speedy_w_beans

Some serious hardware you have there...

In my early days in the hobby I wanted to try a wide variety of chassis and bought kits accordingly. Then I went through a phase of bargain hunting watching for deep discounts or closeout specials. Now I'm more selective and pull the trigger only if the kit has a body I like. My collection is skewed more towards on-road touring and pan cars with a small variety of off-road thrown in.

I agree with you 100% from a technical perspective. At the same time, there is a universal joint marketed as a "CVD," and generally people have a mental picture of what that looks like. If you search on the web for "3Racing CVD," "Yeah Racing CVD," "Xtra Speed CVD," etc. you'll see something like this (which is a universal joint): Search results also show something like this (which is a DCJ): Then there's the universal joint most people think of and is functionally similar to the "CVD" shown above: So, yes, I agree that a "CVD" is really a "universal joint" technically speaking. At the same time, the manufacturers have chosen marketing terminology to distinguish the appearance of two universal joints. It's still the case the dogbone is the sloppiest solution, with universal joints (either true universal joints or "CVDs") reducing some slop, and finally DCJs being the best. Thanks for pointing this out; hopefully this clarifies things for everyone.

There are some old posts floating around (can't find them now) that discuss the effect of angles and joints on axle velocity. If you imagine the main long axle shaft spinning at the same continuous speed as the differential, then as soon as the shaft terminates in a joint like a dogbone end or CVD joint, then the axle stub actually doesn't spin at the same continuous speed. To the naked eye it looks continuous, but through the course of one full rotation the axle stub actually moves a little faster and a little slower than the axle itself. There's math to explain this. So, as you increase steering angle then the amount of variation in the axle stub speed increases and it shows up as chatter. The point of the DCJ is to create a second joint in addition to the first joint, and the intermediate segment between the two joints sees the speed variation but also splits the steering angle evenly so the axle stub's speed doesn't have that variation on every rotation. Again, there's math to explain this. So if you're bashing casually, regular old dogbones or CVDs are just fine as you'll not really notice or care about minute levels of cyclic speed variation in the axle stubs. If you're competition drifting or competition racing, you might think about DCJs as they eliminate that effect and will provide a little more consistent speed (and therefore tire grip) relative to the surface. It really is a progression of improvement -- dogbones are the lowest with a lot of side play and looseness in their joint cups, as well as the axle stub speed chatter. CVDs are a little better in that they can eliminate side play and at least one point of looseness; there's only one dogbone end and one CVD joint. There can still be some axle stub speed variation, but the tightness of the subassembly hides the chatter a little better. Finally the DCJs are like the CVDs but improve on the joint by having two joints. So the side play and single dogbone end are still there, but the double joint setup splits the steering angle and eliminates the axle stub cyclic speed variation. So, they cost more but they are definitely an improvement. This Wikipedia article explains it more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_joint

Did a little Googling and I read a case where someone said he had to turn on his third channel to make the LEDs work correctly. With a 2-channel radio, you may be out of luck.

From other radios I've used, channel 1 is usually for the steering servo and channel 2 is for the ESC. Also, looking at your photo, it looks like you skipped channel 2 and plugged into channels 3 and 4 of the receiver; should those leads be moved over one position? I think I'd: Move the LED controller's channel 2 and channel 3 leads over one position on the receiver; make sure the LED controller's lead are plugged into the corresponding receiver channels. Swap the ESC and servo connections to the LED controller so the servo is on channel 1 and the ESC is on channel 2. I see you left channel 3 unconnected (the black channel 3 tag); just leave that unconnected for now... Edit to add: I don't think this is a genuine Tamiya product. It shows the logo on the channel tags and on the body of the LED controller, but this looks more like a generic GT Power controller and not a Tamiya TLU-series controller. I'd still recommend the changes noted above, but it may be worth a try to leave CH3 disconnected on the receiver too since you don't have a three-channel radio sending a valid signal to the third channel.

Parts are listed at the back of the manual: https://www.tamiyausa.com/media/files/42345ml-1117-c1b7.pdf They finally caught up with 3Racing...

After a week of rain, we finally had a beautiful day. It was so nice, in fact, that I spent most of it outside on the back deck watching birds and squirrels while building TTs from a hodge podge of spare parts. It really was perfect -- 20-22C, 50% humidity, shaded under the picnic table umbrella, just enjoying the sounds of nature and quietly screwing parts together...

The ball diffs need care to do them well. Recommend NOT using Elmer's rubber cement or CA glue. Maybe give some silicone RTV a try instead and give it full time to cure in place of the "synthetic rubber cement" mentioned in the directions. Be sure to flip the diff before installing the screw and nut; it's easy to miss the little arrow in the instructions. Recommend anti-wear grease for the thrust bearing and plumber's silicone faucet grease for the diff rigs and diff balls. It's also good to chuck one outdrive in an electric drill and spin it in each direction for 30 seconds to seat the balls in the rings a little bit while holding the other outdrive stationary. Then adjust the diff screw tightness again so the pulley doesn't slip under pressure while holding the two outdrives stationary. There's a bit of feel and judgment that goes into building these components; it's not like a gear diff where you throw some oil in it and seal it up. Ball diffs need periodic maintenance; the action should be smooth so if the diffs feel excessively gritty it may be time for a rebuild with fresh rings/balls/thrust bearings. A slipper clutch upgrade is beneficial to limit the torque from the motor applied to the diffs. You want the slipper to slip, but the diffs to not slip.

For your reading pleasure... As for on-board GPS, options include the SkyRC GPS, an Android phone with an app like DigiHUD, or a GoPro Hero 5/6/7 for FPV video with speedometer overlay.

Well those look kind of familiar...

Hmm, something something about the main site page and a showroom??

^^^ this.

It's kind of a broad issue and requires some troubleshooting. Something that has really helped me is this: I was having a problem with a receiver-controlled switch on a 6x6 King Yellow build for another TC member. Using this little oscilloscope, I could check the pulses on each receiver channel and confirm the transmitter was sending the right commands. One of the waveforms looked a little funny, and then I figured out there was a loose ground wire in the switch, so the pulse was effectively floating and not causing the switch to turn on/off. Anyhow, it's really handy to use this to monitor receiver channels and then wiggle the associated lever/stick/steering wheel/throttle on the transmitter to see if the control is causing the signal to change. Maybe you can source one already built?

Hi @wolfdogstinkus, I created a new category called "For Posterity's Sake, Not Official Entries" for your submission. The reason is the lack of body shell, and some could argue the flip at the end constitutes a crash. Jason was consistent in requiring a body shell for entries, and there was a healthy discussion about disallowing crashes as they can affect top speed in a GPS. In your case the crash is not severe; it's more of a flip, but there is still the issue of no body shell. To keep it consistent for everyone's official entries, but to archive the video as you want, I hope you don't mind I'm cataloging your video this way.

An old Android phone and the DigiHUD app works pretty well for logging top speed. Someone else posted a speed run video using a GoPro Hero 5, and it not only captured the video but put a speedometer overlay on top of it with GPS speed showing. That was pretty cool to see the footage as well as the speed at the same time.

Lucky me, the sun broke through the clouds for a few hours today and I took full advantage to take some photos and capture some video! Here's the finale, folks! A day or two ago I called up my dad and asked if he had any photos of me playing Hot Wheels when I was a child. He found one, and here it is. We had a modest amount of orange track and purple track connectors: We all look way different now! The original car, 47 years later. It was loved and played with a lot back then, and I remember popping the rear window and clicking it back into place several times. I'm sure that's why it's lost now. I've looked at other examples online, and it seems like some others suffered the same fate: But, here are some sunny shots to brighten the day: So I took it for a test drive while the cameras were charging and all seemed well. My neighbor is a huge Porsche fan and the 962 is his favorite, so he wanted to see the car too. I asked him to run the camcorder and capture some footage while I drove it around. After he was situated I switched it on, and a few second later there was smoke coming out from under the body shell! Then the car launched itself across the street into a neighbor's front grass and the motor kept going even though the radio wasn't sending any throttle to the receiver! Fortunately the magnet mounts let the body break away and there was no damage to it, but the ESC was charred and badly melted: Not a problem, I had another ESC and a half hour later we were back in business. I'm really pleased with the handling; the rear end is pretty well planted. The F103GT is a bit loose in the rear and needs some careful rolling on the throttle. The RM01 Stratos I made some time ago needs a gyro to make it manageable. But this chassis is pretty amazing. Even without changing springs, even without any form of damping, the rubber F1 tires hooked up with the asphalt and it was very nice indeed. Take a look for yourself: If it looks good and drives well, there's not much more to ask for. This project is done!

I think I'm going to grab a tub of popcorn now, as this project is 99.9% done! I finished detailing the shell and getting the magnets in position over the past few evenings, so that's about it. Unfortunately it's raining and will continue to do so for another day or two, so the final glamour shots won't be posted until then. The magnet mount setup worked better than expected. When I designed the body posts earlier for the magnets, the depths of the magnet cups were set to capture both the chassis magnets as well as the body magnets so the body wouldn't wander while driving. I just left the body magnets in position on the chassis and attached a pair at a time. Initially I peeled the protective film off the servo tape for the front magnets, put a wedge under the front of the body to hold it up, aligned the rear, pinned it in position with external magnets, double-checked alignment all around, and then lowered the front nose a few millimeters so the body contacted the servo tape. Some pressure seated the magnets onto the body, and they lifted off the mating chassis magnets with no problems. With the front aligned, it was easier then to peel the film off the rear magnets, connect the front of the body to the chassis, and then lower the rear into position. Again some pressure seated the magnets onto the body, and everything was good to go. For a street-driven casual car, I'm really liking the setup. The body is held in place by the magnets firmly enough to lift the whole chassis by the body, but separating the body from the chassis and putting it back in position again is pretty easy for battery changes or accessing the power switch. This is my first time using magnets, and I think I'll have to use this method more often! It doesn't make sense for offroad bashers or racers (body clips are more secure), but for an onroad fun model I'd certainly go this route again! Here's the finished body. ABC fine line tape (0.3 mm width) filled the main body line, the door lines, and the top vents. Vinyl cut on the plotter finished the air vents, window trim, and headlights. I also used vinyl for the fuel filler, red trim line on the bottom of the shell, and red Hot Wheels logo on each fin. All of this helps give the body more definition and cleans up the paint transitions between the main orange and translucent blue. Front shot... Top view... So I just need some sun to get nicer pictures and maybe shoot a short running video. Stay tuned for one last post, and then we'll call the project completely done!

It's good to see you building again, @Grastens! The whole comical aspect of this, especially the tail pipes, makes me think of bosozoku car culture in Japan. Make it even more comical!

Some fun advertising I found on YouTube. In one of the shots there's a copy of my Porsche going down the track, and in a few other segments I see other cars still in my small collection. Looking forward to finishing and driving it!

Off the top of my head, without naming names, here are a few previous members I remember leaving and why: One simply got all the satisfaction he wanted out of the hobby and moved on to another hobby. One was a perfectionist and didn't seem to feel appreciated. He deleted all of his 1200 posts and quit suddenly, which led to some policy changes around here about editing posts. One was getting trolled by anonymous emails from the main site page, and he had had enough. I think the main site page changed how it handled anonymous emails at that point. At least two I can remember seemed to dive headfirst into the hobby and cycled through dozens of cars rapidly. I think they both burned out or looked at their bank account! At least a few have left due to job loss or financial circumstances; it's not fun if you can't build and share your creations like others here. At least two have died from various circumstances. In my mind, Tamiyaclub traditionally seems to go through a yearly cycle with more people joining and more activity in the autumn and winter months. Once the nice weather hits again, forum traffic dies down. This year has been an exception with The Virus forcing more people to stay at home. I don't have real stats; it's just a perception of how many new posts there are each day. There are more than usual right now.

Annnnnd, let there be paint! As expected, the rear fins were a pain to paint. Even though the main body only took two coats of orange, the fins needed that and a healthy third coat to guarantee coverage in those corners of the shell. I tend to have a heavy hand when it comes to painting, and knowing that, I tried my best to make the first coat a light one just to seal the masks. It didn't matter; there were still a few small bleeds into the yellow stripe and one "R" in PORSCHE. Since I was just using solid colors and no metallics or pearls, from past experience I knew these few bleeds could be corrected by scraping an Xacto blade against the paint to remove it. The scuffing in the Lexan wouldn't be a problem for the next color. Note: This does not work for metallics and pearls; scuffing the shell with a hobby blade will mess with the particle alignment in those paints and it will definitely show later. Better to use a solvent and some careful wiping to make corrections. After my second coat of silver I just about freaked out when I found some silver peeking through the orange on one of the fins. Had I put the paint on too heavily again? Did the solvent in the silver eat away the orange? What sticker do I put over that? Meh. At this point I was so frustrated with the few bleeds and possibly my impatience leading to a bad paint spot that I just went outside and started mowing the yard. About half way through the yard work I came back in and inspected the shell again and realized there was a silver smear on the outer protective film from one of my fingers. I started picking at the silver spot on the fin and it was flaking off, so my spirits lifted as we were back to just a few bleeds needing some scuffing. Peeling back the purple masks, I applied two coats of purple and a coat of silver, and left it to dry more while I finished the yard. At this point the PORSCHE lettering was starting to stand out more, and I was getting excited about moving on to the next color. The yellow masks came off next and the bleeds were addressed. The loose paint particles were captured in a damp paper towel and then it was time to shoot two coats of yellow and a coat of silver. I had an old can of yellow in the garage and figured it would be nice to use it up instead of starting a new can; there was just enough to make it work. Off came the red masks and I could smell success on the horizon. The red itself laid down so nicely, so uniformly, that I didn't even use a second coat. One coat of silver, and that was that. Finally the window and headlight masks came off, and I was debating between leaving them clear, painting them with smoke/tint, or painting them with translucent light blue. In the end I wanted to capture the original feel of the Hot Wheel and went for the translucent light blue; so glad I did. The only issue I see is the translucent blue isn't perfectly clear; there's a little bit of haze thanks to some humidity we had today. It's really tough; winter is the perfect time to use translucent paint, but it requires a heated space to do it. Summer is great for paints overall, but the humidity wreaks havoc with window tint and translucent paints. It was such a joy to pull the blue protective film off the body and see the true colors finally. And it was also a joy to put the body right next to my old Hot Wheel from 1974! I'm looking forward to working on the finishing details next and getting this mounted to the chassis!

For the GT4, both TT02 and TB05 have the same 257 mm wheelbase. They only differ in width by 1 mm (TT02 = 188 mm, TB05 PRO = 187 mm).

I suspect this is the moment many of you have been waiting for, namely, seeing the body come together! With my Hot Wheel and calipers in hand, it was time to get to work. First of all, I want to mention just how incredibly useful it is to have some paper rulers printed and ready for use. Because of the shape of this body shell, it can be difficult to measure and judge length with a rigid ruler. With the paper rulers I could follow body contours and get more accurate measurements to use in designing masks. Also, since the body is still clear it was really nice to cut rulers to size and tape them to the outside of the body, using them as alignment guides while laying down masks and tape on the inside. Just use a search engine to find "printable rulers," there are quite a few options out there. Here I was using a cut ruler with some marks to align a mask.. It made aligning a multi-segment stripe much easier. Here's the main red stripe with a cutout for a yellow '9', as well as window and headlight masks applied. I took several measurements of the original Hot Wheel using calipers and scaled up the stripe and number trying to keep the proportions the same. At this stage I used Inkscape to design and Cricut Design Space to do some cuts/joins as well as print to the machine. The vinyl itself is relatively compliant and handled the cockpit roof without wrinkling. Here's the start of the purple stripes; if you look at the original Hot Wheel posted earlier the old Porsche logo is painted orange within a purple stripe. The logo on the Hot Wheel as well as this body is taller than the official logo, but I'm trying to replicate the Hot Wheel as much as possible. I just found a .SVG of the logo using a web search and imported it directly into the vinyl cutter software. I set up a rectangle and used the logo to remove parts of the rectangle, and flipped the logo since it's installed from the inside but viewed on the outside. Everything finished... I used some tape to finish the purple stripe and then worked on the yellow section at the front and rear of the shell. Paint sequence will be orange/silver, purple/silver, yellow/silver, red/silver, black, and window tint. Both Saturday and Sunday are expected to be nice days with 80 degree F temperatures, so I'm going to take my time on this one and try to avoid paint bleeds as much as possible. My biggest worry are the two vertical fins at the rear of the shell; it's always difficult getting paint into tight spots like those. Hard to believe it took most of the day to mask this. I should have some paint pictures by Sunday evening.