futureworks

I received quite a bundle of parts from Japan yesterday, but this is the one I’m most pleased to have got my hands on - very rare carbon conversion kit for Tamiya F201 cars made by 3Racing. I’ve also listed it on the main site where there are more pics. One of the other parts I received is quite quirky - a FF01 spur gear set with a spring clutch, apparently helps reduce wheel spin from a standing start for a FWD car - we’ll see!

That site has been around for years, and to be honest I’m not sure whether it’s a scam site or legit. If you look at the About us and other general pages, they are blank. This site seems to have parts in stock that are often old and unavailable elsewhere. I did try to contact them on a few occasions a few years ago just to check stock of a few rare items - never heard back, despite several messages, and decided it was iffy and so I walked away. Others may have had better experiences, so interested to hear!

Mine was an XR311 which I got for Xmas 1982 I think, when I was around 13. Some friends has Cheetah’s and brought them to school, and they seemed pretty exciting. Then I saw the XR311 in a model shop in Cambridge, and my Dad did the rest. I remember getting the standard 5 cell Tamiya battery pack initially along with an Acoms AP-227 MKII radio set, and then getting a hump battery and using a knife heated up on a gas ring to cut out part of the body set interior to take it. No H&S back then, just pure experimentation! I never bothered painting it, just ran it and rolled it a lot (deliberately) too! I have a NIB original in my collection now which is better cared for 😊

Thought I’d build my Thunder Tiger TA02 Gas Conversion Kit this afternoon. Quite a rarity these days, dating back over 20 years. Just listed on the main site with more and better quality photos. First time also that I’ve used my newly acquired Tamiya tool set - how have I survived without one all these years! It’s great 👍

I've built up a list of quite a number of retailers I'll buy from across Asia, including from HK, in the almost two decades I've been buying stuff from abroad. I would say that the shift in postage costs to the UK for larger items (i.e., kits) over the last decade and the increased customs scrutiny that was applied to parcels coming into the UK even before the change to the £135 above or below rule has meant I've not bought new kits from the Far East for a long time. I'll generally go to Tamico or more usually Fusion Hobbies where I can get the 10% subscriber discount if I'm in the market for something. However, as I tend to focus on vintage these days, it's not really an issue for me. As for parts, I'll buy from wherever is cheaper, and all the stores you mentioned are ones I will use. The only real change for me is with RCMart where I've become less inclined to buy from unless it's the only place that has what I need. They have in my view become more expensive (by adding vat - presumably they have registered as a vat collector with HMRC) and there seems to have been more of a general sense on this forum of some lower value parcels getting stopped by customs and attracting a charge, and others not, and unpredictability can put me off. That said I've made 2 orders this year, both below £100, and both came through with no issues.

Few bits n’ bobs from the last week or so for a variety of projects. Particularly pleased to have finally found the seemingly unbelievably rare FR-12R engine I wanted for my TG10 mk.2, having been searching for a few years.

Did you find some and change yr mind?

Me too, just not a problem as long as you stick to trading only with established members, and a much valued part of my experience on the forum over the last 15+ years! I've also started added a line (see in brackets below) to my trade wanted ads in a bid to discourage scammers :-) "

Bit of a long shot, but I wondered if anyone had a set of front and rear aluminium steering blocks (knuckles) 3Racing made about 20 years ago for the Tamiya F201 formula 1 cars? Pic attached, so if you can help please get in touch. GPM also made these in blue, so that’s another option. (Oh, and a word to you scammers out there, we see you coming a mile off on this forum, so don’t even bother)

I was looking at doing something along similar lines, in my case a ‘retro-rere’ using a fighting buggy kit but making changes to incorporate the original hump battery and mechanical speed controller from the super champ, so necessitating using the original mechanism deck (needed as it has a hole to allow the battery hump to protrude though; the fighting buggy one does not have a bit enough hole). Unfortunately the way the original mech deck and chassis plates were designed to fit together are different in many respects to the rere, so I had to give up on that idea 😫.

Great, will you add part numbers and prices here as before?

Hey, welcome back, great thing about this forum has always been never needing to be here all the time and pitching in when you can or want to. You have a very recognisable avatar, and I’m amazed it’s been a couple of years! Time flies!

@Juhunio is the 53472 TA04 Toe-in rear upright on eBay one of yours?

No, they are nothing like that, completely clean.

That’s an interesting perspective for me, as my kit is one of the original releases of this bike from the 1990’s, so I wonder if I’ll come across the same issues. That said, I’d looked at loads of online threads about the essential hop ups so knew what people had been suggesting in the past. I bought a complete set of hop up parts from Banzai Hobby, because they ended up being pretty cheap compared with anywhere else, and a few other bits like oval washers from GPM.

Yes, not a Tamiya body, so maybe it was sold as a set together with the front bumper and body mounts, and the owner decided also to add the Tamiya antenna mount.

…and the R8R had a different chassis plate - it had a wider one, same as the carbon version on the 58258 F103LM-TRF, only the Toyota and Porsche GT1’s came with the narrower standard F103 chassis plate, and like the R8R, all the LM cars came with rubber tyres and correct, rather than generic wheel designs, to accurately reflect the real 1:1 cars.

Looks like a pretty standard early F103 chassis with sponge tyres. The conical aspect seems likely to be something that’s become misshapen over time, perhaps how it was stored. The damper arrangement on the chassis is standard, but the kits also provided the alternative mount to ensure there was space for a Tamiya CRP unit - see pic. The car would have started as a F1 variant I think, but has been converted to take a Le Mans type body, so has been fitted with a LM style front bumper with body mounts (these are not Tamiya versions of these parts). That’s why you also have the antenna holder part, which is no longer fitted for whatever reason (this being a standard part for the LM variant, like the 58230). The rear body mount posts are also likely non-Tamiya parts from the looks of it. Overall the standard F103 chassis looks to have had only minor alterations to enable a switch from F1 body to Le Mans body.

@OldUser looks like it’s been 3 months since you posted your request for help, and a real shame it does not seemed to have progressed. A suggestion - the club Facebook page has an email which Chris does sometimes seem to respond to, so you might want to try that - see pic. That said, I thought I’d lucked out trying to get some new Tamiya cars listed on the main site when my email got answered straight away a couple of weeks ago, albeit the model numbers don’t seem to have been added yet despite a follow up email. Quite perplexing!

Postage on top or extra?

@alvinlwh I’m curious, did you brush or spray, noting what appeared to be pots rather than cans of paint you pictured much earlier in the thread?

This phenomenon is also perhaps a consequence of the ever diminishing source of vintage parts, something which has been evident for years on eBay, but now also reflecting what’s happening on the more inaccessible Japanese auction sites where prices for parts have rocketed in the last few years as supplies have dwindled. Ever more patience, persistence and a bit of luck can still lead to good finds, but there’s simply less out there now IMO. That said, I still throughly enjoy finding rare parts to finish projects, but it’s all getting more expensive for sure.

Is it a hummer chassis?

A massive THANK YOU to @Superluminal for helping me out with this and some other bits - a very generous and helpful guy!

So my latest thinking based on research into other Tech Racing aftermarket parts from this era is that the company appears to have a tendency to use one generic instruction sheet for different variants of the same parts. They do a FF01 rear upper arm and brace set for example, one set which is designed for the standard chassis, and another which has extra parts in the bag as it’s designed to use on a FF01 where the FRP or carbon chassis upgrade has been done. Both these parts have different parts numbers and header cards, but the same instruction sheet from what I’ve seen on the web. So I think that’s what we have here, an instruction sheet covering a rear and a front Stabilizer set, with the header card indicating this one is the rear set. The FF reference could be a reference to Front (jury still out on that imo) but irrespective the bottom left box definitely depicts a top down view of a FF01/TA01/2 front hub. I also found this pic of a variant of the same set as I have but fitted to the front, i.e. 90% identical basic parts, with slight differences to a couple of them. It is definitely a different set as the connecting rods, whilst identical in design (in that they have a flange where the ball connector screw up to on the thread), the ones in my pack are very much longer, so designed for the rear only. The other thing that is clear from the instructions is that the set is designed to be mounted using a longer threaded screw through the body mounting hole. My best approach, as I’m wanting this for a FF01 rear, is I think to experiment. I don’t want to bend the stabilizer wire in the pack until I know if and how it will fit, so I’ve stripped a length of gardening wire which is malleable and bends easily, and will try out fitting the set using that to begin with.