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So over the last weekend racing I noticed my car developing more and more play all over, so I've decided to give it a good rebuild and cleaning. Of course, I'll take you guys along. What this car has done since the last time I spent some time with it on my desk: - about 100 batteries of practice - 4 qualifiers - 3 mains - setting a lap record for 17.5t touring on my home track - wore out 2 sets of tires - wore out a body shell The list of complains: - The rear diff leaked like a sieve. It stopped last weekend, probably because it is now empty - Play in the steering system - Wobble in the spur gear - stripped screw in the layshaft after it disassembled itself spontaneously last race - the locating peg on one of the rear body posts broke off, so every time I do something with the body shell I have to realign it - .... it's disgusting So yeah, a good cleaning was due. The willing victim, spread out on my desk, ready to go. Seems pretty clean from the outside, right? I'll leave the electronics in. The ESC is barely a few races old, and the receiver is perfectly placed where it is. I quickly took off the shocks, and removed all the easily disassembled sections like the front bumper and the upper deck. Race on carpet they said, your car will remain spotless they said.... The ball nuts are all rather damaged too. I'll get a new set to place these. If you're gonna do it, do it right! Also, the diff blades on the universal ends are worn out, I've got a set around somewhere, so that's one thing less I need to buy. On the left one of the C-hubs I took off the car. On the right a new C-hub. Aluminum things don't break, they bend.... Right steering knuckle assembly. It seemed fine, but the bearings are gritty and the C-hub is bent as well. The motor mount. The escaping layshaft did quite a bit of damage to the surface, but it's still straight and therefor, it goes back in after a deep cleaning. Other layshaft upright. You can see where the pulley nicked it on the way out. The pulley in question. 20 minutes of wrenching later the shock towers, diffs, front and rear hubs and stabilizer rods are gone. The bare chassis, pre-cleaning. I love carbon fiber, and how it changes appearance depending on the angle you look at it. The previous owner of this car was a bit of a klutz. The top deck was originall shoved in there, tweaking the bottom plate. Apparently he spilt some super glue on the rear part as well. It's on a fairly invisible spot (below the rear lower arm, near the droop screw) so I'll leave it be. My TRF's a working girl, not a shelf queen. Stay tuned for more teardowning. We've still got the diffs to do, shocks to rebuild (my least favorite part), clean the whole thing, get the replacement parts, and then screw the whole thing back together. The shopping list thus far: - 51253 TA05 (I think) B-parts for the rear body posts - New C-hubs. Plastic Tamiya ones are out, though maybe the TA07 ones are stronger, so a good set of Yeah Racing hubs, or Square if I can find them somewhere - 53640 Ball Connector nuts - 19804777 CS 2.6mm x 8mm screws to secure the layshaft. One is bent, and the other one I stripped accidentally. - 53601 5mm adjusters. I'm replacing all of them, just to be sure.

Hi all I'm looking to start a regular indoor meet in Wakefield West Yorkshire (2 miles from the Junction of M1 and M62). The purpose of this is to provide a fun race venue for all kinds of RC (A kind of bashing racing league - Think of the video game re-volt). I will invest in carpet and can even get hold of timing gear but i want to know if there would be enough interest out there for such a venue? My initial thoughts are this would be a Sunday afternoon session to start with. About four hours with half being about fun and the rest a bit of a mini cup - different classes / different races). Please send me your input guys Many thanks

I am selling two sets of classic tamiya Piaa Accord VTEC wheels and Celica GT-Four racing radial tires 50724 and 50419. Both wheels and tires are 26mm and the wheels have +2mm offset and use 12mm hexes. Wheels also include wheel nuts. Tires come without inserts. I am missing the label for the second set of wheels. Nice combo for rally and drift applications.These wheels are not aceton friendly.I am asking for 30€ for everything but items can be also sold seperately for 7€ for a single tire set and 8€ for the single wheels set. I am also willing to take offers. These need to go! Might consider trading these for a set of HPI 26mm wheels or a set of x-pattern tires. Shipping is free for Europe.

So the summer season is now upon us, and Chippenham Model Car Club (CMCC) are venturing out from the safety of the school sports hall for the first time in 2016. All over the county, people are dusting off their buggies and charging up their grass-stained hardcase lipos ready to hit the turf. And, in true English fashion, the good weather of the weekend had broken, the clouds are rolling in and the forecast is for rain! I've spent the winter racing indoors at West Wilds Model Car Club (WWMCC), but Chippenham is only another 15 minutes up the road and it's much nicer to be out in the fresh air than stuck inside a windowless civic hall. So last night, much to the annoyance of my wife, I passed up on a round at WWMCC so I could drag my B4.1 Factory Team down out of the loft and make sure it still works. It's been a couple of years at least since it was last run, maybe longer. It was put back in the box after the last race and, apart from taking out the receiver and transponder, not touched since. I was surprised (and obviously pleased) to find everything pretty much as I left it. Nothing has rusted or seized, everything turns smoothly and there weren't any forgotten breakages. With a bit of Walking The Himalayas to add some white noise to the background, I grabbed a spare receiver and transponder and got it all wired up ready to go. First thing to find was my hardcase stick packs, expensive Turnigy Nano-Tech 5.3s that I bought some while ago and didn't use much. Imagine my dismay at seeing them both slightly bulging - naturally I stored them with full capacity, expecting to use them again, and because they don't fit my Tamiya bashers, I never did. They've had a few top-ups since they were stored but I haven't cycled them in probably over a year. Anyway, they both read near-full charge and the Core RC charger topped them off without making them explode, so they can't be too far gone yet. While they were sitting in the corner doing their ticking timebomb thing, I set to sorting the car's electrics. I actually went through 3 new (unopened) ORX receivers before I got one to bind - for some reason they were all on strike but eventually (after switching from the Etronix brushless speedo to the Probe WP in my M03) I got a signal out of one of them. Transferring it quickly to my B4 before it could unbind itself, I had some action. I threw in a charged pack and went for a test-run. I don't have any grass in my house and the nearest green space (only 5 mins walk away) is too overgrown for a 1:10 buggy, so I had a very careful run up and down the tarmac. I think I should get some tarmac tyres for the B4 so I can run it on the lane behind my house, just for setting up. Those tyres (I'm pretty sure they're the super-soft Prolines that we use for the final race, after the temperatures drops below the dewpoint) will shred themselves in seconds on tarmac. It's a pity I didn't think of getting the buddy out earlier, as I'd have liked to have my 2016 paint scheme on the shell instead of the crappy one I have (a personal favourite design of mine, but I accidentally picked up the "dull ruddy orange" instead of the "fluorescent red" when putting on the final colour so it looks totally lame), but there just wasn't time to get a new body ordered and painted in time. In other news, the wife was terribly upset that I interrupted her plans by staying home last night, so I promised I'd be out late tonight to give her plenty of space to do whatever it was she was planning on doing. This was before the weather reports started forecasting rain, so there's every chance I'll be looking for a pub to sit in for a few hours if the race is called off... Rain is just starting to hit the windows here! Anyway, fancy paint jobs don't win races, and I haven't raced buggies in some time, so I'll probably be back to basics in the slow heat and challenging to relearn my car. Watch this space for updates of "yay! racing outdoors is brilliant!" or "boo, it rained all night!" or "I broke my car again" soon

So it's been a fair few years since I did any kind of racing blog. In fact, it's been a while since I've raced at all. Apart from a few friendly one-day events in the summer, my RC life has been about custom projects and open bashing, but I've spent the last few Mondays hanging around at the local track chatting to some friends in the pits, and I figured, if I'm going to go to the effort of going to the track, I might as well take my Mini along and do some racing. My local club (WWMCC) has recently opened a new Mini class called Mini Clubman. It's designed to pull the Mini class back and stop it from becoming Touring Cars in 1:12 scale; when I gave up racing about a year ago, the M05 arms race was starting to get crazy and my ageing M03 was getting left behind. And if anyone turned up with an M06, well... it was game over for everybody else! So the open Mini category still exists (M-chassis size, front or rear wheel drive, Saturn 20 motor, otherwise totally unlimited), but the new Mini Clubman category is much more proscriptive: Standard M03 or M05 stock chassis Ball bearings Saturn 20 motor Sweep tyres Tamiya TRF shocks Open diff Otherwise, everything must be totally stock - no toe-in uprights or fancy adjustable turnbuckles or rigid alloy components. It's had quite an impact on laptimes, and it's changed everyone's driving style - especially going back to open diffs. It's interesting to see people going into corners on neutral throttle and powering out hard, whereas previously they were going in under throttle and staying on all the way round. Thinking that this sounds like a good way of passing my Monday evenings, I figured I'd clean up my old M03 and get "back to the track" I dimly remembered that my M03 was handling like a pig last time I raced it. I knew I wasn't far from taking a short-term retirement from racing anyway, and I'd probably come back with a new car when I returned, so I never bothered to look into it. Since then the car's shocks got borrowed for my wedding truck and it's been sat on the shelf looking very sorry for itself. So it was time for a bit of TLC. The shell isn't looking too bad for a car that completed a winter season and a one-day championship, and I didn't have time to cut and paint another, so I gave it a quick dust-over and thumbed off some rubber marks. I like to have a new shell every season but I've left it a bit late this year. Next I pulled the shocks off Project Ringpull. I don't have anything to replace them with, so Project Ringpull is now resting its transmission plate on a TLT tyre until I can get around to making some leaf springs. I'd adjusted the shocks out totally for Project Ringpull, but it only took half a minute to set them back to base for an M03 carpet racer (full soft on the rear, full hard on the front). Then I turned my attention to the M03 itself. It was clear to see that both front arms and one rear arm weren't moving smoothly. This is actually a very old M03, a rare gunmetal chassis traded from a member in Belgium and originally sitting under a Suzuki Wagon RR. I had a problem with seized arms before, after running it outside in the rain and then leaving it on the shelf for a year. All the arms came off and got washed - carpet racing makes for a real mess! The CVDs up front (not sure if they're legal in the Clubman class but they're all I've got) are looking the worse for wear, as are the outdrives, so once I've confirmed the rules I'll be ordering replacements. The stiffness problem in the arms was, again, down to rusted hinge pins. I got the worst of the rust off with some fine abrasive and then hand-polished then with a finishing compound - not a perfect solution but my machine shop is currently full of furniture (we're having some work done on our house) and I can't get to any of the power tools. I couldn't find any Tamiya assembly grease but I did find a pot of AW grease, which is sticky enough to coat the pins and gives a nice fluid feel to the suspension. Everything was reassembled and checked for smooth motion without binding before the shocks and wheels went back on. Here I can vent a matter of annoyance - I'd had a set of alloy locking wheel hexes in my Ebay watchlist for months, and last month I finally took the plunge and ordered 10 packs. There's few things more annoying than a hex getting stuck in a wheel and a drive pin falling out under the bench somewhere... Except these cheap hexes appear to have lock screws made of cheese, which are nowhere near strong enough to clamp the hex down over the pin before the head of the screw gets chewed up. Rant rant rant rant rant, worse than it was before, rant, should have gone with Tamiya, rant, waste of money, rant, waited for those for two weeks, rant, been on my watch list since February, rant... Anyway... I'd previously raced with a cheap Acoms servo, the ubiquitous comes-with-a-radio-set servo. Recently a batch of cheap servos arrived from HobbyKing, and I was pleased with the Trackstar servo in my TT02D, so I lobbed one into the M03. Must be better than the Acoms, although I'll probably have to dial in some expo as it's about 6 times as fast Still running with an ancient ESC (it actually came with the car years back), no LiPo cutoff but that's OK because I know my packs will last 3 rounds. All I have to do now is find my transponder and go racing another ridiculously long-winded post to follow tomorrow morning after my return to the track is done

My shorty lipo conversion found me 2 seconds per lap! But I'm still 2 seconds off the pace. And I drove my thumbs off yesterday. I'm car 5, Craig Macdonald. I'm considering my next step... as it stands, the chassis is 100g overweight and I'm having trouble with the gearing - I've spent a small fortune on spurs and pinions over the last few weeks chasing the right gear ratio. I finished the day on 83 / 43 (48dp) which worked out at 4.12. The motor felt like it could take more and wasn't too hot to touch by the end of a 5 minute run. Do I stick with it and try shedding some weight (could cost lots more!) or do I just bite the bullet and buy a modern machine? I almost cried when that full carbon TA04 on ebay sold for 36 quid. I missed out on it by a matter of minutes.

This has been gathering dust on my garage shelf and really needs to go to a good home. It's got a few hopups fitted, including: Alloy hinge pin blocks Slipper clutch (with associated pads). CVDs on the rear B44 shocks with the full array of tuning springs two unused gear diff units (£34 quid each on ebay!) Full hex hardware Reinforced belt covers. Plus a load of other spares, a set of wheels, the original unused wheels & tyres, and all the bits to build the original shocks. A few bits are missing - such as the wing mounting wedges. I just ordered a new B parts tree off ebay so it will be complete by the time of sale. Looking for £120 posted. I'm based near Cardiff. Clockwork pig timer not included.

This started life as a DT03 Neo Fighter, built for racing and most of you will have seen my review of the car on the RC Racer web site. When the DT03T Aqroshot came out I had to have one as like many others have been waiting for a proper Tamiya racing truck. It got tested at the years DT02 challenge .............. it has all the hop ups available and runs a 10.5 brushless with a Hobbyking 120amp X-car esc ​ ​ ​ ​

For Sale :- Tamiya DB01R with huge amount of Hop - Ups ... this car has been raced at my local clubs and I have won a lot of trophies with this car The list of Hop Ups included in the kit are ..... (list taken from the Tamiya USA web site) 54141 DB01 High-Traction Lower Arm F MSRP $9.00 54142 DB01 High-Traction Lower Arm R MSRP $9.00 54140 DB01 Reinforced Drive Belt MSRP $7.75 54036 DB01 Carbon Rein. M Parts MSRP $9.00 54040 DB01 Motor Heat Sink MSRP $9.50 54028 Buggy Aeration Oil Damper MSRP $110.00 54037 DB01 Alu. Sus. Mount Front MSRP $20.00 54038 DB01 Alu. Sus. Mount Rear MSRP $20.00 54039 DB01 Alu. Sus. Block*2 MSRP $19.50 50994 5mm Sus. Ball. MSRP $10.00 54018 DB01 Slipper Clutch Set MSRP $42.00 54015 DB01 Assy Univ. Shaft F MSRP $35.00 54016 DB01 Assy Univ. Shaft R MSRP $35.00 I have added :- Carbon Fibre reinforced front C hubs Front one way Carbon Fibre TA05 battery strap Ceramic diff balls TRF501x diff halves TRF201 grey adjusters Hardened ball studs Alloy steering arms RW machined spur gear Oople painted Baldre body shell Alloy servo posts Includes some spares such as shock towers and front and rear gearbox covers. This car has been impeccably serviced and looked after. This is a fantastic race car and perfect for new people to get in to 4wd racing at their local clubs. It takes stick packs (nimh and lipo) or lipo bricks and has ample room for modern brushless equipment. I have included two sets of wheels and a set of foam inserts ...... Includes genuine DB01R box which is mint ! Instructions and sticker set. £140 plus £12.50 tracked postage.

So, after a great time at the DT02 Challenge held at SHRCCC on 28th September, its time for me and William to get into racing at our local club (TORCH). We've already been down once and ran our (at that time stock) Holiday Buggy round the track a few times. Since then I've acquired a rolling chassis Sand Viper and also an additional Sand Viper body shell and wing. At the moment I'm in the process of converting the Holiday Buggy into a Sand Viper using the additional shell I got, plus some spares ordered online. I'm also turning the rolling chassis into a runner for me to use. Here's where I'm up to so far: William's car: - Removed the 540 Sport Tuned motor and replaced with a silver can 540 - this was at William's request as he was a bit overwhelmed with the speed of the ST motor at the DT02 event - Replaced the HB shell mountings for the Sand Viper mountings Still to do: - Replace the HB wheels and tyres for more suitable ones (Super Gripper has provided links for these, Rob from TORCH has also been very helpful in this respect) - Trim the body shell so it fits around the Carson front shock tower brace For now I think that will suffice for William...I want his skill level to rise so it is equal to the performance of the car before doing anything else. I think once William progresses much beyond this setup I'll buy him a Sand Viper so that we can keep the HB for fun times - JWeston made this recommendation to me a week or so back and now I'm starting to realise the level of hop-ups that will be necessary to make any DT02 competitive I can see his logic. My car: - I've rebuilt the gear box using new A-tree parts as the original had seen some action and a couple of the screw holes used to mount it onto the chassis where shattered. Nice surprise when I opened this up to see it already has the ball diff hop up fitted - I've put new bearings in as part of the gearbox rebuild - don't think this was strictly necessary but as I had some spares hanging around I figured I might as well whilst the whole thing was in bits - I picked some white Sand Viper wheels up from Smitchos at the DT02 event - the rears are on and fitted with some cheap Pro-Line RED tyres I bought (£2 so seemed a bargain!). The rears are fitted, just need to swap the fronts over - Installed the 540 Sport Tuned motor - Replaced the bearings for the rear wheels - the rear left wheel seemed to be binding and wasn't spinning freely - all sorted now Still to do: - Fit electrics. I've bought a TEU-105 ESC, an Etronix Pulse Transmitter/ Receiver, and a Acoms AS17 Servo that all need to be fitted - Fit same wheels/ tyres as will be fitted to William's car Lee (Super Gripper) has given me an extensive shopping list of items needed to properly prep the cars so they're competitive at TORCH...I'm looking forward to working my way through that list as our skill levels increase and we start to feel limited by not having these items in place. I will put a photo up of the two SV's once they're prepped and ready for a blast around TORCH this coming Sunday afternoon

Hello Everyone, I am the club secretary at Mendip RC Raceway in Weston Super Mare and we are planning a Tamiya Club based weekend in 2014. Dates subject to discussion. We have both an on road and off road track with full timing facilities, sit down cafe, toilet block, covered pits with electric, on site camping and plenty of car parking. We plan to have on road classes for Touring cars, Minis, F1s and anything else on road. For off road racing classes for SRBs, Wild Willys, FAVs/Wild Ones, and any other Tamiya off road 4wd & 2wd cars. After much discussion we are proposing using Tamiya silver (standard or torque tuned) or Black (sport tuned) 540 brushed motors for the event for four reasons. Most tamiya collectors already have them, they are cheap, they will keep the speeds pretty level making the racing close & competitive and the lower speeds will help protect peoples prized cars from too much damaged. All classes depend on the number of entries. On the Saturday night we will have a BBQ and night racing. As Weston Super Mare is a popular holiday destination there is no lack of B&Bs and hotels if camping is not for you as well as pubs, clubs and bars to make a weekend of it for all the family. We will also do souvenir merchandise for the event. We will also encourage a swap meet. I have already spoke with a few people on here and there seems to be a lot of interest. We are currently sorting out our diary and I will be back to publish some dates by the new year. Let me know if you would prefer a Saturday/Sunday meet or a Sunday/Bank Holiday meet if possible. Below are links to our web site with videos of both tracks. http://www.worm-racing.co.uk/ http://www.mendiprcraceway.co.uk/ Let me know any feedback. Paul

For some of you this sight might be familiar already from oOple, but being a Tamiya based project, I really yhink I should post this here as well I present to you, the TRF201 FF: oOple Development/Build Thread Specs/Features List: - TRF201 Gearbox (with Ball Differential and Slipper Clutch). - DB01 Front Uprights+Caster Blocks. - TRF HL Aeration Dampers. - Double Wishbone Front Suspension with Inboard Dampers. - Trailing Arm Rear Suspension (2 Degrees Toe-In, -2 Degrees Camber each side). - Developed for use with a Low Profile Steering Servo and 'Shorty' (=95mm long) LiPo Stick Pack. - Compatible with modern Pin-Type Rear Wheels on the whole car. - BRCA, EFRA and BNK Legal to run in 2WD Dlass. - Approx. 284mm Wheelbase, 250mm Width. Existing/Production parts in the design: - TRF201 Gearbox. - TRF HL (TRF201) Aeration Dampers. - TRF201 Steering Arms+Servo Saver. - DB01+TRF201 Suspension Blocks on the front suspension. - DB01/DF03 Hybrid Universal Shafts (DF03 70mm dogbone, DB01 rear axle). - TRF201 45mm Titanium Turnbuckles (for camber links). - TRF Adjusters on the whole car. - DB01/TRF Rear Wheel Axles (for the rear wheels). - 4x Pin-Type Rear Wheels.