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Good News!! another build thread! Another buggy, and this one takes it right back to the first car I bought when i re-found RC 15 odd years ago, The DT-02. That took the form of the Madcap 2.0, a tribute buggy. https://www.tamiyaclub.com/showroom_model.asp?cid=71854&id=19798 For this build i want to set a few ground rules: Push the limit of the chassis - how good can it be? Go big or go home - nothing is too much for this build. Only Tamiya parts allowed - (bar bearings, electrics & one exception) That said, NO BLUE Minimal modifications - use off the shelf parts where possible A lot of the parts collecting has already happened, so this might well move pretty fast.......

I am planning out what electronics I have to get for the Sand Viper, and I'm wanting to know how long the battery cage is so I can narrow that my list of options for batteries. Also, if anyone has any recommendations on LiPos for the Sand Viper, please let me know. Thanks!

Hi, I'm looking for a DT02 chassis - preferably NIB so I can build it up. Either a Sand Viper, Holiday Buggy, Sand Rover etc. Thank you, Mike

Hi All, With the quarantine stretching on I got ambitious with upgrading my son’s Sand Viper. The kit comes with the brushless ready TBLE-02 S. Reading the forums here it sounded like pairing this with 2s lipo, a steel pinion and a 13.5T sensored brushless was a good route to some fun (thank you!). I acquired a Muchmore Fleta ZX v2 13.5T https://www.amainhobbies.com/muchmore-fleta-zx-v2-13.5t-er-spec-brushless-motor-mmrmr-v2zx135er/p693983 After soldering it all together the ECS starts up flashing red/green which indicates it thinks it’s in sensorless mode. Ok here’s the trouble shooting I’ve tried: 1) Attach the old sport tuned brushed motor: works fine. 2) Attached an old sensorless brushless motor: esc starts up in low voltage warning mode 3) Removed the sensor harness and tried running the Muchmore motor: it gave a small shudder and was clearly getting power than stopped and gave the over load protection warning. (This May have been unwise but I was looking for options) 4) Attached an NiMH battery and tried steps 1-3 plus the original setup with the Muchmore, table-02 and the nimh: same results across the board. I attached a picture of the setup and am happy to take more. It could be my solders are bad (they sure are ugly) but they are very solid, I could lift the car with them. There’s no crossover or short on the solder. And step three above seems to indicate the motor is getting power. I’m happy to chase any ideas or suggestions. Thanks in advance!

Hope the group mods don't mind me posting this, but after testing by me and a racer i know have decided I am confident enough in my DT02/3 3 deg toe in uprights to offer them for sale. I have opened a Shapeways store called CTE RC (https://www.shapeways.com/shops/cotic-rc) and have put them on there with a few of my other designs. There are fitting instructions on the part links on the store. No one else makes toe in uprights for these chassis which is why i did them. Hopefully some of you might find them useful, or fun, or just a nice colour (There are about 10 colour options). Here's a pic of Andy's cool DT02 and DT03 race cars and my DT03 truggy with them installed. There is a full installation and rundown over on by DT03 Build log The improvements I wanted was to reduce the size and make the uprights dedicated to the metal driveshafts. The kit uprights are bulky and bind on the wishbones. As you can see in this comparison, the new uprights allow about 10mm more suspension travel, which gives more roll capacity and more grip. No one else makes toe in uprights for these chassis which is why i did them. If you race you will find these a big step forward from the kit version. Andy (my tame racer) reports more rear end grip and stability and the ability to get on the throttle earlier out of corners. He was able to dial in more front end grip because the rear was better. Also reported it had a bigger impact on performance in the DT03 on astro than the DT02. Hopefully some of you might find them useful, or fun, or just a nice colour (There are about 10 colour options). If you would like to order they are available as individual left and right items. Left: https://www.shapeways.com/product/DHAWQ2DWJ/tamiya-dt02-3-rear-upright-3-deg-toe-in-lh?optionId=65301051 Right: https://www.shapeways.com/product/FPEB2TSM2/tamiya-dt02-3-rear-upright-3-deg-toe-in-rh?optionId=65300950 Cheers!

Hello all, I am a first timer trying to build a car with my 2 boys ages 8+9 and I'm having a problem with my Sand Viper. Hopefully someone could help point me in a direction to get this figured out. It really sucks seeing the excitement on the kids faces turn to frustration when they worked so hard building this with me and it doesn't work. We finished the build and turned everything on and I have no power to the rear wheels. My controller operates the steering just fine, but nothing happens when I try to go forward or reverse. The only thing I find odd, but maybe this is normal for an RC car since again I am new at this, is that the rear wheels spin freely but in opposite directions. Obviously this is not under power. If I try to spin the rear wheels in the same direction they do not move freely at all. So I guess I'm trying to figure out if 1. I just got a bad motor, 2. that something was put together wrong causing the wheels to not go the same direction, or 3. my ESC is not working correctly. Thoughts? Again I am new so please feel free to dumb it down to my level if you explain something to me. Here is my set up if it helps. Sand Viper, Hobbywing Quicrun 1060 brushed ESC 60a, Goolrc M TG3 Radio Control 2.4 GHz, and a Tenergy 3000Ah 7.2V battery Thanks again for any help and guidance.

I just got back into the buggies in storage, and got my Sand Viper going again. Does anyone have a link to or know of what good street tires and replacement sand tires/rims will fit. I can never tell what to order to get this going, and appreciate any help here thank you!

Hi all, Just finished installing the hop ups to make my previously stock HB2010 eligible for next weekend's DT02 challenge event. We took the newly tuned HB out for a spin yesterday and was impressed by the massive increase in speed that the new motor and full bearings have given the buggy. We've also been down to the TORCH track last Sunday afternoon for a blast round the track there - great fun and should be even better now we've got the 540 motor in there. However, the poor HB body shell is already starting to look a little battle scarred...I lost one of the headlights yesterday as a result of a head-on smash (fortunately the red plastic seems to react postively to super glue and the shattered plastic is now back in place, for how long remains to be seen!). I've also got cracks around the roof area. This leads me think that the HB shell isn't going to withstand the rigours of weekly racing...plus having been down to TORCH last week we were definately the odd ones out, and of course the body shell, driver figure, etc are all adding weight. So, the aim is to get both my son and I in a position where we both have a car to race - at the moment the Holiday Buggy is our only RC car - we're both total newbies to this hobby. I'm planning to buy a Sand Viper kit to build for myself to race and gradually hop-up over time, plus experiment with camber angles and so on. Initially I was thinking I'll have to buy two sand vipers, however I then realised that HB and Sand Viper are based on the same chassis. A quick google search showed I can buy a Sand Viper body shell and wing online for about £10 which got me thinking - how easy is it to swap out the HB shell for the sand viper shell? I've got a few bits left on the M and D trees that look like mounting points for body shells - are these the ones that I'd use for the Sand Viper shell and wing? What else would I need to change? I'm planning to go back down to TORCH the first Sunday in October and talk to them about entry requirements for their races - I'm assuming I'll also need to change the wheels and tyres for Sand Viper wheels and whatever tyres are permitted in races? If anyone has done this, or can advise feasibility it'd be much appreciated.

Hi to all, First, let me introduce myself: As most of the members in this club RC cars were one of my biggest hobbies in my childhood, and after finding my old RC toy last year and giving it some runs I decided that I needed to get into the hobby again and some months ago I bought a Team Associated SC10b. I really liked the scale looks and it is really fun to drive, but as it was a RTR car I always had the feeling that something was missing, and it was the pleasure to build the car myself. I then directly pointed to Tamiya because of their scale look and "easy to build" kits. I felt completely in love with the Rough Rider, but its high price and not so good specs (compared to modern kits), made me rethink it and I decided that the re-released Holiday Buggy would do the job better for a lower price, but when I started looking for parts, I saw that the Sand Viper kit already comes with full ball bearings, ball differential and other extras, so my idea is to buy a Sand Viper kit and then add the Holiday Buggy body. As this will be my first kit, there is a lot of basic information that I need to know: As far as I know, Tamiya kits come with and esc and a motor, but I have to add a servo and a radio. As I plan to run my car at the beach I would like to buy a waterproof servo, but I need to know which ones fit the DT-02 chasis and if an additional servo saver not included in the kit is needed. So, could somebody recomend me a servo? I also noticed that many people in these forums recomend a low voltage alarm to use the provided esc with lipos as that esc thas not have a low voltage cut-off. Could you tell me where to fet one of these? Then, I will need to know which parts are needed to mount the Holiday Buggy body on the chasis: In some fotos, I see that some body mounts are put on the shock towers, but I don't know the part numbers. And last, I know that the Rough Rider has a plastic cover to protect the motor from water, do you knwo if this would also work wit a dirt tuned or sport tuned motor in the DT-02? When I receive answer to my questions, I will order the kit and the parts, and I will edit this post to document it with the building/conversion process. Thanks in advance for your answers.

Let's face it: The Lexan bodies for the DT-02 chassis may be pretty tough and durable to resist hard running and lots of rollovers. But are they pretty enough to let the heads of bypassing people turn? Not in every case, I think. So it was time to give my trusty Sand Viper a new body. Inspired by mr.retreader's great looking Mad Bear Viper build, I've just started to convert the DT-02 Sand Viper into a Bear Hawk! Or at least some sort of. First thing to do was to get a Mad Fighter body. These are cheap enough even today, and you don't need to get the seperate rear wing and (ugly) decals. Of course you can also go the other way and get a more rare and expensive Bear Hawk bodyset (not sure if the mount holes will line up). They still do turn up every now and then at that famous auction site. Surprisingly, the Mad Fighter body sits pretty well on the DT-02 chassis. The front mount is part M5, the back mount part M1. Do you know any DT-02 based car that uses this part by default? I don't know of any. Luckily, Tamiya has provided M1 ever since on the M-parts tree. Good job! M1 has to be mounted with a spacer. I've used some leftover plastic bushings from the TT-01 steering linkage, but anything similar will do the job too. To save the body from leaning on the gearbox, add some thin foam tape to the rear body mount and the gearbox. I may paint up the body similar to the above mentioned "Mad Bear Viper" in Bear Hawk blue. A driver figure is a must, and the side panels seem to be a nice touch. Red alloy oil dampers from REELY may give it the finishing touch to imitate the original Bear Hawk's red friction dampers.

Hello all, I am currently investigating a handful of new cars for off-road buggy racing that are TRF or could be upgraded to TRF. So far I am looking at the Sand Viper, Dark Impact or Zahhak. Now the sand viper and dark impact are not the TRF versions N.I.B, I would be purchasing the hope-ups seperately. The Zahhak appears to be still available in the N.I.B version as the TRF 201. Price varies from my Ebay research as follows. Sand Viper with seperately purchased TRF upgrades = $520.00. Dark Impact with seperately purchased TRF upgrades = $600.00 and the Zahhak bought as the TRF201 (comes with all upgrades) = $470.00. My pricing includes the radio (futaba), motor (superstock BZ) and ESC (Tamiya 104), bearings and a 15T steel pinion. Now I am still in love with my vintage cars and have upgraded them to the max (hornet and super hornet), however I am looking for a challenge that will be fun to build (moving into the next level of complexity), maintain and provide much more speed and if anything goes wrong I can still get parts. I do not want to upgrade my classic cars as they can be unforging if something breaks (parts hard to find and break easy if to much power). I have been leaning towards the Viper, however if the TRF201 is a better performer than I will head in that direction. Dark Impact was a consideration as it would be my first 4wd. Please let me know if the electrics specs are correct for interdimentional travel (greater speed). I don't really want to go brushless as the price can be let down. Let the debate begin. I love the comments and insight from members. Passion and honesty is a bonus from tamiya lovers. Regards Jeffro