rich_f

I wouldn't call them wood screws - wood screws are pointy. I'd call them 'screws for soft material', like plastic. How many times have you taken some plastic machine/appliance apart and found machine screws driven into plastic parts? I can't recall many, if any. They are invariably coarse-threaded tapping screws when the screw goes into a plastic part. Machine screws are for hard materials, usually metal. Even then, softer metals use coarser threaded machine screws - when I was rebuilding my mini's a-series engine, I noted that all screws into the cast iron block or steel parts were unf (fine), while those threaded into the aluminium transmission housing were unc (coarse). You might say it's for convenience that tapping screws are used in plastic, but they could just as easily use fine-threaded self-tapping machine screws (i.e., with a slot cut in the thread). I think the real reason is that the coarse-threaded tapping screws simply have more 'bite', as has been mentioned before. The threads are physically larger (and the shaft correspondingly thinner) and dig into the plastic thereby affording greater pullout strength vs shallower threaded machine screws. Google 'screws for plastics' and you'll get a lot of results that look just like tamiya tapping screws, and lots of information on why that type of thread form is used. What you won't see is machine screws. Needless to say I've never replaced any tapping screws that are threaded solely into plastic with machine screws, except for when I put frp shock towers on my ta02 - it came with machine-threaded step screws which replaced the tapping step screws for the plastic upper arms. My only guess is that tamiya expected me to replace the upper arms with adjusters with ball ends, meaning a ball nut would go on the machine step screw. I eventually did, but for the in-between time that I didn't, it felt wrong having that machine screw going into that soft plastic.

I agree - those tracks couldn't be more different! The modern track looks like a smooth ribbon with loads of perfectly formed jumps - the 1993 track just looks like a really, really bumpy road by comparison. The drivers look like they are constantly fighting the multitude of little bumps everywhere. I'd say this is a huge factor in why it looks so much more unpredictable. Also what's with the cockpit moving to the front? This is the first time I've seen modern buggies - they look weird.

Firstly, does it have to be tamiya? You can get polycarbonate paint in bottles for airbrushing, like Parma faskolor. I'm sure you could brush it on, though it might need more than one coat. Secondly, does it have to be 'polycarbonate paint'? I've had success with regular liquid acrylic paint from art shops which comes in small bottles (the same bottles faskolor...) but is a little thicker. It remains flexible when dried, doesn't flake off polycarbonate even when bent (I had a test piece bent near enough 90 degrees without issue) and I even tried scratching it off with my fingernails and it was well stuck. I'm not convinced there's such a thing as 'polycarbonate paint'.

I'm not sure how many m-chassis sized wheels you've looked at but there must be a set that resembles those 5-spoke wheels (which look amazing btw, I love how tamiya used to make an effort with wheels and tyres, how they are different sizes front and rear like old race cars - would be cool if they still offered that option). If you found a set of m-chassis wheels you like (and they don't have to be tamiya, plenty of other manufacturers make them), then achieving 55mm outer diameter of the tyre is easy as tamiya and other manufacturers make 55d tyres for m-chassis wheels.

I always assumed this was an effort to centralise the weight distribution, given that the motor is offset from the centre line in the opposite direction, so your 'fix' might actually be undoing this. I haven't ever weighed it though to see how it compares to the plastic tub chassis, and it might not make that much difference to most people anyway.

Meh, it was only £5 so the VAT was only £1. I thought I'll just let it go so I can see what happens when it arrives as it's my first post-brexit order from outside the UK. I'll just be looking at the price at checkout much more closely from now on, regardless of where it says the item is being shipped from.

Yesterday I bought an item off ebay purportedly from Liverpool, UK (I'm also in the UK) but ebay still put 20% vat on it at the checkout. I noticed the seller's paypal details were Chinese after I logged in to pay. I was hoping to buy from a uk seller but clicked through without paying attention and by the time I noticed it was too late. I wouldn't have bought from that seller if I had known they weren't in the UK. Ebay should really stop this practice of putting a uk address for the item location when it isn't actually located there. Anyway, I inadvertently have something coming from China so I'll be able to answer your question re packages sent from there. I'll post an update when it arrives.

I think you've got your answer now, but a couple of things left to say: First, it's not a fault, although it may appear that way - this is what happens when using 27MHz radio gear. There is a lot of interference in that band. Second, if this happens again, i.e, if the controller is turned off before the car is powered off and it starts driving away, just turn the transmitter back on and the car should be under control again, so no need to chase it!

I wondered if this might be the case and sounds like the most plausible answer - tamiya has a habit of naming a part after the first car that used it, even if later ones also use the same part, e.g., 'skyline speed-tuned gear set', 'skyline long front suspension set', 'manta ray ball diff set', to name a few.

What's with all the hate for fwd cars? Is it because rwd is usually reserved for sportier cars only, whereas the fwd realm has both sporty and non-sporty cars, so you associate rwd with better handling? Better than a well set up, sporty fwd real car or a 'normal' fwd car? There are good handling front-wheel drive cars just as there are terrible handling rear-wheel drive cars and to tar all fwd cars with the same brush is unfair. There's a long history of front-wheel drive cars in full-size racing - BTCC, JTCC, etc. So handling-wise, they are just as capable as other drive types in full-size cars. Where rear-wheel and four-wheel drive cars have a clear advantage is in standing start acceleration, especially on less grippy surfaces. I have several fwd tamiya cars - m03 and ff01. They are, in my opinion, more fun to race than 4wd - I'm not sure I'm able to pinpoint why. Maybe it was down to the limited allowed modifications to the cars, or maybe it was because prior to racing fwd, I only ever used an outdated chassis in 4wd racing I had done up to that point, but the fwd (m03 in m-chassis class) was the closest and most enjoyable racing I have ever done. So I think it's wrong to dismiss an entire drive type based on a perception formed by experience of mediocre fwd cars. Maybe as Carmine A says, it's an American thing? I don't know of any bad feelings toward fwd cars here in the UK - but maybe because most European cars are front wheel drive? I remember watching a TV show or a car video back in the 90's or 2000's, possibly with with Tiff Needell (former uk racing driver and Top Gear presenter) where he decided what he thought was the best-handling car (maybe of ones that were available new at the time - but I remember they had a skyline gtr in the mix) and the winner was a fwd car - a Peugeot 106 or a Citroen Saxo if I remember correctly. Had a look online but can't find it.

Out of interest, what are the differences between the ta02 version of the 300zx and the group c version? Is it just the rear spoiler? Is it supposed to represent a car from a different race season? I can understand the Porsches are different bodies because they aren't even supposed to be the same car (one is 911 gt1 and one is 911 gt1-98). Man I wish I could find things on ebay that no-one else bids on!

Would love for tamiya to re-release the ta02-w variants. The 300zx, the r33 gtr-lm and the original supra gt are great looking cars.

I'm with you here - I can't stand the lingering foul aftertaste that sweeteners have compared to sugar. And it's not just Ribena, pretty much all soft drinks now contain sweeteners instead of or along with sugar, even the non-diet varieties. However, this change is nothing to do with our membership with the EU - in fact the same soft drinks in some EU countries still have the old, sweetener-free recipe. This was a UK government decision to force us to consume less sugar, by removing the option to buy the non-artificially-sweetened versions. Cranberry juice was my favourite - can't find it without sweeteners now 😣. (if anyone knows an artificial-sweetener-free variety of cranberry juice in the UK, please let me know) But you can still get soft drinks (not sure about Ribena but certainly other branded blackcurrant juice concentrate) in original full-sugar form in Europe, just with more difficulty and more expense now than before we left the EU.

Members of European parliament are elected. You could lobby the MEPs before. This is an entirely different entity to the European Union, and the UK is still part of it. The simple fact is that if we hadn't left the European Union, the vat legislation wouldn't have needed rewriting, so you can see how brexit has been blamed. You're right though that whoever made the decision to let vendors sort the vat admin was short-sighted, or more likely they thought that the UK as a standalone nation was important enough that companies around the world, large and small, would be tripping over themselves trying to trade with us - so much that they wouldn't mind the extra effort and costs involved. I wonder what else they got/will get wrong.

It is very naive to believe that the UK leaving the EU only has effects on interactions with countries within the EU. When the UK was in the EU, it meant that other countries traded with an EU country, for whom all rules are the same. Now, they trade with just another country with its own rules. They now have to jump through hoops to sell to us, and some smaller ones with limited business with the UK (remember, before we left, we were lumped in with the rest of the EU, providing a bigger customer base and more incentive to jump through EU hoops) aren't bothering due to associated costs/effort, so have instead stopped selling to the UK. So far I've only seen negative impacts of leaving the EU. I realise it is early on, but all I can say is I hope things get better.

If you look at the real e50 wheels (see image below), you can't really see the '3-piece aspect' anyway - the lip/bolts are somewhat hidden compared to the LM wheels. Once I've painted the centres on mine gold they should look pretty much the same. The wheels are some that I found on ebay about the same time I bought the 40th anniversary 934, when I realised it came with the wrong wheels. Not sure of brand. Tyres are HPI vintage, which have a taller sidewall on the outside which fits over a lip on the wheel rim. The only thing wrong is that they are all the same offset, front and rear, and all the same width. I've squeezed on wide tyres in my photo and I think this will look ok for the shelf. For the fronts I was considering modifying the centres to reduce the offset somehow. Not got around to it yet.

Like these?

Yes, the celica came with 2-piece wheels of a similar design. The one-piece wheels you're using came out later and have been used on a lot of cars, though I'm not sure which car had them first.

Isn't the difference in the above pictures that the centre section is sandwiched between the inner and outer rims on the top image (meaning the lip around the perimeter of the centre is part of the outer rim), and on the bottom image the centre section is on the outside (meaning the lip is now behind the centre section, so the area with the bolts is the same colour as the centre section)? This has the effect of enabling a different offset using the same rim parts. Deciding how to paint the tamiya rims depends on how the real car had the bbs LM 3-piece wheels made up - with the centre section sandwiched or on the outside. This is, of course, moot, because the 934 used the bbs e50 wheels, and the LMs look too big and new for this old racer (although they look better than the godawful effort that came with the 30th anniversary version)!

You're not wrong. I spent ages looking for a set for a civic project I have in the pipeline. I eventually found a set in a similar condition to wtcc5's pre-restoration pics. They are accurate replicas of those Mugen wheels, so necessary for a racecar replica build, but they aren't the prettiest! Man I hate this throw-away culture that seems to have permeated the world. Those wheels (though not the best looking design) are rare and really hard to find and I would gladly have bought them from you if I had been given the chance, in order to restore them myself. In my opinion, throwing something away is incredibly selfish - it's like saying "I don't want this item, and I don't want anyone else on the planet to have it either" - even if the item is perfectly good! And look how good they came out after a clean up! Just imagine how much perfectly good stuff is thrown away every day. Sometimes I wish I worked at a dump so I could collect all the cool stuff other people throw away. Instead it just sits buried under the ground...

If you don't mind it not being tamiya... https://landlmodels.co.uk/products/ford-mondeo I recently bought an r32 skyline body from them for racing this year (can't bear to use a genuine tamiya one and get it all scratched up) and it's not bad quality.

Yes the soap solution is squeezed out from under the vinyl. The vinyl doesn't stick anywhere there is still soap solution, so you can see exactly where any remains under the sticker and needs to be squeezed out. You need to use a squeegee to prevent islands of solution remaining under the sticker, and start from the centre and move to edges. I put the window tint film on my full-size car over 10 years ago with this method and it still remains stuck, plus 2 years ago I did my first 1:10th body using this method and haven't had any problems. In fact, it was the best sticker job I had ever done and is the method I (will) now employ on all builds.

This should be simple enough to estimate from videos of cars going around race tracks. If you take a look at a car during a corner, and assume the car's speed is roughly constant around the corner (or at least the portion you are measuring), then the lateral acceleration can be calculated by estimating the number of radians the car turns through per second, squaring this value then multiplying the result by the radius of the corner in metres. The answer will be in metres per second. As an example, let's say you see a car go around a 90 degree corner with radius of curvature of 2m in 0.5 seconds. 90 degrees is pi/2 radians, so the angular speed is pi radians per second. The acceleration therefore would be pi*pi*2 = about 20 m/s/s, or about 2g. 0.5 seconds is quite conservative for rc cars with grippy racing tyres, so I expect the maximum possible lateral acceleration to be much higher.

These ground effect cars work mainly by creating an area of low pressure under the car, which means the normal atmospheric pressure above the car presses down on it. The resultant force (downforce) is the difference in pressure multiplied by the area. So my advice is to maximise the area of low pressure. If you look at Hobgoblin's picture, there is a huge flat plate surrounding the fan under the robot. This maximises the area in the pressure*area equation, which maximises the downforce. I would say skirts are not necessary - you just need a big ol' flat plate under the car - as big as you can fit. As for using a drone and drone controller to control left and right downforce - I think this is unnecessary and might lead to unusual handling. You really only need a single high efficiency fan (or maybe 2, spinning opposite directions to prevent any weird torque effects) and have it act on the whole car. And the only time you wouldn't want it running at full power is when you are at full speed on a straight. As soon as you need to brake for the first corner though, you need it back on so you'd probably just be better off with it on full all the time.

When you say 'bin' do you use that in the British English sense, as in, rubbish bin, trash - or the more general meaning of 'receptacle', e.g., 'parts bin'? If the first then I'm surprised you'd be throwing away what appear to be perfectly serviceable/usable parts. For one, that four-hole silver can is as good as a black sport-tuned.