Honza

FF-01 is derived from TA02, I'd try its arms. The only difference seems to be in lower damper mounts, which are more rearwards on FF-01

What are the rules? M07/8 if it's limited to Tamiya 2WD XM-01 if a 4wd is allowed Xpress XM/AT for non-Tamiya 4wd

Dust is fine, you can blow away most of it with air and wipe the rest.. mud however.. I still have pieces on my car since april race, because it requires complete disassembly and bath with brush to clean up 😃

I learned a long time ago, that no matter what you do, dust gets in. So it's better to just make sure that larger debris gets out without getting stuck in some vital part 😁

Ressurection time! I could swear there was a newer MF-01 thread, but found only this one. Stumbled upon a Facebook group around Poor Boys RC channel. Apparently they are doing MF-01X speed run challenge, which isn't really my cup of tea... However, even though the challenge didn't started yet, there are already popping up some very interesting creations. Here are some pics from the group:

What do you mean by "better shock mounting options"? You can use GF-02 arms - they are a bit longer, you'd need 45mm driveshafts, but they have 3 mounting options. Or you can use #51436 to move shock mounts to the outer hinge pin.

@Gebbly thank you 😃 About designed breaking points - having to reprint a part that takes 6h is something that inspires you 😁 There's speedrun challenge going on, so I thought it would be fun to make a quick modification - using smaller spur gear with slightly altered position, I made a "high speed" modification, with FDR ranging from 4,66 to 2,8. Not sure if it has any real use, but it helped me to move forward with the low range gearing.

Hydropneumatic suspension. It was really cool system, instead of pumping gas into rubber springs, it used pressurised gas balls and pumped fluid around for ride regulation. The ride was so soft, because fluid would redistribute around the entire suspension when one wheel hit a bump. Guess one could replicate a similarly working system with mechanical linkages on an RC 😁 The only similar system was Hydrolastic/Hydragas used by British manufacturers (can't name a specific one, since British automotive indistry is a mess, but some Mini Cooper variants used it aswell). I played with an idea to try replicate this setup in an RC car, but it involves lot of weird shaped rubber parts. One fun bit of trivia I found recently about the Citroen system is, how its engineers dealt with leaking of the hydraulic cylinders - they didn't 😁 They just collected leaked oil in a rubber boot and pumped it back to reservoir. This is why DS lays on its belly when it's not driven for a while.

You can use Google translate on the Japanese site. Unfortunately no new information, only the one we figured out here - #42300 M-chassis set is listed as compatible, with additional information below: 42379/42220 are the 3mm 1050 bearings, 42218 is the TRF/M-07 wheel axle. So, the option #1 is the official one 😃 When we are back to the topic of driveshaft, here is the reason why M-05 driveshafts don't work: At the top is a 30mm M-05 CVD, at the bottom an M-07 33mm cvd. The cross pin sits some 3mm deeper in the hub. That's also reason why M-05 DCJs don't require thinner bearing.

Not an oversight, intentional choice. Tamiya doesn't have any 210mm FWD shell in production, so they didn't need that WB variant. That made the whole chassis simpler, since they only need to flip rear arms for other two WBs.

FWD - M-05 with V.2 chassis. Since M-07 doesn't support 210mm WBs without modification, M-05 V.2 is the next best thing. AWD - XM-01 - although it's sold as a rally chassis, it has lower suspension position, so it should work on asphalt, too.

One #51748 set on its way, so in the meantime, I tested an idea to use 33mm CVDs with them. I thought that I'd need 4mm hexes to compensate for longer swingshafts, but turns out, that it's not needed. Wheel axles used on XM-01 are shorter just by those 3mm. This means that I'll be able to make slightly longer front arms. With starting length of 20mm, each milimeter counts.

I printed parts for someone for their Brat conversion. They are happy with it, but asked if it's possible to get slower gearing. So I gave it a try - looks like it might work with no need to modify design of the chassis. The ratio is close to 20:1

Thanks for the Info, how did you find PN of the swing shafts? I went through several documents and couldn't find it 😃 I can see a 3rd option - 19804932 + 42218 + 42219 + 42221 (not sure if it's cheaper option than modifying the whole set or not)

- design - while it's always criticised that one manufacturer of competitive chassis copies from another, design "trends" in racing scene have one advantage - jumping from one manufacturer to another is easier because of familiar setups and driving style. It happened numerous times that some manufacturer brang radical design, just to change to more familiar design in the next iteration, while others took some ideas... Overall, the target of the design is performance. Meanwhile, in the less competitive scene, main target is simplicity and ease if manufacture - a typical Tamiya is made of four, five large plastic sprues? These can be made cheaply in hundred of thousands quantities. - materials - typical competitive chassis is combination of carbon fibre, aluminium alloys, high quality steel and fibre reinforced plastics. Just like in the design paragraph, these materials are chosen for their mechanical qualities, not so much for ease of manufacture - used alloys cannot be easily die-cast, FRP require higher quality moulds with more frequent cycles, almost everything has to be machined and sometimes heat treated. Non-competitive cars can get away with cheaper materials made to looser tolerances, which don't wear out tooling as much. Metal parts, if there are any, are die-cast, sintered, cut from stock or stamped to save costs. - features - this paragraph is most obvious, but the previous ones are IMO more important - you can throw features of racing chassis on a TT-02, but it still won't be competitive due to previous reason. At the same time, mid-range Tamiya can be more competitive even when it doesn't have all bells and whistles and it's still mostly plastic.

Tamiya did make competitive chassis some 10 years ago. TA05, TB-03 DN-01 and DB-01 were essentially cheaper variants of their TRF offerings. And just like TRFs, they probably didn't sell large enough quantities to be profitable.. TRF range got reduced to TRF4xx, with limited runs of TB-evo, TRF buggies were discontinued entirely, the mid-range reoriented to more experimental designs to various degrees of success... I'd say that there's one category where Tamiya is very competitive - rally. While other manufacturers just slap longer shocks on an onroad chassis, Tamiya si far made three different purpose-build chassis from the ground up. Problem with all this is, that it's not as well known as their entry and toy grade offerings. Which also tells a lot about why they focus on those.

Taking a look at M05 V2-R and M-07R shows: - 3mm 1050 for hubs - Complete M-05 DCJ set, since swing shafts are not available separately - #42218 wheel axle (stock M-07 uses same #51445 axles as XM-01). The combination should work, since both DCJ sets use same #42219 joint pipe. DCJ installation on M-07R: M-05 DCJ parts: M-07 DCJ parts:

M07 DCJs are 33mm. So they won't fit either. I think that you can use M-05 DCJs in combination with #42218 TRF axles - those are used on M-07 DCJs, with 3mm that co 1050 inner bearings as you've suggested.

The picture was in another blog post, linked on the bottom of the post I linked here, there's no other photo of the slipper. I guess that those slipper pads are just another Tamiya option, now for example available for TD4. I didn't even realised it's 5 year old already.. yet still no slipper upgrade from Tamiya or any other manufacturer. I guess that someone could make a custom shaft to fit the XV-02 slipper, but it'd require lathe and milling machine...

The last one was Rally Olio Fiat in November. It's weird that the new Kadett body got released on MB-01.. we will see if there will be a re-release on a rally chassis.

I'm affraid that there won't be a non-pro, similarly to XV-02. The role of cheaper 4wd rally chassis is taken by MF-01X.

I don't have a TT-02B, so I'm not building it. But some parts can be useful for my other projects 😁 There's photo that shows all the parts needed. Except for shims on the top right, or PNs are visible. The YR mount is probably not necessary, if you use XV-02 0.6 spur instead of the suggested 48p one. I also found follow-up posts that show detailed build, modifications and parts athat were not shown in the initial post: - Part2 - Part3 - Part4 You can use Google translate to get somewhat intelligible translation

To add a few: - Never store fully charged batteries. Use storage mode (3,8-3,85V/cell) - fully discharge the battery before disposal.

The last race resulted in DNF in the last SS due to driver's error. Good news is that the suspension mount worked as anticipated and it didn't break other parts of the chassis. Over the summer break, I'm planning some modifications. I'm waiting for delivery of #51748 parts tree to test some new ideas..

(Image from rctech) The small spur/idler engages from opposite side than in TL-01, and since speed tuned gears are narrower, the contact between teeth is quite narrow. It does work, but I'm concerned about longevity with a stronger motor, I stripped couple of stock ones back in the days with TL-01. The issue could be probably solved by shaving the tube part and getting narrower bearing or some insert with a smaller bearing, to get the gear closer to the motor. Since I already needed an extra gear to relocate the motor, I used M-05 gear set to achieve the exact same gearing as other Tamiya M-chassis. But I also designed it with wider range in mind, covering gearing of TL-01 and M-07 as well. It does not go as low as the original MF-01X, the lowest possible ratio being roughly equivalent of 18T pinion with the original gearing, but IMO that's not needed as long as it's used as an onroad/rally car.