OEM+ Hotshot build

[slydar 241]

 

Today is the day.

I've had this kit for about 4 months or so. It will be a box art runner, and with concessions to that, I'm going to make some upgrades.
 

• Tamiya Large dish wheels, in white, fitting of the OEM+ theme. There are lots of Hotshots running these wheels, and I think they look great.
• Some Venom tyres from my LHS. I think these are just a nice balance of looks and performance, but car will be run on grass/sandy topsoil, so they should work well as they have some fairly deep cylindrical spikes.
• Alu' hex's in red to suit the modern wheels
• YR cvd's for front and rear, these are the newer more durable type with the clip retaining the cross pin instead of a grub screw, which I've had a lot of failures with.
• Bearings with colour matched red seals.
• Lipo alarm and male deans plug to reclaim, which I'll use with some old LiPo stick packs I already have.
• My kit came with a TBLE-04S, which I am now thinking makes the alarm redundant, as these already have a cut off. It is designed for LiFe batteries though, but discharging an extra 0.1v's is safe enough for me.
• Tamiya Super Stock BZ brushed motor. Perfect speed and aesthetic for the Hotshot IMHO. the motor is such a feature of the Hotshot being fully exposed, so for my money it has to be brushed, this is the highest performance of the newer Super Stock series as far as I remember and the red end bell is a bonus.
• Some nice "brushless style" gold bullet motor connectors, as hard wiring the motor isn't really an option, and although I love Tamiya's quirks, I can't get down with their motor connectors anymore..  
• A cheapy Surpass Hobbies servo, I run their motors in some of my race cars, and they seem pretty good. 

I will fiddle around with some travel limiters (o-rings in the dampers), to get the stance right, and maybe up the spring rates a little? Will skin the bottom of it with "Stone Guard" tape to keep it nice too, but that's about it.

I've just moved to 1.2 acre property, so I also have plans to make a nice little track with a couple of modest obstacles suited to this sort of car

A few build photos to come!

 

[toyolien 4660]

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[Zealot 397]

I was only just thinking I need a Hotshot or Super Hotshot.

[slydar 241]

Day 1. This is actually the first Re-Re I have ever built. The Hotshot is such an icon, although my memory is hazing, my first experience of RC was a little "demo" race inside the courtyard of our library in the mid eighties. While I can't clearly remember which of the early Tamiya cars where there that day, some of it's family members definitely were, so I thought I'd start at the beginning. 

 

 

So here we go. Rear gearbox going together. I found the thrust bearing an interesting inclusion . Everything is as per kit, but I used AW grease on the diff' gears, to slow them down and help with traction.
I Grabbed an "M06" Bearing kit off the shelf at my LHS, because I needed bearings, and because they have red seals to match the plastics and "box art" theme. This gave me almost all the 850's (lucky because they hadn't crossed my mind) and all but 2 or 4 of the 1150's. The kit does come with some metal shielded 1150 bearings, so I used those inside the gearbox where they're safe from dirt, and 2 spare PLAIG 1150's with blue seals in the outside main shaft position as that's probably the least visible. 

 

Together. Surprisingly, a little more complicated/tricky than say a DF01

 

 

 

Next step calls for the motor to be installed. But I decided not to. I did a little dummy fit of the ESC and the wire length seems sufficient wire the motor as planned. I am going to unsolder the supplied red/black wires on the motor, cut some short pieces from the ESC wires, sort them to the motor instead, and then add connectors so I have the same wire colour from motor to esc. Will look a little neater I think and take away from the "retro-ness" less. Going to go straight to the 15t. I'm fairly sure that will run cool, and if it doe's will work my way down to 16 or 17 using some nicer hard-coated pinions.

 

 

 

 

 

Front gearbox. Same AW grease treatment for the front diff'.

 

 

 

Both gearboxes done. 

 

 

 

First mistake! I feel like at some point I knew these wouldn't work, but then forgot. I also tried Top force style Uni's and XTRA Speed CVD's. there are definitely slightly differences in CVD's/uni's from different brands, which cause some "70mm" shafts to bind even in a DF01. But none of the listed work in Hotoshot. Oh well.

 

 

Rear suspension, with incorrect fititng CVD's installed. Later removed. Alu' hex's to suit the Large Dish wheels. 

 

 

Front and rear done now, with normal dog bone shafts fitted. 

 That's it for day one. I'm home sick from work, so taking it pretty easy.

 

 

[slydar 241]

1 hour ago, Zealot said:

I was only just thinking I need a Hotshot or Super Hotshot.

I'm really enjoying the build! I think its something a bit special, to me anyway. Such an old design, with such obvious Tamiya design language. 

[slydar 241]

Day 2. Assembling the driver and the rear suspension linkage. No paint for the driver, but I will do it later when I get a chance to pick up some paint.

 

Next step is attaching the rear gearbox, and sway bar.

 

 

Front gearbox, sway bar stays, and main shaft, starting to take shape now!
 

 

Next is building the dampers. I went with AE 55wt oil, the kit oil is 600cst, 55wt comes out at a little over 700cst  Used some o-ring grease on the o-rings. Here you can see them bleeding on my home made stand.

 

 

 

Dampers installed. to me it feels over sprung, and under damped. Have planned to pay around with this is if I can, was hoping touring car springs will work but will look at that after it's finished and I give it a test run.

 

 

 

[slydar 241]

Day 3. Electrics

 

Starting with bench testing and ESC setting. Supplied ESC comes pre-set for brushed motor. Set throttle end points, Fwd + Rev running mode, verified battery cut off enabled, and verified motor type setting. Always fun the add another model to the TX! SS BZ motor seems pretty punchy!

 

 

Servo centered and set up for installation. 

 

 

Wiring done. Had planned to shorten the servo and speedy wires, but this head shrink job turned out neat enough  RX is an antenna-less knock off Sanwa jobbie, which is already synced to my transmitter, which is a bonus in this installation. Un-used 3rd "brushless" orange wire is rolled up, heat-shrunk and tucked in neatly behind the esc. 

 

 

 

 

Installed in the car, nice using a Tamiya esc as the switch works easily in the stock position. 

 

 

 

View through the electrics port of inside.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[slydar 241]

More day 3. Decided to bang out the last few steps as I'm pretty keen to give it a run!

 

 

Radio tray is installed now, so installed the motor so I can wire it up. Used bullet connectors. Haven't soldered these before. They're a little tricky, but turned out ok.

 

 

Next steps, bumper, cage, battery door, etc

 

. 

Wheels on next, ready for a test drive

 

 

 

 

[Grastens 2795]

It looks fantastic! I mean that inside and out - the heat-shrunk cables tucked away are particularly neat. I may carry out something similar with my own Hotshot...

[silvertriple 3557]

This driver needs some paint... It totally changes the car when you do...

And for the cable, definitely not an easy topic on a hotshot... 

[DeadMeat666 1675]

My OCD sense tingles every time you call that RZ motor "BZ" 

 

The Hotshot seems like a great kit to build, and I almost feel like I missed out on some of the magic by building a Super Hotshot instead. The beauty of this forum is that now I can enjoy a Hotshot build vicariously by reading this thread 

Very clean job so far!

[Kol__ 3377]

Nice build @slydar

[Grumpy pants 4451]

On 12/27/2021 at 7:04 AM, DeadMeat666 said:

My OCD sense tingles every time you call that RZ motor "BZ" 

 

The Hotshot seems like a great kit to build, and I almost feel like I missed out on some of the magic by building a Super Hotshot instead. The beauty of this forum is that now I can enjoy a Hotshot build vicariously by reading this thread 

Very clean job so far!

@slydar was just making sure you are paying attention 😉

[Grumpy pants 4451]

44 minutes ago, Kol__ said:

Nice build @slydar

Yep, what he said ⬆️

[cambragol 152]

Very nice build. I love the wiring. I was looking at that same motor, so I am interested to hear how it performs with the Hotshot.

[Tamiya1973 12]

quote: "Going to go straight to the 15t. I'm fairly sure that will run cool, and if it doe's will work my way down to 16 or 17 using some nicer hard-coated pinions."

I asked a similar question on here. I thought the motor would run cooler with the 13t. So was going to run that first with a BZ motor. Is that correct or have I missed something.

Thanks 

[slydar 241]

On 12/27/2021 at 5:04 PM, DeadMeat666 said:

My OCD sense tingles every time you call that RZ motor "BZ" 

 

The Hotshot seems like a great kit to build, and I almost feel like I missed out on some of the magic by building a Super Hotshot instead. The beauty of this forum is that now I can enjoy a Hotshot build vicariously by reading this thread 

Very clean job so far!

I don't know how/why I mixed that up. RZ, red, BZ, blue.... Gosh. Haha anyway thanks for the correction. 

[slydar 241]

On 12/31/2021 at 4:07 AM, Tamiya1973 said:

quote: "Going to go straight to the 15t. I'm fairly sure that will run cool, and if it doe's will work my way down to 16 or 17 using some nicer hard-coated pinions."

I asked a similar question on here. I thought the motor would run cooler with the 13t. So was going to run that first with a BZ motor. Is that correct or have I missed something.

Thanks 

Definitely would run cooler with 13t. But by the numbers (FDR's are listed in the manual) 15t is still a conservative ratio of around the 8.5 mark from memory.

 I've run it once. It got a tiny bit hot but was on quite thick grass so I think the gearing is fine. It's pretty much spot on like I hoped, punchy enough to be entertaining 👍

[slydar 241]

I've rough cut the body and run it once FYI. but currently laid up with Covid, so.. painting will come later in a couple of weeks when I'm up to it 🙂

[Kol__ 3377]

14 minutes ago, slydar said:

I've rough cut the body and run it once FYI. but currently laid up with Covid, so.. painting will come later in a couple of weeks when I'm up to it 🙂

Hope you're not too unwell buddy. Hang in there, wishing you a speedy recovery and then you can get back to this build!

[Tamiya1973 12]

1 hour ago, slydar said:

Definitely would run cooler with 13t. But by the numbers (FDR's are listed in the manual) 15t is still a conservative ratio of around the 8.5 mark from memory.

 I've run it once. It got a tiny bit hot but was on quite thick grass so I think the gearing is fine. It's pretty much spot on like I hoped, punchy enough to be entertaining 👍

😎