MontyMole

Hi everyone, apologies for not responding quickly, my free time is getting scarce ultimately. Did we ever raced on Magny-Cours? Because I wanted to propose that. Here's my drawing for the circuit. Let me know what you think.

Wow, couldn't have imagined! The track was pretty topsy-turvy, and I had all kinds of issues last month, from not finding some free time for doing some laps to my LiPo probably going to greener pastures. I guess having a mild January helped.

Apologies for not responding, I was on a vacation. This month's run were promising, even with the scorching heat; my last attempt to get some better times was foiled by my ESC going in protection mode due to the temperature. My tyres got really worn out in the front though.

Wow, I'm honestly stunned. I managed only to get one outing this month, due to my schedule and the scorching heat. Couldn't imagine I could get this far! I guess the new set of tyres did help, even if they are some discount Carson set I found in my LHS.

Done my monthly runs. This time, since I decided to give my Terra Scorcher a clean up, I figured I might as well give it a try on the tarmac. While it did get less laps than the XV-01, it's not as big of a difference as I thought. I really want to know about @Ferruz and @TurnipJF to have their ThunderShot-based cars to perform so well. It's been a while since I drove mine, and that was on dirt, but on tarmac I found it to be quite a handful. If you don't get the braking and speed right, either the car turns sluggishly or oversteers quite a lot, almost pivoting on the front. Which could be useful on some hairpins in this track, but well, if you can't do that on command, it's not that useful.

I'm doing maintenance on my Terra Scorcher, and one thought came to me. I have a set of TT-02B hop up dampers (part 54993) from my older car, and I don't want to "waste" them so, I want to put them on the Terra Scorcher. After all, I already changed the original yellow CVA dampers with the newer black ones, from the other car. It's pretty evident that this time, it won't be as easy as was the first time: these dampers are longer than the CVA2, even with the smaller eyelets. Has anyone tried to fit those on a Terra Scorcher or a similar car on the Thundershot chassis? Thanks.

Surprised to see they actually went for a quasi-scale look, I was convinced they were going for a more budget car. I wonder if they are gonna use the platform for more models, or it's gonna be a one-off.

Finally decided to put some effort and finish doing maintenance to my XV-01: changing diff oil, rebuilding the shocks, fixing an issue with the servo, and giving the chassis a good scrub. That was a lot of screws for sure. After the last round of postal racing, the car wasn't in the best condition: diffs were leaking, I had one shock pop out from the bottom riglet, by assuming unscrewing itself from the shaft, and there was something that got me worried about the servo. I found that, after every session, the servo was actually hotter than the motor itself, which is pretty puzzling. The issue was that the servo saver is rubbing on the chassis, and that put some serious strain to it. It took me weeks to realize what's wrong: I'm using the Tamiya servo saver from my TT-02B (and the servo too, in fact), and the "cap" on top of it was the cuplrit. Removed that, and now it seems to have just enough space. For the diffs, they were pratically emptied when I opened them. I hope the thicker oil will help this time (30000 cst front, 10000 cst rear). Hope the shocks will be fine, I never enjoy building them, I never seem to get how to get a consistent rebound. Now to wait for the good weather...

I'm building on your drawing @SlideWRX, with some additions here and there. Hope it's not too many, it's thirteen curves at this point (!).

I made a draft too in the meantime. I definitely took liberties in adapting it.

Oh shoot, I guess the rather warm winter here was good for something. For the track, well, that's a new one for me. Did we do Mugello already?

I think I'm done for the year, not sure I can squeeze something in the weekend. I need to do some servicing to the car, the diffs are leaking. Probably I'll make a thread for it, there's a couple of thing I wanted to ask. Compared to all of you, my December has been pretty mild, a bit of rain at the beginning and the last time it was foggy and humid, but nothing serious.

Finally managed to get some laps, after 2 and some months of stop. Since I'm on tarmac, I've tried some cheap tyres I've got by mistake from Amazon, instead of the rally tyres that come with the XV-01. I guess they work, but they are unglued, they do come off if you push the car hard enough.

Seems that the same clone was already sold by JEGS, of all things, with the name "Stinger". From what I've seen, it's practically identical save the different shell and the lack of turnbuckles.

Finally done! Managed to install the 13.5T brushless motor from my TT02B. It was really a challenge: first I've picked the wrong connectors for my Hobbywing motor (they have 3.5 mm connectors, not 4 mm like I thought), so that was another delay. Then my little expertise in sodlering kicked in. I've spent literal hours trying to desolder the old wires, getting scalded in the process by the way, because I was using the wrong tip for my solder. Once I've realized I should use the wider tip instead of the point type tip used for circuits, things got by much faster. The job is kinda sloppy compared to the stuff I've seen here, but I hope it will work just fine. This chassis is really not designed for stuff like "regular maintenance" and "putting electronics other than the one the designers wanted". It's so cramped inside that dust protecting box! And the servo is barely fitting in. Still, job's done, car is all finished, and there's a new LiPo to try out (is it my charger or they take an eternity to charge?).

Finally, after like 6 months after receiving it, it's done: Did a couple of laps around the house to try it out. A few considerations: How many screws a model can have. I'm not looking forwards cleaning or upgrading it throughly. Speaking of that, I will do exacly that since I've got a brushless motor to mount, coupled with 46p pinion and sprue. The decals were a nightmare. Especially the big ones in the front, they didn't play well with the shape of the body. Lots of bubbles and wrinkles. There's something I don't get with the steering. I've used CVDs for the front transmission, and I've skipped the limiters you are supposed to put if you use the basic dogbones. If you get to the end of the steering throw, there's some scratching noises going on that I don't think it's supposed to de there. Anyone had this problem? The handling sure is interesting, it's really easy to initiate a drift, but it's also so easy to manage. Definitely worth the effort I've went in building this car. Hope it will deliver in the racing by post thread!

Even though it's not exactly a buggy, @Craig G had this kind of idea in his build thread: I actually had the intention of getting a new Astute and trying to recreate the Ag Systems livery, but my inexperience with dealing with body painting, no real way to do custom decals and a nice XV-01 Lancia integrale being available got in the way.

One more question: I found an old thread about this chassis, mentioning that in order to tap the screw holes, it's better to use Tamiya's thread forming tap (I believe the code is TA-54232), instead of a regular tap forming tool, which I already have. Should I get one of those too?

First try for me. The first three turns are an absolutely murderous, way too close for my Terra Scorcher setup. This time I've got new tyres from Amazon, a cheap preglued set, I wonder if they are actually better compared to Tamiya's default square spikes. I should also take a look at the front shocks, I've seen the front suspension all oily, I suspect they are leaking.

Thanks for the replies guys. I've set my eyes on the GPM Front CVDs, and of course a servo saver. About the metal spacers in place of the NN4 ones, are there any specific brands for them? What are the sizes, aside the inner diameter which I guess is 4mm? Finally, regarding diff oil, what viscosity you recommend for the front and rear?

Hi everyone, I got myself a Lancia Integrale XV-01 kit. Before building it, I wanted to know what are the recommended hop-ups and if there are any build tips: I wanted to get hex screws for this build, either the titanium Yeah Racing set or the high tensile steel set from rc-schrauben. I guess both are fine, my question is: since both are made of machine screws, should I also get a thread forming tap? Or just a bit of grease will suffice? For what I gather, the recommended hop-ups are the slipper clutch and the aluminium pulleys. The slipper clutch will be a pain, because it seems to be unavailable on most places online, I guess I'll have to wait for it. For the pulleys, Yeah racing also offers them. Is the quality comparable? Regarding build tips, I found that, according to a Youtube video (authoritative stuff I know), it's wise to shim the drive shaft between the pin and the NN4 spacer, to avoid ruining it. Anything more I should take care of. Thanks.

Actually, this came Thursday. I'll probably start biting at it later this month or later, there's a bit of stuff I wanted to research. Might open a thread about it.

I need to check my LHS. I think I might have assumed they didn't have one of the collection, forgetting that the Dash-1 and 2 came in the same box. I hope they still haven't sold them!

Bad weather and work meant no RC outings and little time to . But I had to keep myself occupied. For Christmas, I bought some Tamiya stuff to build. And today, I finally managed to get it done! A threaded crawler thingy, and a re-re of the Dash-01, on the old Type-3 chassis, complete with the Burning Sun body. Just for comparison's sake, I dug out a more recent reissue of the "same" car, but on a totally different chassis, the mid-motor MA chassis. They seem kinda similar from the outside... ...but when you take out the body and start disassembling them, you realize they have little in common. Of course the motor's position, but even the motor is completely different, since the motor used in the mid-motor chassis is a weird beast with the rotor axle protruding on both sides, unlike basically any motor I've seen on any RC model: The mechanics and construction are also different: the more modern MA chassis is easier to disassemble and work on, the older Type-3 left me a bit worried I would tear it apart when I tried to change gearings. On the other hand, the older chassis can run more gearing options (I think 5) versus the more limited options of the other (3 gearing options). The reason for this I think is due to the origins, and the contexts, of these chassis: the Type-3 is a revision of the Type-1, which is obviously the first one Tamiya made for the more racing oriented Mini4WD, as opposed to the first 1/32 4WD reproductions they made for pickup trucks. It kinda shows, because it's like they are not even sure how these things should be for, except for a younger, less experienced audience. Most importantly, they can run high gearings down to 5:1, which for a Mini4WD is quite a lot, because maybe they can be run outdoors on a tarmac or pavement, and a high torque gearing can help with that. With time Tamiya maybe realized that kids running behind uncontrollable cars is a pretty big liability, so they pushed for the more controllable racing circuits, which is also good because they can sell more tuning stuff like motors, rollers and whatnot. The MA chassis came in this era, and it shows: it doesn't need all those gearing options because there's no need to, and instead is more geared towards tuning and modifications.

I guess that paintjob improves the car's handling. Great work, where did you get those decals?