wtcc5

@Honza: I want to make simple design 3d print parts as bulkheads to have the freedom for a tight package, especially around the differentials.

Unfortunately, the weekend race has to happen without me. I got ill At least I could finish the build before getting knocked out by influenza. Still at the front of the car, the droop plate received the arm mounts. I raised the bar of the v5.1 build by having all chamfers made by my manufacturer now. So no extra work needed: Front arm installation: Installing the droop plate to the tub: And then one of my build highlights, installing the shocks: The last steps for the front. Front bumper assembly: Before the bumper can be installed, the droop plate support comes first: With the new arb-mount design, it is now much easier to install the bumper plate: Only upper arms and hubs left. For now I stayed with the Xray steering arms (because I thought I would race this car this weekend...):

Early this week the carbon parts arrived: With the next race this Sunday, I thought about if I should build the v5.1 (taking a risk) or use the v5 and build the v5.1 later... Well, I think I am pretty much easy to fathom: I started the build! As always, preparing the 3d-printed parts. Removing them from the frame: Painting the white spots black: Drilling the bore holes. First with a 2.5mm drill, then drilling the 3mm holes: Then making the M3-threads: I moved all ballstuds from the v5 upper brace to the v5.1 brace: New anti roll bars are needed. I made a drawing and then bend the front bar: The front arb is integrated in the bumper: The next steps were a bit tougher. To make a very compact arb-arm-mount happen, I use Tamiyas 54869 Open Face Adjusters and optimize them. In the first step, I took the 2.5mm drill and completly drill through the shaft until it comes out in the ball opening. Then I make the M3 thread. In a last step, these need to be cut down to 10mm length: I also shortened the thread of the 5mm ballstud from 5 to 3mm. This then results in this assembly:

@Pylon80 Yeah… I first wanted to use the XM-01 as basis for this project, but again there would be no possibility to integrate a proper suspension or have a middle motor position. That’s why I chose the Carbon chassis way.

M-chassis and me are a kind of hate-love. Scale and size are wonderful and effectively what I feel is the perfect size for an Indoor R/C car. The available bodies are beautiful and a nice contrast to the 1/10 bodies. What never caught me are the chassis underneath. Everything coming from Tamiya is bulky plastic with a lot of strange geometry and restricted suspension. Other manufacturers like Carten have nice chassis, but don't seem to take it serious regarding racing. Still except for my heavily modified Carten I could not convince me to run any M-chassis so far. Xpress is very very close to the ultimate racing machine I imagine, especially with the Arrow AM1 (I love the drivetrain ). Having seen the new Opel Kadett GTE body from Tamiya, I thought now would be a good time (also other projects are on hold until parts arrive). Idea and concept are simple to write down: Based on my proven KRv5 platform a new carbon M-chassis will be designed using the TT-02/XV-02 drivetrain. Today I took some first measurements, rearranged, proved the package and intended parts. It seems to work fine so far: Of course, this is just the beginning and problems galore will occur soon, but I want to try to make it happen.

and mine is shocked I will get the TRF421 and will need to create a KR m-chassis to run these beautiful new bodies

The practice yesterday was for the upcoming RCK-Challenge race. I will join the GT-Challenge class, like I did mid November last year. Changing back to the much weaker RCK-17.5t motor was a mild shock. At first I didn't hit one apex and later on I thought I had bearing failure, because it doesn't accelerate much after the chicane leading on the straight Compared to the Hobbywing G4 this RCK motor is a "bicycle tyre inflator". After checking, the car was alright and I could adapt. In the early afternoon I had the car in the sweet spot. Very easy to drive and predictable, while not scrubbing speed (everything I tried later was slower). My times in the last race felt not bad: fastest lap 9.852s, fastest qualifyer 30L 5:02.214, fastest final 42L 7:05.111 With the track development throughout the last months and my setup improvements, I could easily beat all these times: fastest lap 9.578s, fastest five-minute-run 31L 5:07.820, fastest seven-minute-run 43L 7:07.841 Saved all changes in a Setup Sheet:

In this post on the package it says „Can be used with models beginning with F189.“: Over at Tamiyabase they say it is F102 only: https://tamiyabase.com/parts/1570-53105 So this is probably an F102 designed hop-up that fits older chassis too.

My manufacturer is busy: I am too. A good friend is king of the bumper game and I asked him to print the new v5.1 design. It became perfect: Since I am doing practice runs today, I immediately installed it:

I am with Twinfan. I cannot stand an unfinished (FF-01) project. As you are working so much on bicycles, I would like to see you using related stuff to build a chassis / car

Yupp! Chaotic, but nice and correcting his wrongs.

Made more updates I don’t want to keep a secret: Most significant is the updated bumper design. It got a bit slimmer and strengthens towards the bumper posts: And then I made adapter plates for the RCmaker pro mount. This way my customers and I can skip making holes in the body for the horizontal body posts, use shorter and lower body posts and have a better force load from wing to chassis. You can also set the body height in finer steps:

Thanks for all your thoughts! Very good arguments for both colors. Still cannot decide. Both have their right to be used. The silver one looks maybe a bit pale, but the wing I got right now would fit better and of course it is the color with which both drivers then won the title. The purple will look better as color, with the stickers and the white wheels. Also it had the Tsuchiya Engineering logo on the wing, which cost a lot of time to draw and research. I even learned a bit Hiragana for it… What would you think about making half the body silver and the other side purple? Is that a good idea? @ChrisRx718: Thanks for your help with the wheels! I had no clue Yokomo did these. Now I need to hunt two pairs! @GermanTA03Guy: The body is from ABC Hobby:

Very nice! This will be great! So you plan to use anodized aluminum screws for additional bling bling, red and green? Can just imagine how fine that will look

You maybe recognized, that I added to the name of this thread. And that I have a new signature, too. This all started one evening with me enjoying motorsport videos from the 90s. While browsing the Japanese Super GT series, I stumbled over this sad story: Until today losing a live in motorsport is not uncommon and this could be any tragic "a father lost his son" - story, if it wasn't for the achievement of Shingo Tachi and his experienced partner Keiichi Suzuki in the GT300 class 1998. To make it short: He was seen as the new star in touring car / Super GT racing. In 1998 he dominated the slower class, won five of the seven races (one was cancelled). Even with a bop weight of up to 80 kilogram this team was unstoppable. A dominance that never happened before or after. He was called for the GT500 class in 1999, but lost his life after a brake failure after the long straight while testing the GT500 Supra for his new team "Team LeMans". This loss had a huge impact in the Japanese Racing community and he is remembered until now. TOM'S cars still have a sticker: Even Tamiyas au TOM'S GR Supra (58703) kit has it (roof line): As I found this story very sad and really like the MR2 by Tsuchiya Engineering, I decided to put in a lot of effort to make a body of Tachis successful 1998 MR2. It started with the MR2 body. Easy to find info about it in the net, but not in the stores. Luckily one shop in the Netherlands still had one. Next was the wing. Tamiya don't have fitting design in their catalogue and also the drift scene doesn't offer anything close. Right now, I plan to hack a DTM wing and 3d-print the mounts to get close to the original. What I still haven't found are fitting mirrors... The stickers were another challenge. Looking at a picture of the car, you would say "easy": Just simple sponsor decals, google it! It wasn't ... I had to do a lot of research and graphic work. Some was fairly interesting, like "Wise Sports". Drawing the cat logo from pixelated pictures and then rediscovering the font "Bodoni". Others were oddly not to find in decent quality like the "Toyota motor sports" logo from that time. These and many more cost a lot of time to draw, as I need perfect vector graphics for the (already done) MCI order. And then a problem I caused myself: This car existed in violet and silver that year. Until now I couldn't decide which one to do and made both sticker sets: For the violet car: For the silver car: I ordered both. These are available now at MCI for you too if you search for "Designers Edition".

In other news: All parts are ordered and the waiting time can begin. I also made the setup sheet interactive. See attached file. tt02_krv5_1_setup_sheet_interaktiv.pdf

If you refer to part 50384, then it looks the same from what I can see on the product pictures online and my F189.

Regarding unique parts: The TA08R has a new motor mount design (22081) to accommodate the TRF420 top deck. You could also count in the rear body post mounts (22085) as unique parts. Well unique design, but also „just“ five digit parts, so not especially for this kit, but available as hop-up for TA-08pro owners. The manual is now available online for detailed view of all parts: https://d7z22c0gz59ng.cloudfront.net/cms/japan/download/rcmanual/47498.pdf

@Pylon80: For the start I always go with the setup the manufacturer suggests. But if you wouldn't have mentioned it... I didn't recognized it until now I added the anti-roll-bar-set next and was a bit unhappy with the expense needed to attach them: Removing the dampers from the bridge, removing the arms from the diff cover and removing the diff cover... Great for setup work Then I made a great deal regarding aluminum and titanium screw sets. One of our german hobby shops made a post christmas sale and offered Hiro-Seiko aluminum-titanium and pure titanium screw sets for the TRF420 for half price. I bought both and added a bit more to make the full exchange happen (still forgot some in the first step). I also added carbon battery mounts: Changes the look a bit. With a practice day coming up, I added the electronics. Had to pirate a bit from several cars. I had the Hobbywing G3 17.5t motor in my Tyrell six-wheeler and the small esc came from the FF03evo as well as the battery: Setup worked very well. Unfortunately Tamiya forgot to add small holes in the chassis for the L/R-balance posts: Then the practice day came. Belt cars are sooo quiet. I like that. Well that was the only positive thing at first. This car doesn't like high-grip surfaces out of the box. Even though I used a lightweight, very low GT-body (from Exotek), the car instantly rolled... The day was saved by a nice guest driver who had 6mm hexes to widen the TA-08. Like this the car became much better to control and stopped rolling. I still had to try something. With all the TRF420 parts it is just logical to think of using the TRF420 suspension parts also. The arms are much longer , so I thought this could be an option. But it wasn't, in the end the car has the same width as before. The good thing: It will fit "plug and play" with just a collision between the upper outer arm part and the c-hub. By chamfering the edge of the arm this collisions is gone: I ran the car for some more packs, added more toe-in in the rear, worked with droop and the car became easy to drive. The chassis is a "wet towel" and you clearly see that on track. The car misses the quick reaction and has a tendency to think it is still cornering with an open steering. It is still not wide enough with 6mm hexes to lightly touch a curb. Investing more is the only way: E-mounts for the front, hex shims and 5mm hexes. While at it the steel ballstuds have to leave and I don't trust the servo saver. Look at the front of the top deck: Tamiya has the option to stiffen the top deck by blocking the slit with screws, nuts and shims. Actual status of this car. I received the front bumper carbon brace and the last aluminum and titanium screws: Now, I wait until @Quincy finishes his TA-08R before running this one again. In the coming weeks the TT-02 KRv5 is in the focus for the next race.

Standard setting for a balldiff is completely tight and then open up 1/4 turn. The slipper clutch is nice to adjust and also works on high grip carpet, so I would think your diff is slipping. I instantly exchanged it with a geardiff to get rid of this problem and have less to none maintenance work to do. 4000K should be no problem for this gearbox.

Got an answer from my manufacturers: I can offer the set of carbon and 3d-print parts for 189€ (plus shipping) if anyone is interested

@Nick-W: How about building aTT-02 KRv5.1? The fastest TT-02 ever build for the racetrack It has blue and carbon galore

Here the previously mentioned files of the partslist and the setup sheet: KRv5_1_partslist.pdf tt02_krv5__1_setup_sheet.pdf

I have to apologize for letting you guys hanging without new infos for so long. I had to finish another urgent project first. Since then I used most of my free time for the v5.1. Never underestimate the time it takes to make all the little details perfect, to draw all the setup arms and prepare the parts for production. Today, I finished the parts list and made the new setup sheet. I still owe you pictures of the rear design. Overview: Most recognizable is the new shape of the droop plate. Mostly influenced by the changed anti-roll-bar layout. I am very happy how close the lower damper end sits to the arm centerline and that the damper slips in between arm and the active-toe-link. The anti-roll-bar-mount is attached by one screw and is guided by the slot in the droop plate. To avoid possible collisions the arm has 0,5mm layer removed just above the rod stopper: With the upper shock mounts moved closer to the center of the chassis, I had to come up with new rear body post mounts. The plastic was replaced by carbon and I added several height adjustments (as requested by my patron and friend Michael Koos): Also attached with one screw, it will interlock with the rear of the top plate. So this is the new version. What cannot be seen here are changes I made to the droop plates and top plates to make live easier and the build more enjoyable. Up to now you had to glue 0.5mm plates underneath the top plates to fill the space between the central drive shaft ball bearings. Now these are integrated. Also the chamfering by hand of the droop plates to avoid a collision the lower diff housing of the tub won't be necessary anymore. In the last step, I contacted my part producers and now wait for the invoices for the prices.

The servo installation was the next step. Again Tamiya didn't cheap out and added an aluminum servo arm: Combined with the aluminum servomount and servo step screws It was at that moment, that I realized I installed the aluminum upper arm mounts upside down, because the top deck wouldn't fit This part is very nice, but doesn't stiffen the chassis regarding torsional flex. I think it should've, because the chassis is a "wet towel" (that is what german automotive engineers would say): The motor will take the space for now: Bumper: Rear body post: Again: Nice, but the carbon plates underneath are to weak to make it as stiff as it looks. Battery mounts: Too much plastic, these need carbon That completes the first chapter for now. Having all these hop-ups and this drivetrain out of the box is the wet dream of every Tamiya fanboy (me) and makes this build very satisfying. Also not having to dump another 300€ to make it full option is nice. Nevertheless, more hop-ups will follow and then I will drive it on carpet and find out if it performs how it looks.