Saito2

Well, less kickup reduces weight jacking when the suspension moves and supposedly less dive under braking. It should also give you more steering. Bumpier situations and jumps are better suited to more kickup.

I used to be all over the place too, buying whatever grabbed my eye. When I started to curate an actual collection, I did so by car families and set a limit at the first 100 cars since that's what I love and what resonates with me. Some newer ones like the BBX, TXT-1 and CR01 among others I got for fun. First I got all the classic monster trucks. I moved on the the Hotshot family, then Avante family and just recently finished the Thundershot family. While I have Foxes, Wild Ones, SRBs, Frogs, etc I made no effort to get all the classic 2wds. For some reason, I prefer the classic 4wds. Strangely, I gathered up all the Kyosho Car Crushers a couple years back. I'm not sure if they'll stay in the collection indefinitely, particularly if we move and downsize someday, but its cool to have them at the moment.

Thanks @Mouc-RC, @Otis311 and @chris.alex! I'm also quantifying the differences between my old DT02 and the new DT04 to determine purchase worthiness. The gearbox and suspension arms are all the same. The rear hubs seem to offer toe-in, the chassis has better kickup and the steering is more sorted. I'm not overly concerned about the front bearings being in the hubs or not.

Does anybody know the front kickup angle of the DT02? I'm curious how it compares to the DT03's 25 degree angle and find it of interest that Tamiya chose to reduce the DT04's kickup angle down to 22.5 degrees. Thanks.

True. The JR-X2's 5-link showed there was still some experimentation/variation going on then. I never knew that. Makes sense as they had the same kick-up. I always wondered why Kyosho and Losi chose around 20 degrees for their kick-up angles vs the RC10's 30 degrees. I love that part, much like Enzo Ferrari's attitude sparking Lamborghini to start building cars. I'm glad they finally put that story out there in that video.

I considered that. The Ultima was certainly a step towards that. The parts fit together better and the kit was more polished, leaving less room for personalization. The only thing that held me back was that the original Ultima needed aftermarket/Option House parts to bring it fully up to level (shocks, turnbuckles, ball diff possibly) so there was that avenue for modification even it it was just bolting on parts.

I'll be slightly contrary but not disagree with what's been said so far. The Frog is the better handler. For both buggies representing the "best" or most hopped-up of their respective chassis families at the time, they handle vastly different. The Super Champ, er, Fighting Buggy is heavy and you can almost "feel" that through the transmitter. That weight, mostly to the rear, combined with its unique floating rear suspension keeps the back end planted. Keeping the drive wheels in contact with the terrain was Tamiya's goal toward a better SRB at the time. It looks a bit odd with the wild camber changes as the rear wheels wave up and down over the bumps, but in my yard at least, it works. It jumps fine with some rear weight bias, but it lands heavy so I'm cautious how high I take it. The front end is lighter and stiffly sprung so it tends to bounce and hop a bit. Even though the steering is improved over earlier SRBs, the light front/heavy rear combined with the lack of differential (always a surprise to me as the FB was the competition version of the SRBs and diffs were coming about around then, but Tamiya probably already had the ORV in development by that stage) meant that the buggy steers like a super tanker. The Frog is nearly the opposite in every way. It feels astonishingly light compared to the FB. With adjustable caster and an actual diff, the front can be made to turn fairly sharp. Its sprung too stiff in the rear and while not Hornet levels, the rear still does bounce around a bit for an IRS buggy. Despite the geartrain not being as tough as the earlier SRBs, Frogs were popular competitors (with a sizeable aftermarket) here in the US along with Scorpions before the RC10 showed up.

The T-word High Trail edition trucks and Frog Jumper's rig inspired me to try bigger 1.9 tires myself. Fortunately the Land Cruiser CC02 rims had the right offset.

With it being out for some more time now, some other questions have come to mind for me. How does it look in person with the DT gearbox and motor hanging out the rear? This is one of the awkward things about the buggy to me, though it totally may be in my head as I'm so used to the classic Hornet's silhouette's more "mid" motor layout. I wonder if I would get used to it? Part of me wishes Tamiya had somehow IRS'd the original Hornet gearbox somehow, but that's understandably a lot of investment. 3D printed parts from various designers achieve this but lack the durability of injection molded parts. How do the rear lower shock eyelets fair? They hang low and in some videos they look half mowed off from scraping. Does the wider front really stick out as being greatly different than the rear. Such pains were put into keeping the rear the same track width as the original, its kind of a bummer to see the front so wide. Maybe its not that bad in person(?).

and Pepperhead Farms dismembers

I think about RC (well, old RC) probably too much. I was thinking the other day while on lunch break at work how many folks point to the RC10's introduction as the big changing point in off road, particularly 2wd of course. While it is certainly true the original RC10's excellent design started the "blueprint" for what a successful 2wd buggy would be and brought an end to the early experimental years, I began to question, was it really the beginning of the end? Perhaps that honor goes to Losi's JR-X2. While the core design of the RC10 was truly inspired, its execution was not great. We Tamiya enthusiast are blessed with cars that generally go together with ease into a functioning vehicle. The RC10 was a different animal in this respect. There were numerous areas where parts and manufacturing issues could be corrected or tweaked by the builder which would equal a far better buggy than one simply tossed together. The transmission in particular was such a potential mess that there was once an aftermarket industry of entire transmission assemblies made strictly for the RC10. The magic of carefully filing burrs off gears (and then lapping them with toothpaste, as some would do), pinning diff rings and filing spline plates to allow egg-shaped idlers to rotate without binding was all part of the fun. And what fun it was! Not only would those extra efforts yield extra performance, the car itself was almost built for customization. Trimmed and milled aluminum chassis tubs, dyed plastics, etc. meant one RC10 was always different from the next. Enter the JR-X2. The overall gist of the JR-X2, aside from being a more refined design, was that all the popular hop-ups of the time were included in the kit. The LRM transmission worked out of the box. Telescoping driveshafts replaced dogbones. The chassis was already graphite, popular at the time. It was meant to be assembled and then raced. But with all that, some of the ingenuity from builders was lost. Its not to say the JR-X2 was perfect, just that it began the slow removal of potential for imagination. Today, there is little to no mystery. Set-ups aren't secret. The cars go together as they should, but they also lose that key element of personalization, the mark of the builder who created it. So should we bemoan such fates? No. The JR-X2, like the RC10 before it, was progress. Progress and change, for better or worse, march endlessly on. It was simply the natural evolution. I miss those days just as I miss the days before it was all RC10, all the time, but we can't hold onto them. Perhaps that's just another reason to enjoy our Tamiya's. Their flaws and quirks constantly give us places to improve and customize. "Perfect" may be different for everyone but true perfection, in a vehicle designed solely to win races, can be boring.

No, I have clearance but I did slip a couple of flat washers under the aluminum steering post, raising them slightly. The connecting rod uses balljointed rod ends held in place with the cross head screws. They're rather low profile joints from my parts box. Old Dubro items IIRC. Even with the Madcap bulkhead brace, the front tower mount molded into the bulkhead is vulnerable. The Super Astute brace does help tie into the tower mount better by attaching to the backside of the tower. Being thrifty (as well as having trouble locating the popular G sprue now), I fashion a brace out of aluminum angle seen here:

Starting with the oldest chassis series... Personally, I find the HS2 to be the most durable. Its boxed chassis overlaid with a nylon roll cage is both rigid and durable. The front monoshock sits low and won't see breakage in rollovers. If the pins are left out of the rear wing mounts, the wing will detach in rollovers and suffer less damamge. The suspension arm mounts a thick and beefy. The drivetrain, while not overly efficient, is tough and can take a fair amount of power. The arms themselves are pretty rigid though and if the screw pins aren't heated prior to installation, they can split at the screw point many miles down the road. Proper shafts with clips also eliminate the problem. The chassis is very protective of the radio gear. The downsides are mostly wear related. The balljointed front end is more wear-prone than modern designs (the re-res improved on this somewhat). The direct steering rods, while simple, lead to bumpsteer. Overall, I consider this the most solid of the choices listed. The Boomerang shares much of the +/- of the HS2. It has better steering but that steering can jam depending on what you run on (sticks, heavy gravel, etc.). The chassis is more flexible but also allows better radio gear access. I find the batter door pretty flimsy compared to the HS2. The body and wing will suffer more in rollovers with the rollcage to protect them. The Thundershot also features a durable drivetrain that is more efficient if you take the time to trimmed the malformed bevel gears with a hobby knife. The open tub is more flexible like the earlier Boomerang and sometimes suffers splits up at the front gearbox mountings after years of use/crashes. The suspension arm mounts are tiny compared to the HS2. They frequently split from inserting screw pins cold (though they seem to hold together even after splitting). Again, hot screw methods and proper shafts/clips solve the problem. The biggest issue is the front A5 arm/bumper mount. An aluminum replacement or brace solves this issue. The latest T-shot series of chassis have also been suffering with blue suspension arms that split, allowing the arm to pull free of its pivot on sometimes minor impacts. Older parts didn't have this issue so its likely a plastic formulation problem. The arms themselves are flexible nylon. The DF01's chassis can break as well after years of hard running and high jumps but isn't faulty by nature. The drivetrain can suffer from the rear gearbox cover lifting under higher power causing gear skip. There are numerous ways to reinforce it. I try to run a ball diff minimally in the rear to offer some "cushion" to the drivetrain. Tamiya does this themselves in the TA02T derivatives of this chassis. The alloy gears in the rear gearbox are wear prone and are replaceable with the touring car plastic gearset. The plastic motor mount cracks too and can be replaced with an alloy version. The front case and lower cover/arm mount can crack and break over time, particularly with high power and track time crashes. The arms are tough 2-piece units made from nylon. Each family get better and better in the performance department as they evolved but in some ways seems a little less durable too. I don't feel as though any of them are flawed to the point of being "bad" and those flaws can certainly be worked around. Kept with reasonable power limits, all should give decent service life and some have been able to take surprising amounts of power.

Well, here we are, back in the saddle again. Things have a funny way of progressing. I was ready to throw in the towel and just get a Super Astute kit especially after seeing the prices of Astute bodies and undertrays.. At the last moment, I decided to go over some Youtube videos and reviews. One, from Tamiya Legends in particular, caught my attention. Glen was feeling a bit of dwindling enthusiasm somewhere in the middle of the project. He mentioned how irritating it was to remove/install the body (his being custom painted). Now, this is a personal pet-peeve of mine as well so I pulled my shelfer down to look it over and refresh my memory. The body was indeed a bit of a pain and I recalled to had a tendency to rub at the rear shocks too. I randomly tried to slip a battery pack in and it didn't fit. Well, that was enough to put a stop to purchasing one, so I swiveled my eyes back to my forlorn project chassis. It was time to get back to it and make it a Madcap (whose body drops on with ease, lol). Astute readers will note the thread title has been edited from "Astute built with Madcap parts" to "Madcap built with Astute parts". Here on the messy bench is what's together so far. The yellow shocks from the Astute theme will probably give way to black ones now. Look! The alloy steering bellcranks showed up before February. Yay! The Madcap front brace (supported at the rear with aluminum columns) ties into a prototype upper deck to add some needed stiffening. The Madcap's shell will easily accommodate this. Madcap arms are flexible (probably PA plastics from the feel of it) compared to the rock-hard shiny ABS/PC versions on the Super Astute. Since I'll be running on a hard packed dirt surface topped with over and inch of loose silt I decided to forgo some response for traction. The Madcap uses fixed upper links to quell flexibility and the Astute's adjustable upper arms only pivot on one axis (vs a typical ball end). I consider all these things as tuning aids. At the front, I'm using ball end upper links to start. The rear uses single axis pivot links akin to the Astute to combat twist from acceleration/deceleration. I could also run a ball end on just one end for more flexibility or on both like the front for full flexibility. Even fixed Madcap links are a possibility. Jamie Booth's "Works" edition Astute used Madcap lower arms with full ball end links all around.

Does anybody know the front kickup angle of the DT02? I'm curious how it compares to the DT03's 25 degree angle and find it of interest that Tamiya chose to reduce the DT04's kickup angle down to 22.5 degrees.

"Character" might be a better word than "crazy', lol. I've touched on this before, but how much do you value "character" when it comes to driving dynamics in an RC? This is one of the very big factors that usually keeps me in the land of the first 100 cars Tamiya produced. Granted, from the beautiful box art (yay! for the new DT04 Fighter Nxgen), inspired names (boo! for the new Fighter Nxgen) to the beautiful bodywork, the car naturally had character but they also drove with personality too. There is the argument that character is actually flaws that one must "drive around", but I prefer the term personality. I don't drive on a track. I get why tracks are the way they are now but they just aren't "off road" to me anymore. With track-duty in mind, I see the need for the correct tool for the job, so this discussion is likely limited to bashing. Once we get into that mindset, where does your tolerance for crazy lie? How much character is too much and how much is not enough? Personally, my taste have evolved or sharpened. My hand hovered over the buy-it-now button for the Kyosho Dirt Master last night. Then I remembered the TRF201X I had was boring to me in the low speeds and small space of my backyard. The Dirt Master would be going do previously trodden ground in that respect. Heck, I find the Stadium Blitzer somewhat boring for being too planted and stable without something like brushless pushing it more into uncontrollably and that is a Tamiya with personality! Traxxas-esque bashers nearly demand high power to push things into interesting territory. The other end is bracketed by wheelie machines and solid axle buggies. I love a Lunch Box but that as much wheelie as I personally want. Solid axle buggies were what I grew up on and I remember constantly fighting and tinkering with them to try to get them under some sense of control when the path got on the rougher side. Its generally not an area I want to revisit aside from a run on a smooth ball field. The Monster Beetle/Blackfoot really hits the spot on the truck side for me, just controllable enough to avoid frustration yet oozing with quirks and character. They still require plenty of skill to pilot and thus aren't mindless point-and-shoot. All the Tamiya 4wds have their own story to tell from the Hotshot to the Egress and I love them for it. Its not until the DF01 that things begin to get more on the settled, neutral side. And the Clod? Well, that's awesome in all its guises. Case closed. So where does your threshold for craziness lie?

There is the 53863 Tamiya DT02 ball diff set available.

Probably a tossup between my first Tamiya, a Lunch Box: ...and my Monster Beetle: The Lunch Box, being my first and only hobby-grade RC for some time in my youth, plus the time and energy to run it nearly daily, got a lot of "miles" put on it. It never skipped a beat. The Monster Beetle was the one that got me hooked on Tamiya and I grab it for a run most often. Its somewhat more capable and always brings a smile to my face. Other than those two, I drive Hotshot family buggies a good bit, but those chores are broken up between a Hotshot, Super Shot and Bigwig, so not just one vehicle gets all the mileage.

The price of certain parts, like bodies and undertrays seem to have potentially sidelined my "Astute built with Madcap parts". Indeed, its looking like that project will need to be more of a "Madcap built with Astute parts" to survive. Sometimes the financial realities of piecing together a car mean buying a kit is more cost effective. I'm examining potential options, including selling off a few cars like an RC10T4 and maybe a Super Avante (good luck!, lol), to essentially give up and break down and get a Super Astute re-re. So what breaks on these cars and are they glass like some say? So far I've come across breaking front bulkheads (regardless of the brace used), steering arms, battery boxes, rear inner arm mounts (despite the tie bar), suspension arms and even gears in the gearbox shedding teeth under hard use. I don't expect RC10-like durability, but something at least as tough as its Egress 4wd stablemate would be nice. I'm just digesting info and experiences from those well-versed in the Super Astute. If Tamiya surprises us with a Dyna Storm announcement tomorrow, all bets are off, lol. If the SA simply isn't up to the task, then the Madcap project pushes forward regardless.

I had Monster Beetle tires on mine for awhile as a kid. They are taller, but unfortunately narrower. Also, as you brought up, they did limit suspension travel up front. Wheely King Mud Thrashers are bigger and the Axial BKTs are bigger yet. Finding RC monster truck tires on 2.2 wheels to emulate 1:1 trucks in general is hard as most seem too narrow. Old Marui Big Bear tires might get the closest as the were both taller and wider. They were a hot set up on Blackfoots for a time.

The HS series has a hefty feel to them and use more old school construction techniques with higher parts count. They understeer or seem neutral depending on which specific buggy you pick as the steering set-ups vary depending on the particular buggy in the family. The Thundershot series is clearly derived from the HS series but with simplified, more modern construction and fewer parts. They seem to feel a good bit lighter than their predecessors. The steering kinks are worked out but they tend to oversteer if anything. Most consider them the last of the high clearance buggies. They are very much a bridge to the Manta Ray DF01 series. The DF01 is yet another leap ahead. The layout and design is more standardized and not experimental. No more monoshocks. They drive well and pretty neutral without significant quirks. All the 4wds are evolutionary and drive with their own personality. HS to Manta Ray would be the greatest leap or difference, however, both in building and running. The Clod as @TurnipJF mentioned is definitely more in line with the Lunch Box out of the box. They can be endlessly modified however to be anything you desire.

Most of the Wild Mini Jr. series, with the possible exception of the Clod, look as though their tires are bigger in respect to the body size vs the RC versions. The Lunch Box Jr's proportions actually seem closer the the 1:1 Rolling Thunder monster van the Lunch Box was based on.

Slight tangent, out of curiosity, if the Ford F150 Ranger XLT were to come back, what would Tamiya call it without licensing? American Off-Road truck? Truck on SRB chassis? Sunny Shuttle or Jolly Joker? (for mini 4wd fans)

I have this funny idea with Masami Hirosaka joining Associated and seeing the reasonably high prices folks were willing to pay for every shade of original RC10 variant under the sun, that maybe, just maybe the mythical, unicorn tears, unobtainium Stealth car ('89 or '91 or both or some inaccurate melding of both knowing AE's current track record) might appear for mega bucks. Tamiya could/might counter with the Dyna Storm or possibly beat AE to the punch. If its at the fair, I expect to see here in the US by August, make that October....by Christmas maybe.

My Lunch Box and Bullhead were shot with Testors enamels BITD because Tamiya paints weren't prevalent at my LHS then (which meant all my early lexan shells got Pactra too). I actually prefer Testors yellow on my Lunch Box vs what Tamiya calls out in the manual which seems too light to my eyes. Enamels are thicker and take forever to dry vs Tamiya's lacquers. I would warm my cans in hot water for a smoother spray. Lacquers go down thin and smooth with quicker drying time. They take less finesse than enamels. Be warned though. If you use Tamiya lacquers, stick with lacquers all the way through (primers, etc.) because Tamiya paint will eat into and lift other types of paint its sprayed over.