TurnipJF

At one point I came across a list of Tamiya shells compatible with the tall XV-02 front damper mounts. I will post it here if I come across it again. As for wheels, it uses a standard 12 millimeter hex fitting so pretty much any one tenth scale option will fit just fine as long as the ribs on the back of the wheels do not interfere with the uprights (and you can usually remove them with a Dremel if they do).

Plus it has the shorter front shock towers, which gives you a broader choice of body shells to fit it. The standard XV-02 has quite tall towers which limit your choices in that regard.

If the budget allows for it, go for it! Generally speaking, the better the base car you start off with, the less it needs in terms of hopping up to be fun, and should you decide to throw the hop-up catalog at it, the better car it can be turned into.

The SRX contains some upgrades that are no doubt very useful for dedicated track racers, but their usefulness is debatable for a car park basher. Personally I would say go for the TT-02 Type S. It has the superior suspension and metal outer drivetrain parts shared with the TB--03 and FF-03 but is otherwise a good old affordable TT-02 with a sensible base price and easily available spares/hop-ups.

It is less sloppy and more robust, so yes, I'd say it is.

An MB-01 with completely different suspension, tasty blue bits and upgraded chassis plastics? I'd be up for that!

I used Tamiya 5mm adjusters and ball studs, 50596 adjusters with 9804154 ball studs on the outboard ends and 50875 adjusters with 9804205 ball studs on the inboard ends. The turnbuckles were Schumacher M3 items in 39mm and 56mm. I also used the rearmost holes on the uprights, and a high torque servo saver with the ball studs facing forwards, and the servo was mounted behind the posts, all of which also affected the track rod location and probably helped avoid rubbing.

In my fleet I have a TL-01B Baja King. It was built stock apart from the big three and some aftermarket wheels/tyres. Although intended as a runner, it is to all intents and purposes a shelfer. Apart from a run in the Postal Races a few rounds ago, I cannot remember the last time I took it out anywhere. And this is not because it is a bad buggy. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it. It is just that, subjectively to me at any rate, all my other four-wheel drive buggies are better in some way - quicker, more responsive, more challenging, more historically significant, etc. So today I decided to give the TL-01B a bit of a look-over and a couple of hop-ups to try and make it a bit more appealing. I started off with a set of turnbuckles sold for the DT-03, which are pretty much a direct fit, just requiring different screws to mount the ball nuts. I then went and swapped the standard silver can 540 for a Sport Tuned, and changed the ESC battery connector to Deans so I could use my LiPos with it. A very brief test drive outside shows it to be a fair bit quicker than it used to be, and now that the camber and toe are adjustable, I have something to fiddle with. Hopefully this will mean that I give the poor old thing a bit more exercise!

Looks good to me! Round 42 will run until Midnight GMT on Sunday 28 January. Rules and results submissions as per the first post in the thread. I will be collating and posting the results for the entire field as usual, but I will also be posting a separate set of results for those cars with sub-540 size motors, so come along and have a go with your WPLs, Grasshoppers, QDs, classic toys from yesteryear, etc!

My word, that is a lot of parts. Did all of those get broken on one skatepark outing?

I think I found them. They are part of the TRG F103LM body and wing mounting set. Your front bumper piece appears to be from the same set. https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/trg-tamiya-f103-lm-front-bumper-body-3827958836

Indeed - the floppy system gives camber gain, as well as a means of adjusting castor if one shortens the upper central plate so that the upper arms can be moved fore or aft and shimmed in place. It was a popular mod for a while, but fell out of favour when the cars thus equipped tended to suffer DNFs due to suspension breakage. Some of the used F103s I see on EBay still carry this mod. I suspect it survives better on the F103GT due to the bodyshell giving some protection to the front wheels in a collision.

That is standard F103 F1 (albeit carbon reinforced in this case judging by the surface texture). Floppy upper arms came as standard on the F103GT, and were available as an F103 "upgrade" under 53258. I use the inverted commas because by most people's reckoning there was no performance advantage to them, and a reliability disadvantage compared to the more robust standard arrangement. Tamiya themselves seemed to acknowledge this, releasing their "best of the best" F103 15th Anniversary Edition with carbon reinforced fixed upper arms.

The polycarbonate chassis cover that comes with the TB-01 is great at keeping muck out of the chassis tub, but terrible for motor and ESC cooling, so today I fitted my TB-01 with a breathable fabric chassis cover from JD Racing. It is much the same idea as the fabric chassis cover that my late grandmother made for my TT-01 rally car many years ago, and ought to work just as well.

I bought two of mine off EBay and one from a fellow Tamiyaclub member via this here forum.

In answer to your original query, I'd go for the F103. It still has loads of spares and bodies available, and is compatible with most hop-ups from more recent releases. It also features a roll damper as standard, unlike the F102 and its predecessors from which it was absent. There is a great deal of satisfaction to be had in turning up with a box-stock model from several decades ago and beating the folks with their latest- generation carbon-and-alloy wonders, and the F103 is a car which can do exactly that. 😁

Very likely - they are rather nice-looking little pieces.

It is the F103 long carbon upper deck part number 54081.

Not sure what posts those are, but Tamiya CC-01 58324 posts would work as replacements, as would any of the posts designed to fit on touring car front bumpers, held on with a central vertical screw or bolt. As for alloy options, Tamiya 54200 F104 body posts would work, fitted with a longer bolt and spacers to raise them higher if need be.

The F103RS has a wheelbase of 26cm or thereabouts, and the F104 has a wheelbase of 27cm or thereabouts as measured with my wobbly plastic ruler. They are exactly the same width at the rear, but most people run 40mm wide rear tyres on their F103s, and F104 stock rears are closer to 30mm wide, giving it a narrower look. The F104 front is about 10mm narrower than the F103 due to shorter suspension arms, but if you want to widen it, you can run the F103 front end as Tamiya themselves did with the F104W, or you can take the longer spindles used by the Mad Bull, Lunchbox, etc, and use them in place of the stock ones, taking up the space between inner wheel bearing and upright with 5mm i.d. shims.

One of the great things about the F1 class is that it is highly dependent on driver skill and tyre choice, and only minimally dependent on the rest of the car. So unless you are racing against the cream of the crop in terms of driver skill, you can be competitive with pretty much anything as long as you are using the right tyres. There seem to be a few misconceptions regarding tyres and their interchangeability between the F103 and F104 chassis. Firstly, you can run F103 wheels and tires on an F104 or any of the TRFs which use a similar front end. All you need to do is to reconfigure the arrangement of springs and spacers to mimic that of the F103. I set up my mate's F104 Pro 2 to use the same Enneti wheels and tires as I use on my F103 when he started complaining that the only reason I was beating him was because of my tires: Fitting F104 wheels and tyres to an F103 is even easier - they just fit with no reconfiguring required. As evidence to support the above, please see this picture of my F103 having just nicked the stock wheels and tires off my F104 Pro 2: The only adjustments you may have to make are those of ride height, as there is a difference between the diameter of F104 and F103 tyres. Exactly what this difference is varies from brand to brand and also often between foam and rubber tires from the same brand, but I haven't had and difficulty adjusting for it by changing spacers on the kingpins at the front and moving the axle up and down at the rear. (And of course you need to choose a wheel style that can accommodate the F103 diff spring and thrust bearing if using a standard plastic diff. Most race-style wheels such as the aforementioned Enneti ones do so just fine, and the alloy diff with captive spring and thrust bearing is a direct swap if your car doesn't come with one already.)

Of course! Can't fault that logic!😁

I think that is a good idea as it makes the racing more inclusive for people who don't have access to larger areas.

I'm honoured! Are those all the hop-up parts your going for, or are there others also waiting in the wings? Just curious, because while I see the alloy diff, alloy motor mount and offset T-bar, I don't see the offset F104 plastic front and back pieces for the motor cage which are needed to keep the wing mount and shock mount central on the car when using the above parts, or the spacer for the non-diff side of the axle. Are these pieces waiting in the wings, still on their way, or do you have a cunning plan that doesn't require them? Can't wait for the build thread!😀

I like having a theme to my entries, and having received a DT-03 for Christmas from my lovely wife, I thought I'd enter DT buggies this round. The DT-01 is a racing veteran, having seen a lot of track use over the years, even getting into the medals at an Iconic RC event a few years back, so I was expecting it to do well for what it is, and it didn't disappoint. The DT-02 has yet to win a medal at an official event, but is nonetheless also a tried-and-tested track runner, hopped up close to MS spec, completely dialled in and running about as well as it ever will, so it too lived up to expectations. The DT-03 however was built on boxing day, painted and decalled the day after, and then went straight out onto the track. It ran quite nicely, but I think it has more to give once I have fiddled a bit with the suspension, weight distribution, etc. Unlike the '02 which hit 30 laps quite readily and came close to hitting 31, the '03 managed 29 by the skin of its teeth, with most runs being in the mid 20s. I don't know what my entry theme will be next round - maybe rally cars, trucks or something else suited to the winter weather. I'll see what the next track layout looks like and decide. I may even give the DTs another go.