Torg's Tamiya Electric RC Cars

Tamiya drill

2012-01-07T22:55:00.001-08:00

A few of the Tamiya kits want a 2.5mm and/or 3mm hole drilled. I have had bad luck using regular drills for this here in the US. A Dremel works ok, but it's not metric. A hand drill might work as well, but hey Tamiya sells a craft drill (item 74041)... And you have to build it yourself :-)

I hopped it up even... Replaced the plastic bearing B-)

Audi R8 body shell

2011-12-23T08:29:00.001-08:00

I just finished a new body shell (Tamiya item #51471) that I am going to put on my TT-01D. I used (in the order I painted):

#86005 PS-5 Black (Intakes, Exhaust, Front lip)

#86409 PS-49 Sky Blue Anodized Alum (Main body)

#86041 PS-41 Bright Silver (Side Blades and backing)

#86301 PS-31 Smoke (Windows)

I used 3M blue masking tape on the side pods and it bled through in areas. I am going to invest in some higher quality masking tape the next time I paint. The masking tape that comes with for the window is amazing compared to the cheap blue stuff.

New ESC and motor for my 49400

2011-12-20T09:07:00.001-08:00

The 49400 is handling just fine, but I felt it lacked a little bit in the power department. Not a lot, but a little.

So when I found a Tekin RS Redline 13.5 in a drawer in my garage I decided to swap out the powertrain. Let’s see if this is too much power for me… I’ve made that mistake before!

After a bit of soldering and almost screwing up the order of the A,B,C wires I took it up and down the street and it is really fast now. The throttle response is what I’m most interested in and not so much top end speed. I’ll try to take another video next time for comparison :)

I also found the hotwire PC interface in the drawer. It worked just fine on my Windows 7 laptop. I didn’t use the CD that came with it, instead I got it from the Tekin website and that triggered an ESC flash right away. That took about a minute and all I had to do was recalibrate the ESC to my transmitter again. It’s a very easy setup ESC. I’ll have to bring my laptop the next time I’m at the track so I can play with the settings. One comment about the Hotwire is that they are trying to be cool in their GUI which makes it a worse program. Just look at that red and black mess below. Just because you can make a transparent window doesn’t mean you should!

Tamiya DF-03 Ra Castrol Celica (92200)

2011-06-12T16:14:00.001-07:00

This kit was bought a long time ago at Ultimate Hobbies, apparently the less pictures are on the box the more special it is.. or at least so I’m told. So when I saw it on the shelf I wanted one.

For this car I did the lexan body paint and stickering first. And I was rusty, tired or just stupid as I made my first cut.. If you notice the side skirt along the door I managed to cut the left side shorter than the right (FAIL!). For the paint I decided to stick with the original scheme and the stickering took a very long time. Message to Tamiya, please make more pre-cut sticker sheets!

The build itself was very straight forward and I already have a DF-03 MS so I was pretty familiar with it. I decided to try out a Futaba S3050 servo for some higher torque and a Spektrum SR300. The ESC and motor is stock. I think I have learned my lesson about not adding too much power too early. Learn to drive it well as stock first! (I’m still a novice driver).

A very nice feature of this kit are the painted drivers that you can put inside. It makes it look really cool, I don’t know how well it will last when driving. It’s just Velcro tape holding it on there.

And finally some comparison shots between the Ra and MS.

Look at what UPS just delivered

2010-02-23T21:20:00.001-08:00

Tower Hobbies had them in stock AND a $60 off coupon for members AND free shipping… how could I say no? ;) I better finish up my rally car before I can start on this one…

Boxes… lots of boxes :)

2010-02-02T17:18:00.001-08:00

Took a picture off all the Tamiya boxes I have (so far)…

I passed the “it’s taller than me” mark :)

F104 Rubber tires & wheels

2010-02-02T17:04:00.001-08:00

My F104 rubber tires finally showed up from Hong Kong, here’s some updated shots of the different tires for the F104. Please note that I haven’t glued any of my rubber tires to the wheels yet.

F201 Type-A on the left, F104 in the middle, Foams (type A I think) on the right. The top row are fronts, bottom row is rears.

rear tires on the left, front on the right. left to right: foam, f201, f104

I’m hoping to get my F104 back in working order (after my Formula Tuned motor broke) in time for this weekend or the next so I can try the different tires out on the track…

F201 rubber on F104 wheels

2010-01-23T18:59:00.001-08:00

Tamiya recently released rubber tires for the F104. They have been in limited supply so far. And even slower to become available were the wheels. I finally got a set from tamiyausa.com last week. But my tires are still in the mail from Hong Kong… So while I waited I wanted to try some Type-A F201 wheels (as I have tons of them from an ebay auction that I lucked out on) .

First off I wanted to do some size comparison.

Item	Front Width	Rear Width	Diameter F/R
F201 #50936	32mm	36.8mm	39.85mm
F104 #51398	30mm	34.95mm	44.85mm

The F201 wheels are smaller but wider than the F104 wheels. The groves that the rubber tires slide over are beefier on the F104 as well.

Some comparisons to the Foam tires.

If you look closely you can see the tire taking on a concave shape. I haven’t driven this yet so I have no idea on how the handling and grip is going to be affected by this. The front tire will have a lot more grip than the foam one, it always puzzled me why the front foams aren’t as wide as the rim.

So there you have it, a F201 tire will fit a F104 rim. Time will tell if it’s a good idea or not :) When I get my F104 tires I’ll take some more pics for comparison.

F104 Softening the rear

2009-12-06T12:24:00.001-08:00

Going to put the Soft T-Bar on the F104 soon.

Also, I got my hands on some hard friction damper grease. Last time I was at the track it was a fail of epic proportions, my F104 was un-drivable. The weather was cool for southern California (60’s F), not sure what conditions they recommend this for but I bet it’s hot. Tamiya makes a medium and a soft version as well. I’m interested in getting the soft one to see what the difference is.

Tamiya Formula Tuned Motor

2009-12-06T12:13:00.001-08:00

When I first got my F014 I used the silver can motor with a gear ratio of 4.16:1 and it felt pretty good to me. But when Tamiya announced their Formula Tuned motor I had to try it out. At the time the only place I could get it from RCMart and on their product details section it said that the recommended gear ratio for this motor is 3.7-3.75. I’ve only used this at the Tamiya track in Aliso Viejo, CA with a gear ratio of 3.72:1 a couple of times and it made for a lot of torque that didn’t fit my driving style (I’m still a Novice don’t forget :)). Had to be super careful on the throttle coming off the corners or I would spin.

The last time I went, my car suddenly stopped. I thought it was a receiver or battery problem at first, but when I popped the body off I found that the end bell had popped off and that one of the brushes had broke! So now I’ll have to find a different motor to use in my F104. Any recommendations?

Classic Tamiya gone?

2009-11-19T08:38:00.001-08:00

www.classictamiyarc.com was one of my favorite sites, now it's gone? Anyone know what happened to it?

GoPro HD Hero arrived

2009-11-18T09:04:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I picked up my GoPro HD Hero from my local REI store, I know it might seem like a weird place for an RC enthusiast to pick up a camera. But Since everyone is selling this for $299.99 the smartest thing for me was the free in store pickup shipping option and the 10% dividend :)

I already have the GoPro Hero Wide and the first thing I noticed when getting the HD version was that it was heavier. I quick check on my cheap spring loaded kitchen scale confirmed this. Fully loaded the HD camera weighs ~185g/6.5oz and the wide weighs ~150g/5.25oz. About half of that weight gain comes from the camera itself the other half is the difference between the new battery and a couple of AAA lithium batteries. Adding more weight up high on an RC car is not good news, but this camera more than makes up for that with it’s phenomenal quality.

The HD version is also slightly bigger than the Wide version, but not by much. See pictures below.

From left to right the (crappy) epic stealthcam, gopro hero wide and gopro HD hero.

The HD hero comes with two rear plates, the one that comes mounted is waterproof and the optional one is not waterproof but is great for anything moving less than 100mph (according to the manual). I instantly switched the plates and the sound quality is much improved.

The HD version still takes SD card slots, but supports higher capacity SDHC cards. I picked up a 8GB Sandisk Ultra II card.

I did a couple of very quick runs outside my house with the two settings I’ll use the most.

1920x1080p @ 30fps (Angle of View: 127º)

1280x720p @ 60 fps (Angle of View: 170º)

The results are just AMAZING, what a great camera! I’m really really impressed by this and can’t wait to take it to the Tamiya track in Aliso Viejo, CA. Another great thing about this camera is that it now records MP4 files that you can just pop right into your PS3 and play (the hero wide had a less common avi codec).

Full specs for the HD Helmet Hero

Full specs for the Motorsports Hero Wide

If there’s one thing I would improve upon it would be to offer a cheaper version of this camera without TV out capability. I can honestly say I will always play the videos/pictures from SD card and never ever connect the video cables that come with the kit. Other than that, another great product from GoPro!

Honda S2000 Conversion

2009-10-07T07:50:00.001-07:00

I bought an Alfa Romeo a while back, but I really don't like driving it. A couple of guys at my work have S2000’s so I wanted to show them how good the Tamiya kits are. (and if I got someone else bitten by the RC bug, that would be an added bonus).

The Alfa uses the 60D wheels, but the S2000 uses GT sized wheels, I found someone in the UK that had the S2000 wheels (but realized later that Tamiya has them #0445588 doh!)... I had some spare Racing Semi-Slicks (50810) so I put those on.

The Alfa is M04M and the S2000 is M04L, so I needed the little piece that goes between the gearbox and the main body, this comes with the M04 F Parts (50851).

So, do I like driving the M04L in S2000 form better than the Alfa? No, not really, I think I need to spend some time on the setup, it still wants to swap ends all the time…

53884 TA05 Carbon Battery Plate Set

2009-09-29T22:54:00.001-07:00

The Porsche Turbo RSR 49400 kit was pretty carbon fibred out, except for the battery plate cover. Which is plastic. So the idea is/was to tape a TLU01 and TLU02 unit to either of the two covers and be able to more quickly swap that way. But there’s a snag. The carbon battery plate fits rather poorly, at least it does on the 49400. Some dimensions for comparison below.

Battery Cover	plate thickness	Post hole diameter
Plastic	4.9mm	6.2mm
Carbon	2mm	6.5mm

you can click on the images below to see a larger view, notice the much tighter fit of the plastic part on the left.

The thing that puzzles me the most is that there’s a 3mm difference in plate thickness, but the blue aluminum mount screws that come with the plate (goes nice with the rest of the 49400) have the snap pin holes in the exact same place as the mount screws for the plastic plate!? As a matter of fact, since the pin hole is slightly smaller, it’s a bit higher. The remedy for this (according to the instructions that accompany part 53884) is: “Cut screw-thread in advance using kit-supplied mount screw” I’m not sure what that means exactly… My guess is that they want me to cut the plastic posts that he mount screws are supposed to go into? Which maces it impossible for me to switch back to the plastic one (remember what I wrote earlier about being able to trying to have LED units taped on one of these).

Instead of cutting the plastic posts I put some sponge tape on the back of my carbon plate, unfortunately the kind I have isn’t thick enough to prevent the plate from being loose.

The part comes with a different snap pin, which is much harder to remove, I decided not to use it. Below, the plastic plate on the left, notice the gap still present on the right and imagine the slop without the sponge tape!

Finally a couple of shots of the two different plates from further back.

So in conclusion, the carbon plate and the blue aluminum mount screws improve the look of the kit but it fits very poorly out of the bag. Had Tamiya drilled their snap pin holes 3mm further down on the mount screws and made the holes on the carbon plate the same as their plastic plate this would only have been a one picture post about how sweet it looked!

Fuse for Futaba ESC found!

2009-09-27T09:10:00.001-07:00

Big thanks to an anonymous post (and zero thanks to Futaba customer service) I was able to find the replacement fuse for my MC401CR. I just ordered from Mouser Electronics two littelfuse 0895030.Z (since I have two of this ESC and this might happen again!) and one 0895040.Z for my MC601. They were only US$3.80 each…

tamiyatrack sept 19 2009

2009-09-22T08:15:00.001-07:00

Tamiya 49400 - Porsche Turbo RSR Type 934

2009-09-13T21:32:00.001-07:00

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!

49400 in the house! :D

2009-08-29T15:31:00.001-07:00

That’s all I want to type for now, busy painting…

M1025 Humvee POV

2009-08-27T23:21:00.001-07:00

F201 differential trouble

2009-08-22T07:56:00.001-07:00

Putting the Castle Creations Sidewinder 4600kV in the F201 makes it go very very fast. But if you run it too long, you’ll melt your differential (at least the lightweight ones). I put the lightweight ones in when the cap screw broke on the standard kit ones. The lightweight diffs are too expensive to melt on a regular basis so I’m going to put the stock black can back on it. To be honest my skill level and the speed of the sidewinder don’t match when on a track ;P It was fun to blast in a parking lot though. I’ve now put the sidewinder in my TT-01D, we’ll see how that goes.

What greeted me inside the front gearbox.

Notice here how the top metal ring has been pushed into the plastic.

kit ones, with broken cap screw. non standard 2x15mm & 2x8mm cap screws are hard to find.

I wonder if there’s anything I could’ve done to prevent this? Regular maintenance is a pain on the rear diff. Tungsten and ceramic balls are over $20 and you need 2 sets, combined with lightweight diffs at $20 a piece. I’m sorry, but spending close to $100 is not in my “differential budget”.

Poor part or hard impact?

2009-08-19T09:11:00.001-07:00

3 Racing Rear Aluminum Hub Carrier (0 Degree) For TT-01

First non-plastic part I’ve bent. If I smack the other one by the same amount I get a 2 deg toe in set? :)

Toddler proof?

2009-08-16T17:39:00.001-07:00

My daughter is almost 2 and a half years old (about a month away), I bought a Tamtech ‘The Frog’ a while ago with her in mind. Today we were out and about having a blast. Thank you Tamiya for building such a sturdy little car, it sure stands up to abuse! :)

My M03 Chase car

2009-08-11T20:47:00.001-07:00

I was in a Costco store a while back and saw a stack of epicstealthcam’s and instantly loved the small size of it. “I need to put that on one of my RC cars”, classic impulse buy!

First I mounted it on my F201.

Then I mounted it in the bumper of my Lunch Box.

Then I built a M03L chase car with a combination of parts from my M03 and M03R kits.

The biggest problem with the epicstealthcam is that it can’t take any impact worth of damn, the battery will lose contact or something and you end up with a video file that’s 0 bytes. The quality is also pretty poor. I love the idea of getting RC POV however, so after some research I bought the GoPro Motorsports HERO wide, it comes in a SOLID case and has MUCH better picture quality.

The GoPro wide on my F201, M03R, TT-01D and DF-03MS.

What I might end up doing is mount the epicstealth rear-facing and put the gopro forward facing.

Hey there’s a giant hole in my tire…

2009-08-11T11:14:00.001-07:00

Was using a 3Racing tire the other day, didn’t even notice the hole until I got back in the garage… oops!

M05 pro first impressions

2009-08-09T11:56:00.001-07:00

So far the biggest thing I’ve noticed is that it has a much better center of gravity than the M03R. Yesterday I was at the Tamiya Track in Aliso Viejo, CA to compare the two. Using the Type-A 60D slicks with hard inserts my M03R with a LIPO would flip around “SUV style” when cornering hard. I then switched the tires over to my M05 with a 5000mAh NiMh battery in it and it didn’t flip at all. I then switched the type-a’s back on the M03R and also put the same battery in it. It was a little better, but would still flip over.

My M03R has the M-chassis Dampers and stabilizers, the M05 Pro is unmodified. M03R has Futaba S9405 servo, M05 had standard S3004.

So, so far the M05 Pro drives easier with less setup tweaking (which I’m still not an expert on by a longshot ;P)

Huge Futaba MC401CR ESC problem

2009-08-09T11:43:00.001-07:00

I used to love this thing, until the fuse I had in my DF-03MS blew. Big deal I thought at the time, I can just by another one right? WRONG!!! After contacting Futaba support here in the US, I simply got a “sorry those are not available”, when pushed further I got a postal mail address for Futaba in Japan and a “ask them”. Buyer beware!

F104 Pro

2009-08-09T11:37:00.001-07:00

I picked up this kit at ultimate about a month ago and I’ve been driving it on the Tamiya track in Aliso Viejo, CA. On the smooth track there this thing is so easy to drive, the only adjustments I had to make was changing the exponential setting on my controller to make it less sensitive.

I left the motor the stock silver can, SR3000 receiver, LRP AI Runner ESC (overheats too quickly and has no on/off switch), servo is the DS1313. My first digital servo. If you didn’t have to cut the tabs on the servo to use it with this kit I’d try a different one to see if it’s the car or the servo that makes this thing so easy and smooth to drive.

The car is VERY easy and quick to build, only thing that I thought was strange was the front rims are wider than the foam tires (this is the first time I’ve had foam tires, fine on the smooth track, useless on a dusty road surface, and they’re expensive I’ll try to get some rubber ones at some point).

The battery mounts length wise in the carbon fiber chassis which is VERY cool, if it wasn’t for just one screw on the right hand bottom side of the car you could fit a square shaped lipo in there, instead I’m using the stick pack lipos mentioned in a previous post.

Here you can see the servo with the cut off tabs. It’s a fairly heavy one, might be helping the front tires get some extra grip without inducing too much understeer.

The F104 Pro comes with optional side pontoons, this will take a way some room inside for electronics but it looks fantastic!

My current Tamiya kits

2009-08-09T11:13:00.000-07:00

Lunch Box Gold Edition

Rover Mini Cooper Racing

M1025 Humvee

Toyota bB/xB

Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint GTA

Tamtech-Gear The Frog

Ferrari F1 (F201)

MO3R Chassis Kit (compatible with the Mini and the xB)

DF-03 MS

Subaru Impreza WRC Monte Carlo '05

F104 Pro

M05 Pro Chassis Kit

Drifting

2009-07-05T21:30:00.001-07:00

For my drift car I chose the TT-01D Subaru WRC 2005 Monte Carlo. It’s a chassis I didn’t have and having Petter Solberg decals was another bonus. Since the former world champion is no longer with Subaru I figured I better pick this up before it was too late. Another rare fact is that Petter Solberg himself won Norwegian Tamiya Cup 1987. Some 20 years later he has his own Tamiya kit, how cool is that!?

I chose the Hpi drift meister 13T motor and the Futaba MC401CR ESC. It moves pretty good. It’s so fun to drive since the tires are like hockey pucks, rock hard and sliding all over the place :)

My battery transporter

2009-06-26T20:59:00.001-07:00

My late grandpa-in-law was a WWII marine, I decided to keep this and use it as my battery transporter. I coated the inside with rubberized undercoating. It says “For A.C. or Battery operation”, pretty close to “For RC Car Battery operation” :)

Going LiPo

2009-06-26T20:50:00.001-07:00

When I had my first Tamiya’s all the batteries where NiCd’s. When I started on my second stint of Tamiya’s I got all NiMh’s, I wanted the extra run time and the price was half of what the LiPo’s where. Lately I’ve been able to get 4000mah lipo’s in the $40 range from Hong Kong (ebay). When you switch to Lipo in a Tamiya there’s a few things you should know.

You need a charger that is capable of charging LiPo’s
You need a speed controller or a voltage cut-off device so you don’t permanently damage your battery.
You probably need a STICK PACK! (the first lipo I bought was an $80 squared pack, I can only use it in my TT-01D after dremeling it.

The battery above is my favorite so far, I’ve gotten them through RC-Union on Ebay. I’ve replaced the Tamiya plug with Deans Ultra’s.

Why go Li-Po?
• Up to 30% longer runtime than traditional NiMH/NiCd (of the same capacity)
• Up to 40% lighter weight than traditional NiMH/NiCd (of the same capacity)
• Precision cell fusion technology virtually eliminates internal resistance
• Li-Po power delivery ensures maximum power throughout the discharge cycle
• Can be used and recharged unlimited times per session
• Less energy is lost to heat equals greater power output
• Fits 90% of 1/10 scale chassis with little or no modification
• Battery can be charged days, even weeks, ahead of time
• No complicated maintenance or conditioning required
• Cost is far less over time due to a lifespan that is up to 10 times that of NiMH/NiCd

LiPo batteries have a "C" rating which tells you how much current it is safe to draw from your battery. It's expressed in terms of the capacity C.

So my 4000mAh 25C battery is good for 100A (25 x 4000mA/1000).

My charger, this has a battery temperature sensor (for safety) and I also have a USB cable for it which can graph charging and discharging. More for fun than anything else, I’ll play around with it more and post later.

DF-03 MS

2009-06-07T19:28:00.001-07:00

Finally a REAL dirt car for me to drive. This thing is so much fun to drive. I bought it down at ultimate and decided it was better to spend the extra money for the MS edition instead of hunting down tons of hop-ups later. I decided not to follow the paint scheme or sticker job from Tamiyal. Not a big fan on pink on blue flame job really. I tried some iridescent paint, but on a see through lexan, that doesn’t end well. So I back coated it with white. So I guess my paint scheme is “iridescent white”, it’s subtle which I like.

A big surprise with this kit was that it didn’t come with any tires. A first for me, pretty weak. So I had to go back to ultimate and ask for a recommendation. I ended up with LOSI IFMAR Silvers (LOSA7283S Front, LOSA7367S Rear).

I picked up another Spektrum 3000 reciever, moved over the Futaba MC401CR speed controller over from my mini cooper and got a Checkpoint 13x2 competition off-road motor. Battery is a Intellect 7.4v 4000mah 25C Hard Case Stick Pack Lipo they’re about $45 from rc-union on ebay. This thing hauls, so much fun to drive!

Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint GTA (M04-M)

2009-04-26T20:08:00.001-07:00

Tamiya Item #58307 I bought already built on Ebay, the first thing I did was download the exploded view pdf from Tamiya and rebuild it. This thing had been sitting on someones shelf for a loooong time. The tires where getting cracked and this thing was clearly never driven as the body mounting posts had been cut off too low. It also didn’t come with the polyurethane bumper, so I got that from ebay as well. The bumper fits very snugly under the front bodywork, not sure if I’m supposed to trim it back or not (I haven’t yet).

The M04 is (at least to me) HARD to drive, it wants to swap ends all the time. I added some 3Racing adjustable dampers to it, which kept it from flipping over all the time when changing direction (the stock setup was very soft).

The car didn’t come with any electronics so I used a standard S3004 Futaba servo, the Spektrum SR3000 reciever, LRP AI+Reverse Speed controller (this ESC has no on/off button, very annoying!) and I chose the Peak Racing RS24 Hellfire Stock motor.

As you can see in the pictures above, I lost both side mirrors real quick!

I like the sound of the peak hellfire rs24 stock motor, compared to my reedy 27t stockstar it’s very quiet. The guy at ultimate that recommended me told me to oil it frequently, so we’ll see how reliability is.

Toyota bB / Scion xB

2009-04-17T20:30:00.001-07:00

Tamiya kit #58265 is the Toyota bB or as they’re called in the US Scion xB. My wife has one of these so I decided to make a little mini version of it.

These kits were never sold in the US due to licensing issues and they are quite rare to find on ebay as well. I had to pay quite a bit for mine from a seller in Hong Kong.

The Tamiya recommended paint scheme is black with really cheesy flame stickers…. nooooooo thank you! My wife’s car is “black cherry”, so I went to a couple of Toyota dealerships and bought some touch up paint. 3P2 was their color code and the tiny bottles come with a nail polish style brush. So I applied some to a spare piece of lexan I had, wanted to make sure it didn’t crack or peel as soon as the lexan was bent. It worked!

I had to do a few coats of it and I did a back coat of flat black, otherwise depending on angle and light you can see through the body. The Tamiya flat black doesn’t bind well to the car paint and the car paint won’t flex nicely so this car is DNC – Do not crash!

The Tamiy Toyota bB/Scion xB sits on top of the M03-L chassis, I used the suspension from my M03-R instead of the stock dampers. I also added heaps of electronics. I added the TLU-01 and TLU-02 light units, which around my house cause a tremendous amount of interference. Around this time I ended up buying the Spektrum DX3S radio system, which comes with a free SR300 reciever. As you can see in the photo below there plenty inside.

As for LEDs I have:

Two sets of 5mm white for headlights and reverse lights.

One set of 5mm red for tail/break lights.

Two sets of 3mm orange led for signal/hazards.

F201 Carbon fiber chassis

2009-03-28T11:00:00.001-07:00

I recently bought the 3Racing carbon fiber chassis. It’s pretty slick. I tried putting my square lipo battery in it. It fits, but I can only put the right side battery holder on after cutting out large amounts of plastic with a dremel tool. The lesson is, only use a stick pack lipo battery for a proper fit.

A Lunch Box Point of View

2009-03-15T08:27:00.001-07:00

I mounted a lipstick cam and recorded this:

youtube video

Ferrari F2001 (F201)

2009-02-22T19:17:00.001-08:00

Being a fan of Formula 1 and Tamiya RC cars it was only natural that I get an F1 car. The F201 is a 4WD shaft driven chassis with an inboard double wishbone suspension and a mid-mounted motor, so it resembles an actual F1 car in more ways than the body.

Below is an old picture of it (since I switched to digital it now has a much smaller antenna tube).

The F201 chassis has been discontinued by Tamiya (probably because of licensing fees (Ernie Ecclestone always wants more money!)). So I had to buy this from Ebay. The New In Box F201’s command ~$300 (Tamiya’s old MSRP) easily so I bought an assembled but never run one. I’ve taken it apart and re-assembled it a couple of times already :) This car is very compact, so getting to the bits you want is rather cumbersome.

The F201 comes with a full bearing kit and a Tamiya “black can” (sport tuned). I put that motor in my Lunch Box and put in a 19T Reedy Challenger instead. I also got an aluminum motor guard instead of the stock plastic one to provide better cooling. The ESC I chose was the Futaba MC401CR. This combination has worked really well. The ESC is programmable via their Link software (that you have to run in windows2000 compatibility mode under XP btw) and you can download Volt/Current draw logs (up to 8 minutes). It’s exactly the kind of thing I like to mess around with :)

The stock tires that come with the kit are pretty weak and wear out VERY quickly. I’ve since bought two sets of reinforced tires; Type A and Type B, the A’s have more grip and are softer than the B’s (which are designed for warmer temperatures). I’ve used my B’s the most and they’re barely worn.

I’ve also had to replace:

The lower suspension arms with reinforced ones.

The front gearbox (suspension mount bent in a crash).

The differentials with lightweight ones (the cap screw that holds the stock ones together just broke).

Another "gadgety” upgrade is the Spektrum SR3300T reciever, it sends telemetry back to the radio. The temperature sensor is easy to install, but the RPM sensor was a little harder. The instructions tell you to aim the infrared sensor at a piece of reflective tape on the spur gear. There’s a slight problem with that plan… the spur gear is in a SEALED gearbox. I very carefully drilled a hole in my gearbox and thought I was good to go. Except the sensor also wants to be 1/8 of an inch from the reflective tape. My solution was to superglue a round piece of plastic to the spur gear and then stick the tape on that.

The RPM sensor and the drilled spur gear cover

The plastic piece and reflective tape on the spur gear, temperature sensor can also be seen on the motor.

Spur gear cover on, then I used some two-sided tape (same stuff that comes with your ESC or radio receiver) to the IR sensor, then some electrical tape to cover it all up.

More upgrading to the F201 to come :)

M1025 Humvee

2009-02-09T20:20:00.001-08:00

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!

Rover Mini Cooper Racing

2009-02-01T19:22:00.001-08:00

The Rover Mini Cooper Racing, which I just refer to as “the mini” from now on was the second Tamiya car I bought. I never had a road car when I was a kid and this kit is pretty cheap (this was before I ever thought I’d be hopping them all up).

The chassis is the front wheel drive M03, my thinking was: I have an off road rear wheel drive, so time to get an on-road FWD. I’m not saying my decisions are very logical, but there you go! :)

Like the Lunch Box it comes with non-ball bearings, standard silver can 540 motor and TEU-101BK electronic speed controller.

The body is clear lexan, which is painted from the inside, when you’re done painting you remove the plastic film from the outside and take a picture (because your car will never look as good as this ever again!) :)

I used Tamiya polycarbonate spray, white for the top and orange for the body. These pictures were all taken before I cut the posts.

This was the first car I started to hop up. The first thing I did was ball bearings. Then I got some different tires, the stock tires that come with it wear out really quickly where I drive. I got some M-Grips, Super Grips and slicks to play around with. Soft and hard foam inserts (for those that don’t know, they simulate tire pressure and can change the handling characteristics of the car). Since I’m not a racer I don’t have anything conclusive, but I prefer the supergrips with hard inserts. Next in line was a new motor, I got a Reedy Stockstar 27T which really put some oomph on it. I also added a ball differential and universal drive shafts. With a more powerful drivetrain I needed better handling, I got the Tamiya M-Chassis Aluminum Damper Set and the anti-roll bars. Now the car started handling much better. As I smacked into things the front uprights took a beating, so I looked into getting aluminum front uprights, but they were quite expensive on their own. So I bought the MO3-R kit instead, it came with (among many other things) Aluminum front and rear uprights (the rears have a 1.5 degree toe-in further improving the handling). It’s crazy to think that my mini has tripled in price so easily. It’s fast and fun to drive, so I won’t complain too much :)

Since I now have two M03s I can do a lot of experimenting to see what makes the most difference. The guys over at rc-mini.net have a lot of good info about this.

Gold needs gold!

2009-01-31T08:00:00.001-08:00

When you get the gold edition with gold rims you need to have matching gold anodized flange locknuts! :)

Lunch box upgrade

2009-01-31T07:49:00.001-08:00

As I’ve mentioned earlier the Lunch Box comes with friction dampers, which means not really dampened at all. Despite it being quite fun to drive I decided to upgrade to the C.V.A. Short Shock Unit Set II.

Each pack (#50520) contains 2 shocks, some non-descript oil that’s pretty thin (certainly has less weight than the medium oils I have) and a choice of stiff or soft springs.

Here’s a shot of how the old friction dampers just push the rod up through the chassis. The Lunch Box comes with metal mounts for the short shock kit.

Since I got the pimpin’ Gold Edition my old shock housings were chrome, the new ones aren’t. But I can live with that :)

New dampers and springs installed.. Now when I do the “drop test” it “sticks” instead of bouncing back up at me. I’m taking it for a spin today so we’ll see how it handles.

All hopped up

2009-01-25T18:43:00.000-08:00

Hop-ups are upgrade options that can increase the performance and durability of your radio control car. So, what can you hop up? Just about anything.

As you can see in the picture below, I'm all hopped up!

The Lunch Box

2009-01-22T21:36:00.000-08:00

The Tamiya Lunch Box is one of the most fun RC cars I've ever driven, it's got friction dampers and huge tires so it bounces up and down pretty much anything. If you punch the throttle from stand-still it will pull wheelies, if you do it from reverse it will flip over! :) I'm extremely happy that Tamiya decided to re-release it, this time with an electronic speed controller. Back in the day all my cars had mechanical ones and a lot of you will remember chasing after rogue RC cars that had theirs stuck in full throttle. No more! The bathtub chassis is very durable and the hugging nature of the body makes it pretty much dust free inside (unlike, say my Humvee, more on that car later). The gearbox is the exact same as it was back in the day and the same one found in The Hornet. Out of the box this car runs pretty good, but like many of the cheaper Tamiya kits it comes with plastic and metal bearings, which is cool for about ten minutes. VXB sells decent ball bearings for a good price and if you don't know how many ball bearings you need of each size they have a Tamiya section where you'll find what you need. I'll repeat what many others say, adding ball bearings is the best and cheapest thing you can do to improve your cars performance. I ran plastic bearings in my Lunch Box, Mini and Humvee for a short while, since then I've bought ball bearings before I build and I just throw the plastic ones right in the trash where they belong! The Lunch Box comes with the standard "silver can" 540 motor, which is pretty decent and I used it for a long time. As I got some more cars and upgraded those motors I ended up putting the "black can" Sport Tuned motor that comes with the F201 (Ferrari F1) in it. Which seems like a really good for it. Putting too powerful a motor in the Lunch Box will either flip it or constantly lift the front wheels off the ground making it very hard to drive. For videos of the mighty Lunch Box in action, just search youtube, I'll make some of my own soon.

RC Cars need controllers

2009-01-20T07:01:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid I always had a 2-stick transmitter because I could never afford a pistol grip transmitter, so based on some quick research the radio controller I got was the Futaba 2PL 75Mhz. Again I based my decision on brand memory, Futaba was around back in the day and the Tamiya kits come with Futaba steering servo adapters.

The 2PL was about $70 which is a pretty good deal considering the kit comes with a nice pistol grip transmitter, a R153F micro reciever (typically runs for $50), two standard S3003 servos (typically cost $15 each) and crystals ($15). The radio has 10 model settings with a quick and easy interface.

The FM band has a lot more channels available to it while the 27Mhz AM band that all the RTR (Ready to Race) Tamiya cars come with only have 6. My Tamtech gear mini-frog came with the Expec SP, which is the most basic one you can possibly get away with. It has an on/off button and a couple of knobs for steering and throttle trim.

As I got more cars I bought more recievers, I don't want to move the reciever from car to car when I'm out driving them. Since the 2PL came with the R153F that's what I kept buying. It seems a bit silly to buy a 3-channel reciever to go with a 2-channel transmitter. But for some insane reason the futaba 2-channel 75mhz reciever costs the same as the 3-channel! So my thinking is, if I hook up something fun on the third channel in the future (gearbox, hydraulics, lights, etc.), I can.

The next system I got was the Futaba 75Mhz 3PL system, the reasoning behind this was that now I'd finally have a 3-channel transmitter to go with my 3-channel recievers (despite me still not having anything connected to a third channel in any car). I made sure I got a different crystal set than I had so non-rc-car-enabled friends could come over and share in on the fun :)

The 3PL FM transmitter has a lot more convoluted interface than it needs to, switching car models requires a LOT of button presses. In hindsight I should've just bought another 2PL or I shouldn't have bought another analog radio system at all.

My Scion xB car has a LED light system in it and when connected I got massive servo chatter caused by radio interference on any of my recievers/transmitters. So I drove down to ultimate to get their take on it; is it the light controllers (more on those in a different post) or is it the reciever? To my surprise, the problem didn't happen in their store at all. So it was fair to assume that it was radio related. Their recommendation, go digital... so I did!

My latest radio system is the Spektrum DX3s 2.4Ghz it was ~$250 so way more than the standard analog systems. But any hint of interference was gone, which is worth a whole lot to me, especially considering how much money I put into the Scion xB (more on that build later).

The DX3s has a really nice LCD screen with a push-roller interface, it is very light weight as it only needs 4 AA batteries (as opposed to the 8 in my other transmitters). The transmitter antenna is very compact so nobody will ever lose an eye like you can with the "fishing pole" antennas on the AM/FM systems. The reciever antenna is also very short, so your cars end up looking a lot swankier, either by having no visible antenna tube or a very short one.

The DX3s kit came with 2 recievers (SR3300T and SR300) and no servos, which was pretty perfect for me as I had all the servos I needed. I knew that I'd want my Mini and my Ferrari F1 car on digital so I picked up a SR3000 reciever for $70. Which is only $20 more than the R153F's.

More on the awesome DX3s later... I've hooked up the telemetry from the F1 car :)

Intro

2009-01-18T19:55:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid I got my first RC car, the Tamiya Hornet. I had so much fun with it that I also got a Tamiya Lunchbox... But somewhere along the way I lost interest... That is, until now.

Ever since I got the re-released Lunchbox I've been spending a lot of time and money on Electric Tamiya RC cars. Why electric you ask? For me the answer is simply;that's what I grew up with, so that's what I'm into.