inside of a headset, that's a remarkably low barrier to entry.
