Tamiya 49400 - Porsche Turbo RSR Type 934

I didn’t have any belt driven Tamiya cars, so I looked into the TA05, but none of the bodies really excited me. I also have a tendency to buy the stock kit and then buy a ton of hop-ups. This time (one might say in a moment of weakness) I got it all hopped up from the start. I was browsing on Ebay when I found “the 49400”. It is by far the most expensive kit I’ve gotten and probably ever will get. Some people will reserve this kind of car for display or keep it in the wrapper as a collectible, me, not so much... I will take this car to the track! I consider it a crime not to :D

The box arrived safely from Hong Kong.

Unboxing the car was great fun, I love how so many of the pieces are on display. There’s very little plastic in this kit, mostly anodized aluminum and carbon fiber. In past I’ve built the car and then worked on the body, this time around I worked on the body first and then started to build the car.

The lexan body almost ready for paint. I chose to stick to the original color and got a can of PS-54 Cobalt green. The plastic spoiler is actually cobalt green, so if you chose a different color scheme you’d have to paint that as well (the side mirrors looked so close in color that I forgot to paint them the suggested semi-gloss black). The 49400 also comes with LED holders, I chose to mask off the headlights etc At some point I will put LEDs in this.

body after two coats of paint, didn’t seem like it needed a third like I’ve had two with the metallic paints.

After painting the car I moved on to sticker the body, the 49400 comes with two sheets of stickers. Some of which was pretty intricate, cutting out all the bits that make up the rear bumper was especially tricky. Honestly I should’ve used liquid mask and spray painted the rear bumper black.

The motor mount and the lower portion of the bulkhead installed. This was before I realized that I had inserted the cap screw on the wrong end of both differential cups (aka the IKEA principle ;P)

Below, the front bulkhead and steering linkage finished, it was great to see how little play, yet how freely the steering linkage moved compared to my TT-01D.

The carbon fiber upper deck went on next, it has “RC 30th Anniversary Since 1976” printed on it (I was only a one year old when Tamiya started making RC cars).

I hope I never have to replace the belts on this thing, it would pretty much be the same as rebuilding the entire car…

The suspension ready to go on the car, I used my Tamiya silicon oil air remover. It gets the bubbles out as well as makes it a nice stand to keep them in. The car is more stiffly sprung in the front than in the rear. One of the spring retainers that goes on the damper cylinder was much lighter shade of blue than all the other anodized aluminum. Quite strange, something I didn’t expect in a package of this quality.

Car is ready to go, I used the Futaba S9551 and put the receiver on the  lower deck instead of on top of the servo, that way I can hopefully fit a TLU01 on top of the servo. I’m not sure where I can put a TLU02.. maybe tape it on top of the battery plate?

I really like the tires on this car, I’m going to try to preserve them as much as possible. The wheels are 26mm wide the rears were offset 5 and the front offset 2. So far all the GT wheels I have are offset 0 dish wheels, I wonder if/how they will fit on the track. I’m also unsure of what compound the kit tires are? The f201 tires for instance looked great but became slicks in a very short amount of time.

The Futaba MC601C ESC has 3 wires and uses a Y-connector wire for the battery and motor, because of that I had to route wires over and under the belt. I’m a little nervous about that, I used a couple of zip ties to keep it tight… we’ll see how it goes on the track…

The 49400 all stickered up and ready to go!

And that’s all I have about this spectacular kit so far. I feel very lucky to own one of these and can’t wait to see how it is to drive!