Honza

MK3 became obsolete more in terms of electronics, than mechanics, which are very similar to MK4 and solid. Unlike cheap Enders and similar entry models, there are not really upgrades needed to make it print reliably. The biggest disadvantage is its driver board that runs on 8-bit MCU, which limits its speed, connectivity and its UI is ugly. It's biggest disadvantage for your use case is lack of enclosure, which is needed for materials that require higher temps. But those are common on printers around price point of a new MK4. That was main appeal of Prusa. Instead of going through community forums to get firmware and slicer profiles that actually work, or even making your own (I owned an Ender before and it's been like that), Prusa continuously worked on everything to make their printers work seamlessly (although sometimes a while after they sent long delayed printers to customers cough cough XL). Others have caught up recently, but Prusa still generally does great job, with MK3 receiving updates relatively recently. Of course, that doesn't mean that it will just print anything that you throw at it. There are some things you need to thing about during design to make it print faster, with less supports and with right orientation. But generally, RC parts already have right shape for printing. You can still tinker with your printer if you want - there are things that can be upgraded - but you don't have to. Tamiya uses ABS, polycarbonate, nylon - those are available, even in fiber reinforced variants. But those are the exact materials that need enclosure and even then, PA and PC is not trivial to print. I use PETG, which is easy to print material strong enough to make a working model, but it's also quite brittle. There's also PCTG, which promises mechanical properties of ABS with printability of PETG. But I still didn't get to unpack my roll and test it. The biggest issue of FDM is Z-axis strenght. Some materials are better than others, but generally, bond between layers is much weaker that other directions. That's something that must be thought out during design. I'm not a type of person would would spend time printing various figures. I see it as waste of print time and material. Even then, my printer runs very often even if I don't work on any project, doing just that - various flexy animals are very popular among kids and even adults, and 3D printed figure stil has unique feel, so it's great little gift. There are opportunities for various functional prints, too - holder here, cover there, replacement for some obscure part that disintegrated due to crap material... And suddenly you printer has days of print time in a matter of weeks, even if you think it barely runs. So in the end, if you have good deal on a printer, get it. You won't regret it. It's a really useful tool.

That's reinforced nylon. GF gives the gray grained look, so I suspect that the old part is the same material. It's possible that they changed amount, type of fibre material, amount of pigment (PA is naturally white) or injection procedure, which resulted in different colour. If they reduced amount of GF, the darker parts would be more flexible. Otherwise, there shouldn't be a big difference.

Do you still have sprue? Material type (>ABS< or >PA<, for example) should be stamped somewhere.

Just FYI, I got to my M-05 and tried to measure the distance. Unfortunately, the shaft bosses are too deep within the chassis to reach with calipers, so I couldn't get reliable results.

A similar solution to the stock FF-01/TA02 mount/diff cover wouldn't work? Or something similar to what I did on my MF-01 conversion, with mounting screws in the middle of hinge pin blocks. Although that requires moving the diff up a little to make space for the mount and screws under the bearing.

A bit too late to the topic (sorry about the accident) but this is basically what X-ray did with their first 2WD buggy - They took the XB4 and throw away the front drivetrain and tweaked the geometry. That car was intended for indoor, for dirt, they introduced the XB2 and later did carpet version of that.

I was today years old when I found out that even the most hopped up versions of TA02 still use the U-shape hinge pin. Great job! Is there a way to make the suspension mount a separate part? Changing a whole gearbox half in case of a crash and damage to the mount is a bit of pain. (Ask me how I know 😁) It might be a way to fit the hinge pin as a reinforcement. It'd also allow you to make more variants of kick-up angle. One part I didn't like is that the bottom part of the gearbox is horizontal, going forward from the arms. Going in the plane of the suspension arms and then curve up around the motor before ending in the bumper would provide more ride height, which would be beneficial if you intend to do a rally variant. The disadvantage would be slightly higher CG due to motor moving up a bit, but considering Tamiya did a quite successful road going FWD with an XV-01 gearbox, I don't think it will be an issue. 🙂 I wonder if the gearbox fits under an M-chassis shell.. A mini FF-01 would be quite cool

You're right, I forgot about 3rd parties 😁 I only found the 3racing set, read some non-positive reviews, and never thought of it again. But the 16-24 range sounds good. You can also move the spur a little to gain space for larger pinions within the same motor position range, as alternative of speed tuned spur. Or TL-01 spur for something extreme 😃

That happened to me aswell. I counted 17T instead of 16 on the 0.8 part and found out when my V1 conversion has been almost finished. Luckily I left enough space around the gear to be able to fix the mistake. Here's quick drawing of the most important dimensions from my cad model.

The spur is 21T, idler is 27T. Theoretical calculation is 14.4, the extra 0.1 mm is added backlash. (I'm adding 0.2 for 0.8 gears.) How did you calculate yours?

The center distance between the two 14.5mm. Finer pitch is m0.6, coarser is 32p or m0.8 - they are quite close, so I couldn't determine which is it. Tommorow I'll fire up cad and upload drawings and models.

Two weeks before first race of the season, Mazda's driver needed some practice. I tried to make some photos, but my phone couldn't keep up, so they are blurred from cropping and motion.

I think this is great idea. One of the issues with FF-01 (and XV-01) layout is, that the large spur gets in the way of front shocks. The stock shock tower is a design compromise to get around that, so I would consider redesigning it as well, as this more compact layout provides more freedom around that area. Also, it's one of FF-01 specific parts, that's getting harder to get. And as I mentioned in the other topic, M-07/8 gearing might be worth investigating as well. Edit: one more thing - there's no speed tuned gear set for M-05, the optional set is just tougher material to handle hotter motors. But it's considerably faster compared to stock FF-01 gearing, (a 24T pinion gives 4.83 ratio compared to 6.7/7.21 on FF-01) however, you can get down to a 14T (8.29) pinion, if you need something slower. It's just something that needs to be taken into consideration in the design.

I currently don't have access to my M-05, but the shaft being close to the spur is correct. M07 has a reduced diameter shaft for that reason. At this moment, I could provide measurement from my MF-01 conversion, which I calculated (using pitch circle of two gears and adding 0.1mm) before I got M-05, but so far, it works without excess wear. I could also provide step files of the gears that were used for my design, if that helps Speaking of M-07, wouldn't that be a better solution? It has the same gear ratio, more modern (and slightly smaller) differential and option of 4 gear transmission. Plus, future of M-05 and it's part support is a little uncertain after introduction of MB-01

Looks like they improved, I had a different experience with their shock-gear dampers. O-rings are too tight, bladders show bubbles after a year of use, plastic parts have quite loose tolerances. I replaced o-rings, pistons and rod guides with Tamiya parts, after that, they're quite decent.

I finally finished something I wanted to do from the start, but didn't get to it: Suspension blocks which will hopefully work with M-05 V.2 arms ( I don't have them to test), but what's more important, with different toe-in. For the start, I did 0, +1 and -1 variants. I installed the -1 variant and will test it tomorrow Hand since I have several replacements, I did crash test of the stock part. It worked as intended with crash from the front. But impact from the rear was a bit unpredictable and nearly torn away the chassis mounts. I will have to do some changes.

Exactly. But you can easily fit it under a 160mm body. We have to wait and see, but it looks like there's not much space around the front wheels aswell. XV-02 also nearly touches the bathtub at full lock.

It does make sense, but the only part of the bathtub carried over seems to be the A-part tree. Although I don'tlike the upright battery, it's not that big of an issue for CG, with narrow lipo square packs available. It's more about packing efficiency, with battery like that, it requires quite large bathtub, which barely clears the M-chassis wheels, with lot of empty space unused. Because of that, it seems that larger wheels won't fit, which is unfortunate, because it could be an interesting alternative to MF-01X in off-road variant as well. Transverse battery layout would provide a bit more space.

The whole package is quite tight, especially in S-wheelbase. I wonder, why they didn't go in "improved MB-01" layout - transverse battery, but under the driveshaft to lower the CG. If they kept the reversible chassis concept, it could make a rear weight-biased TC version, too.

Nice 130RS! Wish Tamiya made some Škodas, these bodies are not easy to get.

Thank you! I also wasn't sure if I can put a build with custom parts there, but other threads inspired me to give it a go. Personally, I think it's fine as long as it keeps the "build" format. Design portion of the custom parts is documented in this section.

Definitely give it a try, M05 may be donor of compatible differential, but there are also some projects on this forum that apply entire modern drivetrains into older cars. This information might come handy if Tamiya stops making gears and other parts that keep older cars running.

Yep, I know that platform quite well But I don't think that's the reason, since the aforementioned Abarth also has an engine replica and Rally Beetle has large chromed bumpers and other hard plastic parts. Either it's extreme cost saving, or they consider sticker to be easier for newbies (still doesn't excuse bad proportions).

Great job, Tamiya should've done extra part for mask, like they did with Delta or E30. Sticker just doesn't look as good, especially if proportions are off.

This is cool, it's great to see 3D printed parts serving as a way to fix old models. Have you thought about making the gearbox compatible with 1510 bearings? It would allow for some more modern differential options from M-05/6