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13 minutes ago, Mokei Kagaku said:

For a company used to live off EC-subsidies and bragging about it, I reckon customer satisfaction and image aren't all that important.<_<

🤣😂

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2 hours ago, Mokei Kagaku said:

For a company used to live off EC-subsidies and bragging about it, I reckon customer satisfaction and image aren't all that important.<_<

Can you show me where they did that? I'd really be interested in seeing this...

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4 hours ago, hIghQ said:

Can you show me where they did that? I'd really be interested in seeing this...

I know it sounds too insane and shameless to be true, but they actually bragged about their EC-subsidies. It was stated in several of the catalogs a couple of years ago. I collect model catalogs, so I can probably still dig them out.

I appreciate that subsidies aren't entirely a bad thing. For instance to improve the employment rate in an area with high unemployment, but reading it in their catalog made me really angry.

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On 2/1/2022 at 8:10 AM, Raman36 said:

For the record, Tamiya beat Xray to the punch with the TA08. The TRF420X is a car to fill the void and the 420 is discontinued.  The 421 which will take the TA08 arms to the next level.  

 

People confuse Innovation with marketing. Take cell phones.. our new version has 3 camera lenses. Omg let’s dump our phones and buy the new one.  This is where Xray shines, they have done a brilliant job at marketing.  

 

A couple of questions here, and obviously you're not on the Tamiya design team or have any inside knowledge, but I know you have a lot of experience...

The TA platforms are where they try things right?  The TA07 was TRF419 suspension but crazy plastic tub and single belt.  The single belt didn't go any further, and was just dropped, although arguably the MS and MSX versions are just the single belt versions of the 419 and 420? 

So the TA08 will be trialling the new arms and if they are successful they'll end up on the TRF421?  Or do they just do things with the TA cars that never carry over? (like the hybrid belt/gearbox from TA06, single belt from TA07 etc?)

So you think a TRF421 is likely, which is probably more of a carbon version of the TA08?

I think your second point (that I haven't deleted from your original comment) hits the nail on the head.  The arguments about the TRF420X being outdated stem from the fact they haven't done what everyone else has done, and not just copied the other cars.  Which is kind of ironic when the complaint about lack of innovation really means they haven't copied the others...

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I’m no expert, I think Qatmix and Mokei have much more insight than I do. 
 

You’re Pretty much spot on. They experiment with the TA cars, then apply to TB car and a TRF cars are last.. they play safe with them. Sometimes those experiments are disastrous = TA06.

Prior to the release of TA07, there was much rumour about single belts. The 419 however was already out at this point. So the 420 would have adopted it, but they played safe and updated the weakness from 419.

The trend at this point however shifted to upper and lower arms, by Awesomatix, Schumacher and Mugen.. and no more C hubs, if I could have $10 for each one I broke… 

So came about the TC01 and TA08. Inevitably these types of arms will end up on TRF cars. My hope is that they will be carbon like the Schumi, and not simply a harder version of the TA08. Most likely it will be the latter. 

When the 420 inventory dried up, I thought they would go straight to the 421… but they played safe again. 

There are plenty of cars out there that haven’t made the change to these arms.. Yokomo for one. 

When the 08 came out, I as super excited, as it was so simple in design.  It’s been one of the easiest cars to drive. So much that my 8 year old placed 4th at Toys4tots in field of 11 middle aged men! Lol. 
 

The Tamiya bashers on RCtech were not so kind to the 08 though.. my favourite was, they raised the roll Center with the v chassis.. OMG the car is going to sprout wings and become a missile. 

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3 hours ago, Raman36 said:

I’m no expert, I think Qatmix and Mokei have much more insight than I do. 
 

You’re Pretty much spot on. They experiment with the TA cars, then apply to TB car and a TRF cars are last.. they play safe with them. Sometimes those experiments are disastrous = TA06.

Prior to the release of TA07, there was much rumour about single belts. The 419 however was already out at this point. So the 420 would have adopted it, but they played safe and updated the weakness from 419.

The trend at this point however shifted to upper and lower arms, by Awesomatix, Schumacher and Mugen.. and no more C hubs, if I could have $10 for each one I broke… 

So came about the TC01 and TA08. Inevitably these types of arms will end up on TRF cars. My hope is that they will be carbon like the Schumi, and not simply a harder version of the TA08. Most likely it will be the latter. 

When the 420 inventory dried up, I thought they would go straight to the 421… but they played safe again. 

There are plenty of cars out there that haven’t made the change to these arms.. Yokomo for one. 

When the 08 came out, I as super excited, as it was so simple in design.  It’s been one of the easiest cars to drive. So much that my 8 year old placed 4th at Toys4tots in field of 11 middle aged men! Lol. 
 

The Tamiya bashers on RCtech were not so kind to the 08 though.. my favourite was, they raised the roll Center with the v chassis.. OMG the car is going to sprout wings and become a missile. 

Thanks for the insight.

Surely they can still break something if there are no c hubs to break? Like uprights? I have broken a couple of c hubs on the TA07 and its a quick change trackside of a very cheap part so its not a major.

I probably need to look into those arms more. I like the simplicity of the current arrangement but then its what i'm used to, the others may be a big improvement. I get the feeling though that they must be approaching the limits of what a 10th scale car can do with just the tiny contact patch of the tyres to hold it to the track. 

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13 hours ago, Mokei Kagaku said:

I know it sounds too insane and shameless to be true, but they actually bragged about their EC-subsidies. It was stated in several of the catalogs a couple of years ago. I collect model catalogs, so I can probably still dig them out.

I appreciate that subsidies aren't entirely a bad thing. For instance to improve the employment rate in an area with high unemployment, but reading it in their catalog made me really angry.

I'd go even further, when you own / plan a business and you actually do qualify for some form of EU subsidies, you'd be stupid not to apply for or accept these. And if your business idea, etc, is good enough and you bring employment to a less well developed region (Slovakia is not the wealthiest country in Europe) so that you actually qualify, I would also not hide the fact that the EU sees my company as "good enough" for their programs as well. Perhaps even brag about it, yes. Depends on how exactly it was presented / worded. There's enough people skeptical about anything concerning the EU (see for the example the UK and the lies of Brexiteers like Mr. Nigel Farrage Mr. Boris Johnson), or like in America, people skeptical of anything the government does with taxes, except (over-)funding the military (i.e. Republicans), who have a biased, negative attitude towards the EU, subsidies, or both. Personally, I have never met either Juraj or Martin Hudy, so I cannot really comment on them as people, but I do not really like Xray (or Hudy) as a companies all that much. However, I do like (and have had good experiences with) both companies' products (except for the - sometimes insane - prices.

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14 hours ago, Jonathon Gillham said:

 

I think your second point (that I haven't deleted from your original comment) hits the nail on the head.  The arguments about the TRF420X being outdated stem from the fact they haven't done what everyone else has done, and not just copied the other cars.  Which is kind of ironic when the complaint about lack of innovation really means they haven't copied the others...

I thought exactly this, Innovation takes many forms and most likely zags when other zig. The TD chassis is a good example of this imo, its pretty innovative these days to have a 2wd and 4wd buggies share a considerable amount of the same chassis and geometry is it not? especially given how pretty much all current 1/10 buggies are (mostly) the same design with aesthetic differences.

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There's nothing wrong with EU subsidies for Xray IMO - though we are getting wildly off topic :-)

How else could you profitably setup an RC manufacturer in Europe and compete with the far east? As I understand it that money mainly went into procuring CNC machines and building the factory.

Before that point Xray made some specialist tools, some very niche parts for other RC cars, and most of their products were for slot car racing - those funds let them go from being a very small business to quite a large company making a high quality product in volume, I think they managed to make some bits for Corally and maybe others too - presumably they employed a load of people along the way. I can't think of a better way to spend EU money TBH!

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so looks like the rrp for this kit is going to be around the £750 mark in the uk. if that's correct its staggering considering it looks around 2 years behind most of the other top manufacturers. 

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11 hours ago, Jonathon Gillham said:

Thanks for the insight.

Surely they can still break something if there are no c hubs to break? Like uprights? I have broken a couple of c hubs on the TA07 and its a quick change trackside of a very cheap part so its not a major.

I probably need to look into those arms more. I like the simplicity of the current arrangement but then its what i'm used to, the others may be a big improvement. I get the feeling though that they must be approaching the limits of what a 10th scale car can do with just the tiny contact patch of the tyres to hold it to the track. 

When the TA04 came out, the C hub had a turn buckle for camber link adjustment and one diagonally attached to chassis for support. The C hubs were also thick. By the next generation, the C hub became thinner and the chassis turn buckle went away.  With this design, the C hub was just asking to break. Awesomatix with their first car had the 2 turn buckles, but did away with the C hub, so that the diagonal turn buckle could adjust castor. This resulted in a much sturdier set up. 

Most of the time when I broken a C hub, the bottom screw on steering upright stripped as well, or broke it and I lost the flange tube. Searching for it on black carpet was always fun. So I stock med up with a few spare packs 🤦🏻
 

With the TA08 arms, I have stripped the steering up right on bottom screw, but that’s it. If Tamiya made it out of aluminium however, it would probably resolve this issue. Although the impact would probably disperse to some other part 😉

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1 hour ago, Finnsllc said:

$900 ?? WOW

Yeah I've seen some crazy prices for it. I asked at a local shop and he said about NZD900 which is much better. 

I was looking at the TRF420 last year and it was about NZD850 from the Hong Kong shops too, including delivery. That was both RCMart and Asiatees

I'm still interested, but only if the price is around that NZD800 - NZD900 mark

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They’re pricing themselves out of the market. You can pick up an X-ray X4 for less. 

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Read some reviews of this car.. overall they’re very positive. Pricing has it at RCMart  $670.. which is decent. US pricing doesn’t look promising, there aren’t enough coupons at tower to make it reasonable 😂

The best bet would be a Japanese website as the dollar is really strong against the yen but unfortunately Banzai is a bust and PlazaJapan doesn’t take special orders 

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3 hours ago, Raman36 said:

Read some reviews of this car.. overall they’re very positive. Pricing has it at RCMart  $670.. which is decent. US pricing doesn’t look promising, there aren’t enough coupons at tower to make it reasonable 😂

The best bet would be a Japanese website as the dollar is really strong against the yen but unfortunately Banzai is a bust and PlazaJapan doesn’t take special orders 

Its still quite a jump over the TRF420 which was around USD500. I assume its do with the way things are globally and most new releases will be higher than the previous model rather than just Tamiya hiking prices 30%. Hopefully the local guy comes back with that NZD900 still...

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Maybe slightly off topic but,

IMO I feel that the whole "haters gonna hate" thing came about because of the people calling Tamiya kits (mostly the TT02/TT01 kits) "Toy Grade".

I know there is a bunch of shiny plastic and such, but how many "Toy Grade" kits require assembly? In the US I think of "Toy Grade" when I go to Walmart and see those Nikko RC cars and stuff like that, which require no assembly whatsoever.

Granted there are assembled RC's from multiple manufacturers, those really can't be considered "Toy Grade" either, as there are replaceable parts.

Not really sure where the whole "Toy Grade" misnomer came from but, People sure do have a lot of fun racing these "Toy Grade" cars in championships. (Sarcasm).

For the record I really don't have experience with Tamiya kits outside the TT02. But if I were to speculate on the 420, I'd assume Tamiya is just building on top of what already works, and is letting competitors do the innovation that Tamiya may or may not adopt. That could explain Tamiya being behind the curve. Waiting to see how the competitors innovations track in the real world.

-RC Perspective

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12 hours ago, Jonathon Gillham said:

Its still quite a jump over the TRF420 which was around USD500. I assume its do with the way things are globally and most new releases will be higher than the previous model rather than just Tamiya hiking prices 30%. Hopefully the local guy comes back with that NZD900 still...

Agree. Even the cost of extra chassis doesn’t justify the increase. 

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6 hours ago, RC Perspective said:

Maybe slightly off topic but,

IMO I feel that the whole "haters gonna hate" thing came about because of the people calling Tamiya kits (mostly the TT02/TT01 kits) "Toy Grade".

I know there is a bunch of shiny plastic and such, but how many "Toy Grade" kits require assembly? In the US I think of "Toy Grade" when I go to Walmart and see those Nikko RC cars and stuff like that, which require no assembly whatsoever.

Granted there are assembled RC's from multiple manufacturers, those really can't be considered "Toy Grade" either, as there are replaceable parts.

Not really sure where the whole "Toy Grade" misnomer came from but, People sure do have a lot of fun racing these "Toy Grade" cars in championships. (Sarcasm).

For the record I really don't have experience with Tamiya kits outside the TT02. But if I were to speculate on the 420, I'd assume Tamiya is just building on top of what already works, and is letting competitors do the innovation that Tamiya may or may not adopt. That could explain Tamiya being behind the curve. Waiting to see how the competitors innovations track in the real world.

-RC Perspective

They view it through lens of other brands, where they make cheap graphite chassis made in China. 
 

Tamiya is a plastic model company, so they always want to push the envelope on creating a plastic tub chassis.  
 

The TT02 is a great chassis. It’s fun for running in front of your house and good for spec club races. I’m currently trying to make the TCS GT ProSpec class a regular fixture at my track. Another inexpensive class to run versus EuroTruck

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Just checking back in here to see how things panned out price wise - top hit on googlem for a UK seller:

- TRF420X = £667

- TRF420 = £565

- Xray X4 = £619

- Yokomo = £599 or £589 for CF chassis

- Schumacher MI8 = £519

 

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Yeah the TRF420X is mental expensive. I know it comes with both chassis, but I'd prefer they offer 2 versions and shave a lot off the price. If the price was similar to the TRF420 then I'd likely have ordered one by now (although have been to 2 onroad meets this year...) especially since seeing all the reviews. By all accounts its very capable and would suit the low grip tracl i run on.

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Makes me feel old those prices. I remember my TA05R I bought at full retail price of £159.99 when it was first released, was very competitive at my local track and handled so neutral. 😳🙄

I remember before my TA05R my older Yokomo MR4SD SSG Special I bought for £80 locally and it was like brand new with enough spares to build almost another 2 cars.

If I was going down the racing route again I would personally consider a looked after 2nd hand car/package. And spend the rest on beer 🍻 😂😂👍

James.

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