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What's this? Another Back to the Track thread? Yes - I periodically start these whenever I get the urge to go racing again. 2024 was perhaps my best year of racing ever, completing all rounds of the Iconic Cup for the first time. It was hard work - 6 weekends away from home plus the bonus non-championship round at Cotswold. But there was a moment when I was sitting on the tarmac, watching the end-of-season trophy presentation, the sun on my back, the tyre dust on my face, additive on my fingers and the smell of the previous night's barbecue smoke in my clothes, when I reflected back over the miles driven, the time on track, the battles, the passes, the crashes, the breakages, and I was temporarily overwhelmed with emotion. What an adventure. What a journey. I was certain, as I set off on the 4+ hour journey home from Halifax with the entire season behind me, that I would be back again in 2025. 2025, however, brought fresh challenges. Not least, the Iconic Cup's schedule was punishing - it would have been hard to cover my fuel costs for the first 3 rounds. Losing Mendip Raceway meant there was no home race for me. Sealing the deal was the fact that the entire series got fully booked out within a few hours of opening, while I was busy racing at the Modelsport 50th at the beginning of February. But - all is not lost for 2025's racing plan. A new race series - the BRCA Sporstcar Endurance Championship - pits teams of 4 drivers against each other, driving modern touring chassis with Le Mans Hypercar bodies and 21.5T brushless motors, in races ranging from 2 to 6 hours in length. This is something I've wanted to do for years. Sadly I missed out on Mendip's endurance race last September by dint of Facebook's wonderful algorithm deciding I didn't need to know about it until it was too late to get a team together. The only endurance I've ever driven was a 2-hour buggy race on A1 Racing Club's astroturf track. It was dark by the time we started, it rained throughout the race, and our re-release Sand Scorcher suffered a number of problems - not least the universals coming lose every 5 laps - but we finished top of our class by being the only SRB entry to finish. The ciders we sipped after the race had ended were some of the best we've ever tasted. Almost a decade later, a racer who I know from a local club but haven't seen in years, posted on Facebook saying he was entering his TRF-421 in the Sportscar Endurance series and was looking for drivers. I jumped in straight away, offering my services and - I hope - accurately and honestly describing my abilities as someone who is definitely not quick, nor skilled at car setup, but careful, dependable, and doesn't crash much. At least - that's how I was in M-chassis in 2024. My relatively high place in the Iconic Cup championship didn't come because I was topping the timesheets (far from it) but because I was consistent, stayed on track, picked up points in every race and was always there on track while others were spinning off it or haemorrhaging parts. However, this was only in the M-chassis class. I haven't driven a 4wd touring car in anger since the TA-05 IFS was a current car. I had a brief stint racing a stock TT-01E with a Fat Fox body at my local club, but that was a few years ago now. 2019, by all accounts, and I wasn't very good at it. So - I figured my best chance of not embarrassing myself and my team mates at the first race of the season was to get myself something modern and head along to the local club to get my eye in. If I can handle a modern touring car around a tight and technical club track with a 17.5T brushless in it, a 21.5T car on a nice big outdoor circuit should be easy by comparison. Modern TCs are seriously expensive - way out of my budget - but with the new Schumacher Mi-9 on the market and Christmas just over, there were a few Mi-8s for sale in the Book of Face. A week later, this landed on my doorstep.

Over the holidays I built up my BT-01 Supra in the Front Motor Rear Wheel Drive config. I neglected to take any WIP photos, but it was a pretty simple build thanks to Tamiya's great instructions. The body stickers have two sets for the early and late type of the supra JZA80, with very different looking headlights. I went with PS-22, racing green, backed in PS-12 silver. I am very satisfied with the paint job but you gotta take your time with the front bumper area and go with thin coats. It's a bit difficult to get in all those nooks and crannies. I use some vinyl around the body post holes to prevent scratches. One of the major upgrades I did for this chassis is swapping to all hex machine screw hardware. It took >60 m3*10mm screws and a handful of m3*8mm and m3*12mm screws. I used a cutting tap from my LHS. Tapping all the screw holes into the hard but brittle PC-ABS plastic meant I could reuse those threads again and again without issue. I want this chassis to drive for many many years. I swapped out the stock 70T spur for the TT-02 68T high speed spur. If you want to use any other spur with the BT-01 I highly recommend it, just know that you have to swap the regular button head screws in the motor mount, holding on a side bracket, for countersunk screws so the spur mount clears them. I used an xacto knife at an angle to carve out the counter sinking. Just keep checking with the screw to see if it is flush before continuing to carve. I used the MB-01 bearing set from Tamiya. They're all shielded bearings, but for an on-road car, they should be fine. I also equipped the TT-02 oil filled shock set. The friction shocks it came with are all right, but since the step screws needed for them are self tappers, they had to be swapped out. Oil shocks definitely helped in the uneven parking lot. One thing to note when using the TT-02 set is that it comes with 6 ball studs that work fine, and two balls with threaded centers and long grub screws to mount them in, which are a slightly shorter length. You'll need 1mm of shims or additional ball studs on each of those to line the shocks up perfectly. Other than that, I mounted my Dynamite 20T 540 motor I used in my DT-03 last summer, and some budget ebay tires by Acekeeps since I didn't want to wear the stock ones out. On my asphalt driveway, these tires gripped up very well. I drove on a circuit like this: {------------) \ | } | / | {_______) Just 5 waterbottles used as pylons for this track. Even with these cheapo tires, since they come with foams and are VERY soft, they grip super well. I haven't setup any laptiming for this yet, but I figured out laptrax and got that to work today, so expect to see this rig in Postal Racing this month. The BT-01 feels very well balanced. It requires very little braking to transfer enough weight onto the front tires to make sharp turns. I was able to keep it pinned at 80% through the straight only letting off to 60% for the corners. It felt really nice carving up the track. The ~60/40 weight split front to rear is very noticeable. The front end has SOOOOOO much authority once you load it up that I swear I could hear the rear end slip out a little when I was cornering really quickly. Now, for why I put this post into the racing section! I took both this BT-01 and my 3racing M4 M-TC with a Lotus Europa shell down to my local carpet track for a race day. Naturally, the high grip black carpet made for a pleasant ride. However, neither chassis fit into any class so little racing got done with them. I did fit a transponder though and had a lot of fun getting my lap times down. The BT-01 started the day feeling very floaty. It turns out the soft tires I went with were shifting side to side under the rims. I purchased a set of USGT belted tires and went back to the track. The much firmer tires made the car feel more planted on the track. The raised battery above the driveline did make it feel a bit top heavy, and it was prone to traction rolling on this high grip surface. I managed to get my laptimes down to a flat 15.0 seconds, only 0.8 secs off the 25.5T TC class. Now for the 3Racing M4, a belt-driven 4wd mini sized TC. It can be 210mm or 225mm, short and medium M-chassis sized. I had it setup in 225mm with a torque tuned motor for my Lotus Europa Special shell which garnered many glances from the crowd of competitive racers. It has a spool up front, an oil diff in the rear, and a boatload of toe in up front with the stock setup. That toe in helps with high speed cornering, letting me get down to a 15.4 second lap. I ended up staying on throttle for most of the course, only letting off very slightly. It has the motor mounted to the rear and handles kinda like an MR chassis. Settling down the rear end at low speed was a challenge, but the track was in more of a high speed layout anyway. Racing is fun, but I don't really like strict classes, especially stock motors. My local offroad track opens back up in April, so expect to see some race reports as I challenge 2wd mod with my DT-03 once again!

I bought this from a Japanese seller 20 years ago. The body set is a first gen Schnitzer M3 but the decals and exact livery are a mystery. I'm guessing it's 80s or 90s Japanese Group N or JTCC. Are the decals custom or created by a company? What does the real car look like? My english Google search didn't provide much. Maybe a Japanese language search can help. If it's not based off of a real racing car, then I'd feel better using it as a running body. Thanks for any help.

... as illustrated by my TT01E and TRF419. (Not shown: difference in price tag) Someone came up to me at the track, and asked me why I had the front body posts way up into the bumper of the TT. I told him it was so I could swap bodies between that TT and my TRF with relative ease. He looked at me as if I just lit a cup of water on fire, and stammered he never thought about a TRF and a TT having their body posts in the same location. This got me thinking. At some point I discovered that the two holes in the bumper plate of a TT must have some purpose, and a bit of experimentation showed me that it's so you can get some body posts in there and have them be in the same location as their higher-end chassis'. What I also found, is that there is hardly any information about that on the internet. So I've decided to do a little research, and write an article about body posts. Tamiya touring car body posts, to be precise. Tamiya's first proper touring car was the TA01. Isn't she pretty? This car had its body posts on the shock towers, the strongest (and highest) point of the car, but because of the angle of the front shock tower this meant that the forward posts ended up roughly slightly to the rear of the the front axle. On the rear they end up a bit behind the rear axle. I'm not sure if this was arbitrary, or if someone actually put a bit of thought behind it (knowing Tamiya, the latter), but this is where they ended up. Keep your eye out for these, as they turned out to be the de-facto standard for many TCs to come. The TA01 soon was joined by the TA02... .. which had its rear shock towers on a completely different location. But notice how Tamiya made these cool little extensions for the posts? That's so they end up in pretty much the same spot as a TA01. Probably done to maintain backwards compatibility with the older body shells (which, presumably, were already drilled/dimpled for the TA01, let alone the interior sets which had specific cutouts to cater for the rear body posts). As a TA01 and 02 don't differ much up front, the front posts stay put. At this point I presume Tamiya felt they had to keep a standard going. Because when the TL01 was released it came with hatchback-style body sets, which don't really work with the rear body post locations they'd used up until then. So they moved them forward to cater for the higher roofs and steeper rear windows, ending up roughly above the rear axle instead of aft of it. But! Tamiya had to have something to maintain backwards compatibility with the bodies they already had on the TA01 and 02. At this point I can presume they knew they couldn't easily deviate from these locations. so the TL01 came with a different set of rear body posts, meant to be installed with certain bodies, which put the rear posts on the exact location needed for those. Also note how the front body posts (to the right of the photo above) are angled so they still end up above and slightly aft of the front axle, exactly where the TA01 and 02 have them. The TA03, in all its variants (F, R, RS, FS, etc) followed the logic of the TA01/2, and came with a set bent back to suit the rearmost body holes of the older bodies... ...and a set to suit the higher-roofed TL01-style bodies. (Not the best picture, but it was all I could find. Sorry.) The TB01, TA04, TA05, TA06, and TA07 all share the same rear post location as the TL01 first introduced, right above the rear axle. But with the TA04 TRF (and related TRF404x), something else was introduced: Note where the front body posts are! They're in the front bumper, as the holes in the shock towers are used to adjust upper shock location. With the TB02 and TB03 sharing a lot of TA-blood, this carried over, and the TA05, 06 and 07 all had the body posts right above the rear axle and in the front bumper. But does that mean that Tamiya had forgotten about the rear-facing posts? Not at all. With the introduction of the TT01, you had the option to build it with the mounts at the TL01 location, but also the TA01 location! At the front of a TT01, you're to attach the front body posts at the TA01 through 03 location, right above the front axle. But! The front bumper plate of a TT01 has two extra holes, which exactly end up at the TA04 location! Pretty sure this makes the TT01 or 02 one of the most versatile chassis in terms of body post location. The TT02 actually has a slightly more elegant solution for the rear-facing posts. On the 01 they make a bit of a weird bend over the shock tower, but the 02 has these nifty spacers, and allows the posts to be mounted from both ends of the tower. But is that all? As the rear of my battered GT86 shell still has a set of holes unaccounted for, no, it's not. There's a set of weird, outboard holes. Those were first used with the TRF415: This car has its roots in racing, and with racing you want to spread the downforce acting on the rear deck as equally as possible. Hence, two body posts on the rear shock tower, but further outwards than the TA01/TL01 posts. All the TRF cars since the 415 has had their rear posts there. See the first picture above this thread, and notice how much further outwards the rear posts on the TRF (the one on the left, duh) are. Have I missed anything? I'm purposely sticking to the TCs here, and not all the buggy/truck variants (TT02B/DF02/HMMWV) as then the list would probably never end. Do let me know below.

After my heavily modified Tamiya TA05 had sat on the shelf for many years I finally got around to racing it. The Dudley winter series is indoors on carpet and is 21.5 blinky. Slick tyres. My TA05 had never turned a wheel in my hands so I had no idea what to expect or how to drive it ( I an a buggy racer ) A steep learning curve it was !

At the last ETS in Germany, Marc Reinhard announced he would part ways with Tamiya. It will be interesting to see where he's going to go next. Maybe Xray, to battle it out with fellow German Ronald Völker? Or will one of the smaller teams like Infinity snatch him up? And more to the point for us, what does the departure of 'our' front man mean for the future of TRF? Tamiya quietly pulled out of off-road racing a few years ago when they decided to stop updating their offers, and I have a feeling that this could very well mean the end of Tamiya Europe's racing ambitions. In Japan I'm sure Akio Sobue and Naoto Matsukara will continue to be a force to be reckoned with on track, but Tamiya Japan is very much a different company from Tamiya Europe and Tamiya USA. On his last race, Marc sported a classy black-and-white variant of his usual paint job. All I can say, as a fellow racer and fan of TC, is thank you Marc, and the best of luck to wherever you decide to go next. Source The RC Racer

Hi, I recently purchased a TT-02 D for club racing at my local indoor carpet track. I really enjoyed the build and taking my time painting the shell and applying the decals. However, the TT-02 has its limitations out the box. There is no adjustable front toe, front or rear camber and rear toe in without spending upwards of £80 on Yeah Racing aluminium parts and the Tamiya Steering upgrade. I sold the TT-02D on instead of throwing money at it and purchased a Schumacher Mi5 Evo used but I cannot fit my Tamiya Sport Tuned brushed motor to the motor mount because of the pinion shaft collar/bushing and the fact the two holes in the motor could not match up with the chassis motor mount holes. I tried a Etronix 21T tuned motor, which has a smaller bush/collar but still ran into problems. Its not surprising really as I guess its a full fat racer designed for Brushless and LiPo. Our club runs Brushed and NiMH because its a small track and we want it to be affordable for everyone so a Brushless setup was not accepted so I'm selling the Mi5 Evo. I'm back looking at touring cars, from Tamiya. The TA-0x and the TRF Family but I don't know if they are designed to only take Brushless motors or not? From my research from reading manuals the TA-01 through TA-05 all definitely take Brushed motors. The TA-06 and 07 show pictures of Brushless motors in the manual so I assume a brushed motor wouldn't fit? I'm fairly new to Tamiya models and on-road carpet racing so I'm struggling a bit trying to find what will take a brushed motor in the TRF Family, Possibly only the 414? Ideally id like the newest Tamiya that still supports running the Tamiya Sport tuned motor or a Brushed motor so that parts support is still available. Any helps on what chassis take brushed motors would be great. Thanks

I've recently acquired a TA03R-S in an auction, but really just wanted the body shell. Now you can have the rest. The tires are shot from sitting (splits). Price is negotiable, but please no less than $50USD. Here's a pic: and the bottom: