Big Jon

I’ve been using a slipper on my 01 for years. Assuming that you have spurs and slipper pads ready to go, spur changes are quick and easy. Remove the nut, pull off the outer plate and spur, drop on the new one and replace the nut. It takes longer to remove the shock and gear cover than it does to swap a spur.

Without getting too personal, my hobbies have helped me to manage sometimes crippling depression, and racing/meetups encourage me to interact with people in a social setting. Therapy indeed.

My current favorites are the TD4, XV-01 and M07. Each has the ability to make me feel like I know what I’m doing on the wheel. The DF-03 drives surprisingly well in mostly stock trim, too. I own a fairly trick DB-01 that will probably never be driven, and if it is, will never be driven to its full potential. From what I understand, they’re extremely good. There are very few Tamiyas that don’t drive well when the intent of the chassis is taken into consideration, although there are more than a few that have objectively poor performance. The T3-01, as an example, is not “high performance” by any standards, yet is tremendous fun to play with. Mid-level and above kits always drive well in my experience. Entry-level kits usually require at least a few hop-ups to provide the experience that I’m looking for; usually the “Big Three” is sufficient.

I’ve been checking every afternoon for updates since you started this. Blast!

So good looking, too. Group B was insane, just the wildest racing, and the drivers were incredibly skilled. They’re the only race cars more monstrous than Can-Am, which were nuts too.

Look at that turnout! Must have been a blast!

That would be too big for our group, but it would be phenomenal fun to race a bunch of buggy based rally cars. Almost like SCT, except with good handling.

At least in our group, everyone paints their bodies differently. The Subarus will always be a popular choice, of course, especially because to ‘08 WRX comes with the XV-01 kit. Some guys will do a color variation with the kit sticker set, others do a race-type one color, others will do box art. Any chassis you want as long as it’s standard sized - approximately 260mm wheelbase and less than 200mm wide. You do have to use 24 or 26mm touring car wheels and normal sized tires.

I’m enjoying your builds! Are you aware of the RC10/Tamiya connection? The Stealth transmission is Associated’s take on the MIP three-gear aftermarket transmission. The MIP transmission is based on the SRB three-gear transmission, and the first production MIP transmissions were for SRB. The slipper came much later. The six gears were not bad at all. Yes, they did require some extra care when assembling, but all race cars required care. The diff was easily accessible and they used readily available pan car spurs for a wide range of gearing options.

Update: I put the Square Spikes back on the DT-03 and built a set of CVA shocks with one-hole pistons. After some testing this morning, I ended up with 40wt oil front and rear. I’m out of 45wt, or I’d try it in the rear. The Square Spikes work so much better in my yard than the Dirt Hawgs and provide more predictable handling. Last night, this buggy was honestly a little frustrating to drive. Granted, my yard is too rough for a little buggy like this, but it was fairly wretched with the Dirt Hawgs, substantially worse than any of my other buggies. With reasonable traction and some dampening, it has become fun again.

1/10 rally cars do very well on indoor carpet as long as the jump faces aren’t too steep. Typically, if the track works well for spec Slash, silver can or 21.5 buggy, it works for rally. It’s the supercross style tracks that are too much for our little cars. To elaborate on the tire and motor choices: With our small tires and limited availability of good compounds, it’s easy to overpower the limited traction on dirt, even with 4WD. The fastest guys I race with are using Torque Tuned or various sensored brushless motors turned way down. I use a hot 13.5 turned down, although probably not enough. As for tires, I usually use the slightly bigger soft compound Rally Block clones, clones of the old HPI Pirellis or yellow compound Schumacher Mini Pins. Most guys use either soft Rally Blocks or the clones. Body choice makes a big difference in performance. Bodies with very short front overhang and plenty of room in the fenders are best, like Lancia Deltas or Alfa Romeo 1600. Ideally, the body will fit tight against the plastic of an XV01 and there won’t be any room for a foam bumper. Rally-X is a lot of fun and has a completely different feel than stage rally. The whole race is high speed without the very sharp turns of a stage course, and there are far fewer turns. We ran stage rally as a club for several years on tight courses, and I enjoyed it a great deal.

Open motor, open tires.

Thanks! I believe that Axial claims 1/10. They’re 11.4” wheelbase crawler bodies.

DT—03 For this evening’s run, I pulled out a fun yard buggy. A very standard build, it has the usual bearings, steel pinion, and hex screws, and one of those nifty Yeah long aluminum servo savers. A Yeah Hackmoto 17t and kit 1060 shove it around, and an aftermarket wing replaced the flimsy stocker. Today’s run was a bit of a lesson. Normally, I run this buggy with Square Spikes front and rear with open cell foams on kit Astral Dish wheels, and they work well enough on my rough yard. Tonight, I ran on the DE Borrego wheels and Pro-Line Dirt Hawgs, which are not very good on this surface. They’re much more at home on pavement and very hard dirt, so the buggy was difficult to control when cornering on grass, with a heavy push in and snap oversteer through the middle and out. The lack of initial steering made it harder to position the buggy than with the Square Spikes. Additionally, the nailhead shock pistons cause the suspension to bottom easily, and the buggy seems to end up upside down when tripped or otherwise disturbed. Still, it drives like a proper buggy, just with a much lower limit than my other buggies, and has enough pep to be a fun drive. With the correct tires on a smoother surface, I’ve had some real fun with this one. It doesn’t require much maintenance, it’s been durable with no parts breakage, and I don’t mind passing the transmitter to anyone who wants a try. When I head inside, it’s getting the Square Spikes put back on, and I’m finally going to dig around in my shock bin and build a decent set of shocks for it. I like this guy enough to invest a little time in it at this point, and I’ll keep it simple enough to keep its casual and carefree nature. It’ll never be a serious race car, and I don’t want to ruin it by trying to make it something that it can’t be. Finally, this run ended when a rear wheel fell off. That’s a good thing, because the motor was HOT. These Yeah motors are dogs unless you crank up the timing, then they get very hot quickly. It’s hotter than the surface of the sun here today with high humidity, and I wasn’t monitoring motor temp at all, so I’m glad that the wheel falling off stopped me in time. I might install a smaller pinion; I might not.

It’s a great deal of fun. This year, a semi-local 1/10 scale off road track has started running rally-X, and it’s gotten decent turnout. Regular racers seem to like it better than stage rally.