Wheel_Nut

Yes.. DT-03 with a sticker sheet. I was thinking about that, until I realised it had already been done. https://www.tamiya.com/english/products/58401neo_falcon/index.htm

Some of the motor suppliers give advice for gearing. Of course this is aimed at racing, but will generally still be usable for hobby running and bashing. The ratio's are pretty tall compared to what is run in a lot of vintage buggies. Possibly check your kit gearing and see if you can get anywhere close to 7:1 recommended for a 13.5T brushless. You can still run on 9:1 gearing - It will just have less top speed and run cooler. There is no guarantee it won't destroy the gearbox on hard acceleration.

It depends whether the gearing is right for the motor. Particularly the higher wind brushless motors are torque monsters, so they need taller gearing to give an increase in speed. A low wind motor means more RPM, so that's one way to get a lot of speed and power if the speed controller and the car's gearbox can handle it.

I can understand people of previous generations who don't have tolerance for adult men who play with toys. It comes from a different set of values to what is prevalent today. The idea was that adult men are supposed to use all their time to earn money, care for their family, do maintenance around the house and garage. The idea of relaxation would be church on Sunday and a roast lunch with their relatives. I don't like to say one point of view is right or wrong. I feel like I don't have the right to tell others how to live their lives, what medicines to take, or which political party to support, or anything at all. I accept that everyone in the world has different ideas and opinions. Even when I don't agree, I think I will keep my opinion to myself. If I want to stand in the middle of a public place and play with a toy car, I can still do it. I'm prepared to disregard other peoples view, when it suits suit me to do so. It doesn't mean they are necessarily wrong.

Good question. I am not 100% sure of the answer. I think the front bulkhead in the Blitzer trucks is more rigidly designed, so the loading is more evenly shared between the upper and lower chassis bolts. They both have a tendency to break as far as I know.

Lets say Tamiya change to new chassis and bulkhead mouldings that have the same overall dimensions and looks externally similar to the old one... Perhaps they could change it so the front bulkhead attaches with 6 screws instead of 4 and the chassis has properly engineered reinforcement around the mounting points. So, if it looks 90% similar, but 200% better durability, then would you be curious to get a kit to see how they re-engineered the revised mouldings?

If they are going to re-release the Falcon, it needs to be largely redesigned. I wish all of Tamiya's re-releases could re-deigned to fix the weakness. I think they could re-use the old gearbox internals and the suspension arms. The chassis, the front bulkhead, and the drive shafts need a complete re-design. The old Falcon design is unsuitable for today's power systems and the expectations of hobbyists. Re-releasing the originals will just remind people about the poor design of these Tamiya products. The weakness of the Striker chassis was even worse than the Falcon. Bear hawk re-release is probably redundant, but the blitzer beetle and stadium thunder might be popular if the designs were updated to make them more rugged.

I agree with everything you wrote. I haven't bought a re-release boomerang yet, but that has more to do with parts availability than the design issues.

Are you implying the Hotshot era buggies do not have issues with brittle plastic, weak drive line and not efficient drive line? Thunder-shot had a lot of issues with brittle plastic. The Mantaray was a step forward in most areas, especially chassis and drive line durability. The Mantaray still had a sucky steering linkage that let it down IMO.

I always found that 1:10 scale models were a lot easier to store. The other benefit is they don't need registration or insurance.

It probably answers the question why production runs are limited. When Tamiya run the injection moulding / dies for a particular kit, they would make enough for the production run they have planned. The unit cost for each plastic sprue will typically be very low, but a lot of the cost is in the time needed to change over dies, do maintenance and also testing the setup between production of different mouldings. The warehouse probably doesn't have space to keep high stock levels as that would be costly as well. I don't know how big an issue tooling cost is these days. AFAIK the tooling cost would be about 10% of what it used to be back in the 80s due to far better technology and automation. I don't think the unavailability of tooling is a major obstacle if there is sufficient demand for the product, but again it takes time to test-run and revise new injection moulding tooling. Its pretty obvious that Tamiya don't plan to sell a lot of spare parts. It seems like they use the entire production to go in the kits, and when that is finished (I guess) there won't be any more until they decide to do another re-release.

The Cat XLS was completely dominant after its release. It was light weight, well balanced, and had surprising amount of grip. I never raced a 4WD car, but about 50% of the cars racing were cat XLS, especially the guys who were the most competitive. Yokomo YZ870 was also competitive, but not as popular as the high cost and limited parts support put many people off. Kyosho Optima mid had a very loyal following, and there were guys who got really good performance from it. Avante was very much obsolete from a racing point of view, although it was only the new racers who ever attempted to race one.

As I recall "Peak Tamiya" coincided with the release of the Hotshot. After kids began breaking their Hotshot models, it was probably the start of the decline. Some went on to more advanced models that were better quality, and the younger kids probably didn't take it up at the same rate as the first generation during the craze of 85.

The correct answer is the "Super Champ"(!) Actually any of the SRB buggies will qualify. They are iconic because of the way Tamiya replicated many scale features of the VW based chassis. They are also the most durable for long term collectors because they have the high proportion of alloy parts. Although not necessarily the best for actually running the buggies. Hotshot and Boomerang are also iconic because they were sold at the absolute peak of Tamiya's popularity in the 80's.

To me it seems the MIP upgrade would be worthwhile if it stops the Boomerang from making crunch-crunch sound on the exit of every turn.