Tizer

There are some set ups you can use at home. It's more often used for vapor smoothing parts from an FDM printer (with ABS filament). This however is SLS Nylon (PA12) so the chemical used might be slightly different, not sure. I work at Shapeways and we offer a vapor smoothed finish on SLS and MJF PA12 printed models, so I just used that What it is is a chemical polishing process where an agressive chemical vapor condensated onto the surface of your model and 'melts' the top layer, leaving it a lot smoother than before. Always! The thought crossed my mind of using this one with the Tamiya carbon chassis to put next to my 2 HPI's and Big Wave FF01's but that would be a little bit boring wouldn't it

I finished this car quite a while ago but never showed the results. Couple things I had to replace: Front knuckles were cracked so replaced those with original blue ones in new condition. Front bodypost was missing so I've added a new set. Rear wheel axles were from a TA01/2 so I swapped those out with the correct FWD freewheeling axles. Front bumper was smashed and none of the other ones in my spares box were good, so I 3D printed a replacement in SLS nylon and had them vaporsmoothed to get as close to an injection moulded finish as possible. Batterymount was missing so I also printed and smoothed one of those. Wheelhexes were cracked, so I replaced those with new ones. Plus ofcourse a deep cleaning! The car turned out to be pretty solid. It has a mark of some paint (from where it crashed into something and the body rubbed) on the gearbox, some scratches on the batchtub and lower gearbox plate and a tiny tiny crack in one of the damper mounts. It would make a great runner or project, but it's the 5th FF01 in my collection so I will let it go to someone else. Will put it up for sale soon I think It was a fun little project that kept me busy for a few evenings. By now I think I can assemble an FF01 blindly Here's what it looks like now: What do you guys think?

As always I get stuck on trying to make everything perfect and lose motivation. In the meantime I've 3D designed and printed a bunch of scale detail parts to up the realism of the car but didn't have the time (or will) to paint and add them to the car. I have the fuel fillers, bonnet/boot latches, towhooks and side exhaust all done. I got distracted with a couple of projects in the meantime One of them is another HKS car though! The long discontinued Yokomo HKS GT86 Racing Performer. Hard to find body now! Was lucky to find the complete kit + a lightbucket set for it. Painted it in a metallic black colour to mimic the dry carbon look the real car has without having to mess around trying to get a weave pattern in it. Yokomo themselves suggest to just paint it black but I think this suits it better. I've used a darker black for the rear diffuser. The wing is painted in the body colour and all of it (including all the decals except for the chrome gold striping) has been covered with a matte clear. Windowtrims are painted a mix of matte and gloss black to mimic the rubber trims and glued edges of the glass. The included side mirrors and exhaust have also been painted instead of using decals. I've found the matching Yokomo Advan wheels and wrapped them in Advan tire thread T-Drift tires. Still left to do is add a few 3D printed details such as the aerocatches and boot latches and paint the lightbuckets to match the real car better. This was supposed to be a quick job inbetween building the rest but it's also taking longer than expected. I do hope to have it finished before the end of the year. It's so close!

3Racing used to make a conversion kit for the M05 to turn it into a 1:10, 259mm wheelbase chassis. Always wanted one, but they have been discontinued for a long time. Looking forward to seeing what you will build

Tearing it down was a matter of about 15 minutes. It's become routine after building so many FF01's and TA01/2's Now for a deep clean and rebuild with some new parts.

Recently in another buying spree on Yahoo Auctions I bought a Tamiya Toyota HKS Altezza body in the carbon print, as that was still missing from my collection of HKS bodies. I kindoff forgot what chassis came with it, so when it finally arrived a few months later I was surprised to find a decent looking stock FF01 under it on drifting tires. Not sure what was going on there, but of course that doesn't make any sense Since I already have plenty of cool FF01's I don't really need this one, so I decided to clean it up so I can perhaps sell it on. It arrived pretty dirty and dusty, but in what seemed like good condition. No obvious cracks in all the common places. Now it's time to pull it apart, see what's missing or broken, clean it all up and replace what needs to be replaced. It should end up being a tidy looking stock FF01 for someone else to enjoy racing/building.

Wow this is incredibly cool!! I didn't know a kit for the TF2 existed. I have one for the TA02 just like it Thanks for sharing the build and pictures!

The colour came out really well! Amazing what a good clear coat can do (and hide )

Nice work on restoring the old electrics Ampro would be @Pintopower on here

Would be cool to see the Sok livery. Haven't seen one before

I'm not sure if there's already a thread about this, but over the past decade or so I've been collecting rare Tamiya wheels. One of my favorite types are the carbon reinforced plastic wheels Tamiya has done in multiple designs. I think this started somewhere in the late 90's with the M-chassis minilite wheels and the racing 5 spokes that came with the TA02's, but there has since been many more. I think I'm getting close to having all of the different ones, but maybe some of you know of more? Please let me know I received a set of Carrera GT wheels in the reinforced version last week from Japan + some more sets of carbon dish wheels. After taking this picture I realised I forgot about 4 sets I have So far I have the following sets: One-Piece Spoke Wheels (5-spokes) in 3 different packaging styles M-chassis 8-spoke Wheels 24mm Medium Narrow Dish Wheel (+0 Offset) in 3 different packaging styles Medium Narrow 5-spoke Wheels (Carrera GT) Medium Narrow 18-spoke Wheels Porsche Boxster wheels Speedway Pal 37R wheels (not Tamiya) It's super interesting to see all the different types of packaging Tamiya has used over the years. For example the One-Piece Spoke wheels you see in the above group picture with the modern Tamiya tags on them, I also have in the oldschool 90's packaging and a dark-green non branded packaging. The non branded stuff might be event only sales maybe? The 90's one was the coolest, as the pattern printed on it always sortoff matched the style or theme of the wheels. This one for example had a 'carbon fibre weave' style going on. And here's also more of the dish wheels, again in a non-branded packaging I've seen many times with oddball colour Tamiya wheels. I think again they might be event only limited edition packages. I've seen neon colours and (colour)chrome plated wheels with the same white label before. Anyone else into collecting wheels like this? I have a big pile of transparent wheels too, and I know there were limited edition chrome and gold plated versions of wheels as well that some of the TC members have collected.

There's quite a few Tamiya repro and upgrade parts for sale on Shapeways too

Those are the ones, yes. On the TA02S Lancia those are also already included. To complete the line-up of alternative TA02's, the TA02W (that came with the 300ZX and Tom's Supra) has the wide rear wheels, but also TA01 front knuckles and longer shafts in the front to widen the front trackwidth. It's the only one where the chassis was changed to widen it compared to a normal TA02.

Don't know if anybody already answered your question from the original post, but the only difference between the TA02S Lancia and the TA02SW is the wheels. The wheels make the W (wide) part of the SW. The wheelbase on both is the same which is achieved by using TA01 rear wishbones.

That's the same one indeed. They are all made by Team C.