M1025 Humvee

The third Tamiya kit I built was the M1025 Humvee. I wanted a 4WD car next since I had a RWD in the Lunch Box and a FWD in the Rover Mini Cooper Racing. I got this kit down at Ultimate Hobbies.

It has the standard TEU-101BK electronic speed controller, plastic bearings and silver can 540 motor. The M1025 Humvee comes with oil filled shocks plus the front and rear gearboxes have ball differentials which is quite nice. For this reason this kit took a bit longer to assemble than my earlier builds. The shaft from the rear to the front is pretty “flexy” and I’ve been looking to upgrade it, but this DF-01 chassis doesn’t seem to have too many hop-ups.

The body is made from high impact resin and was pretty easy to airbrush. I did a solid color instead of doing the camouflage paint scheme that is on the box. My sister-in-law is in the army and I asked her for color tips.

The car has holes drilled for a 16T through 21T pinion gears, to run with a 21T pinion however you need an engine with a lot of torque, I put a 27T Reedy Stockstar in it, but with the 21T pinion it couldn’t get up medium inclines from standstill. It could get some decent speed on the flat, but on paved roads it would flip real easy. If I remember correctly I’m using a 19T pinion at the moment.

The Humvee is a blast to drive on fine gravel/sand on top of hard packed surface. However it fills up inside with whatever you drive over, it has exceptionally poor dust protection.And the front part of the body is mounted with two plastic flaps on the inside instead of the standard posts. It looks good from the outside, but it comes loose really quickly if you drive it “enthusiastically”. I’m trying to figure out how to modify it so the body stays put.

The tires are pretty stiff and contributes to the fun factor when driving in the “loose stuff”, but since they don’t have any sponges the hole inside the rim lets sand into the tires making them pretty unbalanced. Actually even without sand in them these tires cause a LOT of vibration on the suspension parts. So much so that I’ve lost tapping screws while driving it!