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ChrisRx718

TL01 Rally Car Project

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So the last thing I really need is another project going on what with my CC01 build and my TA03F drift car, but this is more of a 'rebuild' or maintenance thread showing my first ever Tamiya RC car; the TL01.

The actual kit was a Castrol Toyota Tom's Supra TL01 58264 which I got from Time Tunnel Models where I worked as the Saturday labourer. It was my 16th Birthday Present.

Looking back on what is now quite a rare kit I wish I had built it box-art, but you don't realise at the time and my TL01 took many different forms over the years and saw a lot of use (and about 5 new chassis parts!).

Firstly I built the chassis to box-standard, plastic nylon bearings and geared diffs BUT I had already upgraded mine to a TEU101BK ESC, so it was different from my Dads' Opel V8 Coupe.

Bit of trivia, but it turns out the Opel V8 Coupe is model number 58263 - so my Supra was the very next model number 58264!

Now this was the time of The Fast and The Furious movies - so my Supra was bought for one intention - to be painted orange.

I have no pictures of it and can only remember it being incredibly rubbish at the time! What a waste of a now sought-after bodyshell :(

Soon after I decided there really wasn't much space for running an on-road car and I was getting heavily into RC Drifting too, which resulted in the purchase of a TT01D.

The TL01 was modified into a kind-of-mental Pikes Peak VW Beetle, which just happened to be a spare part going cheap at Time Tunnel Models from a kit. It had no stickers or window masks so I had to be resourceful...

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Somewhere along the line I amassed the parts for and built a full-option TL01 complete with many desirable hop-ups. Sadly it is now long gone, sold on eBay together with a gorgeous Mitsubishi Evo VI bodyshell...

TL01S.png

I've also owned 3 different TL01B's along the way, so you could say I've had a fair few TL01-based cars in my time! I still maintain that they are better all-rounders than the TT01 which replaced it...

Anyway, on to the project.

I want something tough and hard-wearing that can be run on dust / dirt using Rally Block tyres and with little maintenance where possible.

I took the Baja Bug and began the tear-down...

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That will do for now, but on to my first question...

I'm probably going to run a 3500kv brushless system in this car and I'm curious as to the best gear setup?

I have speed-tuned gears and standard gears, and a mixture of pinions - which with your advice I will upgrade to a steel one (0.6 mod).

So Speed Tuned Gears or standard?

19, 21 or 23T Pinion?

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I ran a 19T pinion with standard gears with 3500kV and felt it was undergeared, but not sure how high you can go.

Maybe try speed tuned gears and 19T, as its easier to swap the pinions.

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I ran the standard gears in the TL01 rally car I build for my father, as the courses we ran on were tight and technical, with acceleration more of a priority than top end.

A 21t steel pinion seemed to suit the 19t LRP Rally Special brushed motor we used, but I don't know what to suggest for your brushless setup I'm afraid.

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I ran the standard gears in the TL01 rally car I build for my father, as the courses we ran on were tight and technical, with acceleration more of a priority than top end.

A 21t steel pinion seemed to suit the 19t LRP Rally Special brushed motor we used, but I don't know what to suggest for your brushless setup I'm afraid.

A modern 3500kV brushless system is probably comparable to your 19T rally special

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I ran a 19T pinion with standard gears with 3500kV and felt it was undergeared, but not sure how high you can go.

Maybe try speed tuned gears and 19T, as its easier to swap the pinions.

I'm thinking ST Gears and 19T / 21T. The 3500kv is un-sensored but would probably be driven flat-out everywhere anyway! Small wheels should prevent it feeling over-geared.

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I've been wondering about turning my TL01B into a rally car and fitting an Evo VI shell to run along with my TT02 Intergrale. Have you given any thought to fitting lipo batteries into the chassis or are you just using rounded lipo/nimhs?

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Round case lipos is what I use as lots of my runners have the oval shaped holes, so I don't even have a square case yet, although I would like one I can't justify it since my other two round case ones seem to go on forever!

The tl01 works so well as a rally car too; you can increase the ride height and the dog ones don't get thrown out of the drive cups. It beats the TT family hands-down IMO as they sit too low and don't have the ground clearance available.

I'm thinking alloy uprights (weak point) and possibly some universals for this runner though...

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def worth getting is the 2 "U" shaped lower suspension hinge pins for the front and rear along with the frp stiffener plate from the tl01b. As the standard hinge pin screws on the normal tl01 was a weak point for breaking the chassis holders off. As for the body, a box art Tamiya Evo V would be lovely.

James

:)

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I'm thinking Scooby for the body, as I already have a spare sticker set - having trouble just finding the polycarbonate body on its' own though.

I wanted the U-shaped pins but I also saw the stainless low-friction pins going cheap on Banzai - whilst not as strong they would at least be less prone to corrosion... I'm not sure yet though.

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It's worth a consideration if the 2003-2004 shape impreza doesn't turn up on eBay / TC, I'm surprised at the lack of them though considering how many kits featured a derivative of that mould but with lots of different sticker variations.

I'm considering sticking alloy lower & upper arms on this, as I already have them on my FF02. Then I could get a TL01LA suspension set for the FF02 shelfer... But that's more money again!

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Noooo! Not alloy arms! The last thing a TL01 needs is a means of passing more stresses to the chassis lower arm mounts. They are prone to cracking as it is!

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Noooo! Not alloy arms! The last thing a TL01 needs is a means of passing more stresses to the chassis lower arm mounts. They are prone to cracking as it is!

OK OK! It was just a fleeting thought. It's gone now :lol:

I'll leave the cheesey alloy bits on my shelfer.

TL01LA looks really nice but if this is going to be a basher I think I'll benefit more from parts which are readily available, so I'll stick with the stock arms.

I have some trick bits going on this to strengthen it up some too.

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You can get one piece plastic arms from HBX and they are pretty cheap. HBX has a clone TL01 chassis, but their hopup arms are alright. You also get the lightweight kingpins with it, but the c-clips are way to soft. The pins itself are useable if you have some new c-clips.

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Decided on a few things with my wallet the other day.

Body is getting a 2001 Subaru Impreza body - not the shape I wanted but at £12 I couldn't really grumble!

Gearbox is staying Speed Tuned Gears

21T 06 Module Steel Pinion coming - might be overgeared but...

...23T BZ motor also en-route! Was going brushless, but have decided to save that setup for another project. The BZ will be pretty similar in performance anyway, and my ESC for that is waterproof.

Stainless steel suspension pins

Turnbuckles for camber / steering tie-rods

2.4gHz Receiver coming

3Racing carbon suspension supports

Lightweight TL01 frame (please don't crack, please don't crack...)

Still undecided on steering servo's. Was going to buy another one of my trusted Blue Bird 631MGs as they're really quick, but now thinking I might just get something with quick response and waterproof around the same budget (£12-15). What recommendations can people make?

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Been watching this one with interest.... as I'm currently working on a similar project, part TL01B and part HBX / clone. To be paired with a Parma Peugeot 306 body for some rally action...

http://www.tcphotos.com/getuserimage.asp?t=n&id=img154_07102014014016_1.jpg

(I'd post an image rather than a link, but it's not allowing me to again....)

Alex

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What do you guys use/do to do the pannel gap lines...do you use a paint brush or super fine marker pen?

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Well this is slightly overdue an update...

It sat looking sorry for itself in a box of 'bits' for ages, not being touched. But with my new Jimny in the pipeline I figured I better get this one finished first!

I've managed to lose some of the earlier build pictures and also lost the picture frame template I used at the beginning of this build - sorry about that.

Here it was with the gear diffs built up, Speed Tuned Gears and lightweight hollow gear shafts all installed (in the rear anyway, I lost the other pair :( ). I was unable to source a carbon propshaft for a sensible price, so I've stuck with the standard steel item.

All new bearings. Rear diff is completely locked out for some oversteer action. I swapped out the TA03 ball diff from the front since these can require a lot of maintenance and accessing the differential on a TL01 is not a short task.at.all. Lots of ancillaries have to be removed prior to gaining access, so a maintenance-free standard gear diff was fitted.

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Here's a couple of option parts which are getting rarer these days. Simple as they are in their make-up however. The upper arms are tiny!

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Blue Bird metal geared steering servo installed, chassis halves loosely screwed together:

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Next was the motor choice. I recently decommissioned the BZ motor from my DT02 so it made sense to fit it here. I've read online that a BZ is basically a TZ with dust protector - anybody know if that is factual?

Square 06 module 21T pinion gear and some nice chunky cap headed screws go here, the stock TL01 family have some really soft 30mm screws which have an awful tendency to round their heads, making motor removal a little tricky.

DSC_0373.jpg

Next was dampers. I almost spent some money on some low-friction aluminium Tamiya items (pink) but in the end decided that they're going to get covered in dirt anyway, so tried to use some existing parts I had laying around.

The only CVAs I could find were from a CC01 kit - so were 68mm eyelet to eyelet. To put that into perspective, I needed some which were 55mm or less! Quite a bit to remove.

I sleeved the rods internally to take up approx. 5mm, then found another few mm in the lower ball connector itself. Overall the new shocks came in at around 57mm - so just a little longer than desirable. Not bad for freebies!

CC01 before being modified on the top, after being modified on underneath:

DSC_0375.jpg

I've also fitted soft stabilisers front and rear - for no other reason other than that they were surplus to requirements. I have another build, an FF02 306 Maxi (thread to follow) where I used some GPM alloy suspension arms, which unfortunately meant they could not be fitted to the shelfer.

One neat little thing about the TL01 lightweight chassis frame is that it is supplied with this FRP end-plate and stabiliser support, to eradicate that bulky plastic bumper.

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With the modified CVAs I ran some soft springs all-round, predicting these would assist the rougher surfaces I intend to run on. I also fitted 3Racing carbon suspension braces, as the TL01 has an awful habbit of breaking at this point - which means you're required to replace the whole chassis. As these are some 2.5mm thick however, the standard brass ball studs did not get sufficient grip on the mounting points. I picked up on something from Effigy3's TRF201X build in the form of using some set screws and ball end nuts instead. This gave me a lot more purchase on the mounting points and added a bit of bling too, since I only had blue ball nuts(!)

I even managed to find some gold wheel nuts. Pretty schwing!

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On to the front suspension. Similar affair, however in this instance I decided to try and be inventive. It appears the TL01 has neutral caster as standard (can anyone confirm?) so I fitted some TA03 items made by GPM. These also benefit from having 850 ball-bearings in for smoother and more precise action.

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Quite obvious / significant caster angle visible here -

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I've no idea whether it will benefit the handling. It was just one of those inspirational moments, so I did it without hesitating. Again these GPM items were surplus from my TA03 project, for which I managed to source some genuine Tamiya items.

Front suspension assembled. I used soft sway bars front and rear.

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You will note above that a great mod for a TL01 being used on anything other than tarmac is the TL01B front bumper.

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You can see here how it helps the chassis ride over uneven ground and protects the vulnerable lower suspension mounting points.

DSC_0383.jpg

Electronics installed; nothing fancy-

HK3100 3ch receiver

LRP Ai Runner Reverse ESC

I used some trunking here too - first time I've used this technique. It's tricky to work with but well worth the effort I think. I forgot to slide on some heatshrink first as this is the neatest way to finish the ends, so I have just used some cable ties for now.

DSC_0384.jpg

Another pic just to show how well the Yuki Brainergy LiPo battery fits in this chassis-

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I took the built chassis out for a quick test drive on the lawn (which admittedly needs cutting) and was impressed. It grips very hard so cornering is tricky on a grass surface, the car just digs in and tries to roll. I need to find somewhere with some loose surface!!

One problem - that ESC. It's very old and has served me well, but I think it might be broken. I believe it has an 18T motor limit, so the 23T BZ should be well within tolerance. However, after just a 5 minute run the ESC was overheating and cutting out.

That will have to be replaced - I can see a Hobbywing 1060 taking centre stage *AGAIN*.

Bodyshell next. The usual affair with this kind of thing, it's going to be a Subaru. Paintscheme will not be boxart however...nor will it be blue!

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I love TL01's and those lightweight chassis's are getting quite pricy now so i would be upset if it broke :blink:

I have 2 sets of universal shafts 53418 light use only, if your interested.

sven

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I'm having trouble keeping up with all your builds Chris, will be nice to see this one progress especially though!

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Thanks - I'm flitting between projects as and when parts arrive!

I'm going to have to strip out the ESC now in favour of something with some more guts. Can't believe this little thing has let me down! I'll put it in my Eunos as that only has a silver can.

Paint was ordered for this project today. Went with Fastrax stuff as recommended in general discussion :) it will be bright!!

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Started the painting process the other day...

DSC_0022.jpg

That PC-5 paint is excellent, can't believe Tamiya stopped producing it :(

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