ChrisRx718

10 years ago Madness. I never did get around to this - closest I got was a DT-02 but stumbled trying to find red wheels - so I gave up! I would love to revisit one day. I think converting a toy-grade car would be the fastest way to go about it - does anyone make any properly red 2.2" wheels though?

Thanks dude, I will scour the manual now and take a look. I hope the differential is easy to access... It certainly doesn't look it!

Nope, still haven't run this. I'm deliberating as to what bodyshell I can fit on it - the chassis is very tall and 'chunky' at both ends. I have invested even more money in a Yeah Racing Aluminium Steering setup, but seeing as the steering bridge still 'hangs' from the front bulkhead via a flexible lump of plastic (designed to look like an engine rocker cover) I don't think it's going to be a vast improvement. I'll promise to update the thread when I finally settle on a bodyshell!

You absolutely need to invest a few quid in one of these cell testers - They're so cheap, and so much safer to use than a multimeter. They'll also tell you the individual cell voltage and % level, down to 3 decimal points (which is overkill, but nice!) Many of my LiPo's have been stored at 3.4v per cell (because I always used to think this was correct) but Google reckons 3.8 or 3.85v. Now that I have a fancy charger with 'storage' mode, I will address all my LiPo's before retiring them to the ammunition case I store them in!

Birthday yesterday so I took some Tamiya's to the local outdoor track for some free practice thrashing. TD2 - completely let me down; ran fine for 12 laps or so, then just as I was getting a feel for it I noticed I was losing acceleration out of corners. Pulling along the straight I could hear the motor singing its' heart out (10.5T Justock) but it wasn't correlating to wheel-speed. Took it to the bench and my first port of call was the clutch. Fully-tightened that - Tamiya gives you access from outside of the gearbox, but I couldn't tighten it? In hindsight this pointed at another issue, but at the time I didn't figure. I'm guessing the TD2 has a ball diff? I didn't assemble the kit, I bought someone else's which they had assembled. If it's got a gear diff I'm in trouble, cos I'm out of ideas. If ball-diff, it needs tightening! BBX - so glad I brought with me a backup vehicle. The BBX ran flawlessly, but really needs 3S LiPo to flex its stuff (and overcome the weight). I've added a skid plate and it has 3-piece wheels intended for a crawler which are very heavy. Handled wonderful but you could really notice the weight through the tight hairpins. Both vehicles really suffered with front-end "Bite" - I'm guessing because of Tamiya's obsession with ribbed front tyres? The Kyosho Dirtmaster's ran rings around me, but I reckon if I could get some more front end and fix the power issues on the TD2, I could probably get away with only being lapped twice instead of 5+ times

Bummer, I have bought a Justock 10.5 to go in my TD2 and hadn't even seen this issue coming. Back to the drawing board

Very decent they are too

Got fed up waiting for Tamiya to release some 'slightly tweaked' XV-02 shock towers for the XM-01 and saw that Yeah Racing had released their own parts. Picked up a set of carbon towers, the little bulkhead brace thing (accidentally bought two, like a plonker) and a set of servo posts. The Yeah Racing Blue is very similar to Tamiya TRF blue. Hmmm. Considering that this hasn't been run yet, there sure is a lot of seepage of oil from that diff. I hate the little M1.5mm socket screws - they're far too soft for this application. I cleaned up the grease and reassembled, but couldn't loosen or tighten the screws as they gave up the fight against my hex wrench Front tower installed. Nice set of MST wheels and tyres too! Rear tower completes the job. You can't really see the servo posts. Finally made a start on the body. I've put a single sticker on this afternoon Nice big Castrol logo for the roof. I'll hopefully finish this up soon so I can get started on the 'spare' Yaris GR body too!

Nope, these were genuine Tamiya #69942 Modeler's Side Cutter!! But they didn't put up much of a fight Yeah I tried to keep the cost down on this as much as possible, the motor heatsink caught my eye but to be honest, this is basically being used as a step-up from a bodyshell holder, so it seemed overkill!

What's this? A new Project? It's not even a Tamiya? But Chris, you haven't completed any of your current / ongoing projects, some of which are getting on for 10 years old? Quite. But, I had every intention of this being a Tamiya project. I first spotted this bodyshell on L&L Models website, which I presume is a Team-C dodgy re-mould of the Tamiya 406 ST body (#58212). So here started the cogs turning in my mind - Some of you will be able to tell my intention immediately from just this image. I wanted to create a BTCC Will Hoy Esso Ultron Peugeot 406 - luckily that is one of the sticker sheets available. A tricky, 2-tone gold and British Racing Green paint job is all that stood in my way. ...And a chassis. Originally it was my full intention to build a BT-01. The newly-announced (at the time) Tamiya chassis which can be assembled in both FWD and RWD. But prices at my local hobby shop were...alarming. £159.99 for a Supra BT-01, which I would need to assemble as FWD. And the instructions didn't include how to do that - to the best of my knowledge. Then I built my MB-01. Essentially, this is a scaled-down BT-01 in M-Chassis size. This car is super disappointing. It's ungainly, has a terrible steering angle, limited upgrades, tons of suspension slop - and it wasn't even fun to build!!! I like my RC cars to be "anatomically correct" so to speak. That is, the FWD touring car in this case. So- BT-01 - Too sloppy, too expensive (for what it is - though I have since seen that Tamico will sell you a chassis kit for €69.99) FF-02 - Too rare FF-03 - Parts too hard to obtain now (I'm still looking for a new, reasonably-priced chassis plate for my FF-03 if anyone sees one) TT-02 - with the rear diff outdrives removed? Cheap solution, but seems a bit of a hack job This meant looking further afield than Tamiya, sadly. I looked at- 3Racing Sakura FF EVO - Looks very similar to a Tamiya FF03, around £200 though, which was a bit more than I was looking to spend 3Racing Cero Sports FWD - Within budget, looks good and is upgrade-able MST TCR FF - Well within budget (£90) and it had funky brake discs and calipers. Chassis looks more interesting than others - particularly the limited suspension. As you'll have seen with the title, I went with the MST. I had done a bit of research (there isn't much about these chassis in forum posts) and I'm well aware they are intended for a kind-of spec series, back-to-basics approach with limited upgrade-ability. Part of my research also included looking through @alvinlwh's TCR-M project thread. That car is essentially the same as this, but on a shorter chassis plate and with narrow-er suspension arms. Anyhoo... TCR-FF kit arrived within just 4 days of ordering from Asiatees. Super stuff. Box is well presented and a kind of 'pizza box' style where it's nice and slim due to the lack of a bodyshell, avoiding high shipping costs as a result. Inside you get what you'd expect; wheels and tyres, various numbered bags and an instruction manual. Bags were clearly numbered stage-by-stage, so you don't get any leftover screws or hardware after each step, which is good. Instruction manual is nowhere near the gold-standard we are used to from Tamiya, though. Useful little toolkit is included - the black plastic pieces are to introduce camber by effectively increasing the tread of the lower-arm connection points to the main bulkheads. BTCC touring cars did have a lot of camber, so I might go back and fit these... Front (and only) differential. What. A. Nightmare. Tamiya have definitely spoiled us. Assembling this thing was absolutely crucifying. The thrust washer comprises 8 tiny balls which you have to assemble yourself, relying on ball diff grease to hold everything in place. Horrible experience! All built - another advantage over the BT-01, full ball-bearings throughout. Front bulkhead and diff assembled. Read bulkhead is a mirror of the front, albeit without a differential and motor mount (obviously) I'm not sure what the plastic is made of, but these virtually brand-new Tamiya nippers did not agree with it. Not impressed, Tamiya (maybe they had achieved consciousness and were aware that they weren't being used on a Tamiya model? ) Servo arrangement is very Tamiya F103 if you have ever assembled one of those. Mounted upright between two flat blades of plastic which effectively 'clamp' the servo between sheets of double-sided tape. It sounds pants, but the servo is rock-solid. It does mean (like on an F-103) you have to cut off the traditional mounting points for the servo, rendering it pretty useless for any other application). More to follow, at the photo limit now I'm afraid!

Hmm, these always seem like a good idea (especially when running Tamiya ESC's without LVC) but in my experience this particular style of alarm will blast out "false alarm" buzzes under hard throttle / braking. Making an almost continuous beeping when the battery is 'under load'. Probably not an issue in cars with low-power systems, but very frustrating on big-wheeled cars and buggies!

Just realised a subtle irony! My Mini-Z MR-03 LM is running a Porsche 956 body (you only live once) The 956 Mini-Z wheels seem pretty hard to get hold of, but I got some Mazda 787B wheels really cheap. I pre-empted Tamiya by about 2 years

Looks fantastic as always bud, keep it up!

The rims even had more offset in the back than in the front, too. I have a set (Porsche "Twists") which I sometimes display on my 993, definitely a cool look.

Acrylic display cases for touring cars are a bit on the expensive side (based on my limited research) so I was delighted to find these in IKEA today. They are wall-mountable, basic (but very solid) construction and cost just £22 each. They have access ways at the rear should you wish to add your own lighting, too. It's a bit of a squeeze, admittedly. There's plenty of height, but length is not brilliant 470mm. That will accommodate most touring cars, but some of the Group C cars are going to struggle - the C11 Mercedes is 490mm, the upcoming Porsche 956 is listed as 483mm. These won't fit sadly. Even a trusty Nissan GT-R is going to be very snug. But for £22 I think they're brilliant!

First project I've done since building my XM-01 chassis, due to building a garden office and creating a new workshop space. Is this sacrilege? I think the OG livery suits the car much better - plus the previous owner had already painted the bodyshell white, I had no choice really... Trusty tools; Tamiya decal scissors, a spray bottle of lukewarm water and Fairy liquid, my wife's old hairdryer... Done! Happy with how it turned out. Justock ESC / Brushless combo to go in this and then - god forbid - I'm actually going to run it!!! Next project on the bench is to finish the aforementioned XM-01:

Yep, despite looking practically identical, they are actually off by about 1-1.5mm. The cutouts in the chassis plate are slightly too narrow for the alloy posts too. But otherwise they're exactly the same shape - how very frustrating!!!

The 2008/9 issue? I heard that was a formulation issue. The sprays contained a controlled chemical and had could no longer be imported - I remember seeing a letter from the UK distributor at the time. It was hard to sell a Tamiya bundle kit and justify a can of 'Carson' or similar paint in lieu. This only affected PS paints - the TS range was unaffected. Leading to lots of folks being miss-sold the wrong paint for polycarbonate.

Sadly, no. Everything was packed-up at the end of the final steps you see above as I embarked on building a garden office / workshop: Which is now complete - but I need to organise, unpack and decide which model to start working on next! I have yet to install the electronics in the XM-01, or fit the decals to the Yaris GR body...

I've been absent for a bit, but I've been working on building a Garden Office which I hope to also treat as an RC workshop / tinkering place, having endured 10+ years of keeping all my models in a shed and my tools in various places around the house, which I'm sure resonates with many of you. This meant I sometimes didn't have the motivation to get everything out, find what I was looking for, spend a small amount of time spannering and then tidy everything away again. The thought of going through that process, after a long day of work, made me not want to bother at all. This has meant the stagnation of so many projects and mentally, lots of procrastination about just "selling up" and moving on. I'm glad I didn't do that, and I'm ever grateful for the opportunity to have been granted a garden office, subsidised by my employer. Within a week of completion, I had ordered 4x IKEA Besta cabinets for display and storage of what I estimate to be about a quarter of my collection (!) I hope this means more content from me in the future, with the ability to spend more time actually working on my models, rather than tidying and locating / storing parts and tools constantly.

Nice Supra But your TS paint is only good for hard plastics, you can't paint the body with it. You can try mixing it with some PS-55 Flat Clear but it's not guaranteed to work without just flaking off. Hobby shop shouldn't have sold you that paint if it's intended for the body.

Don't get me wrong, I love the MF-01X. I have 4 - plus the parts to build one of @Honza's mid-motor 3D printed creations (which I still haven't got around to by the way) But it's compromised - it's quick, but lacks articulation for it to be like a trail truck (as the Jimny and Mercedes G bodies might suggest). It's a TL-01 with a bit more ground clearance and lots of annoying quirks. Any particularly 'brisk' running can see the slot-mounted motor move away from the pinion mesh. Even with the metal hop-ups I'm having this issue, which either gives a nasty grinding noise or complete loss of drive. I like continually fiddling - so I have one which has TL-01 parts for a touring-car width chassis the same length as the 934 body for a much cheaper 'runner' capable of using that bodyshell. But it's still compromised ultimately. That Beetle will be popular enough to probably sell on without bother, then put the money towards an XM-01 which seems way more capable (effectively a scaled-down XV-02).

I am yet to brave cutting my chassis cover! I might have a go later. Is it possible to fit a motor heatsink with the cover in place, or does it sit quite close to the motor can? I notice the manual recommends the TT-01 aluminium heat sink, but I'm not sure if it will fit at the same time as the cover.

The new workshop is being built (Okay, so it's supposed to be my work-from-home office, but let's not pretend like this isn't going to be a Tamiya workshop also!) So we went from this: To this (today)!

Today I received- Replacement curved scissors - got the official Tamiya ones just before Plaza Japan put the price up A replacement bodyshell for my Kyosho Outlaw Rampage (which meant the box I received was MASSIVE) And a couple of sets of 53163 coloured springs as I was missing 1x fluorescent yellow spring on my TA-03F. I was absolutely gutted when they arrived and it turns out now they're all painted black I've not seen Tamiya re-use the same product number like this before, but actually change the nature of the product.