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TamTech Lambo GT-01

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4 hours ago, Golden said:

To your question - and if it helps - I ordered these from modelsport in the uk - plus a tamiya standard to tamiya small battery adaptor - and it fits perfectly (I should also swap the actual connector over for a neater fit):

https://www.modelsport.co.uk/product/overlander-nimh-battery-pack-2-3-af-1600mah-7.2v-mini-tamiya-384284
 

Now. Importantly. What colour are you going to go for???!!!!

Pics of mine to follow - and while I can see a bit of it from your pics -  I’d be hugely grateful for a bit of favour…

I’ve got the manuals for the gto and porsche but there wasn‘t one included in my countache kit. Is there any way you could send me some pics of it - I’m pretty sure the chassis is the same (although it would be nice to know for sure!) but I’m not sure how the body set mounts - and it’d be good to check if  I do actually have all of the parts!) I can't find this manual on line or for sale anywhere - so would be hugely grateful for some pictures. Happy to send you my phone no. by pm if easier for whatsapp etc.

Thanks for the help/support!

1. They aren't local(US), but Amain has a similar one.  I was going back & forth on what to do, but I am going to go stay with NiMH, and avoid trying to fit a lithium system again.

2. I've got some parts coming, and if they fit I will discuss color soon. :) 

3. No problem, I can start taking pics of it and pit it together.  Tamiyabase.com often has the manuals, but not this one.  Has anyone submitted something to them before?  Might as well put it on the web.

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On to the Body!  Tamiya went through a fair effort to not have posts & clips visible on these models, so after painting it looks like almost another build.

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Well, when I received the kit and opened it, the lexan seemed to have popped out a bit near the front wheel well.  I popped it back to normal and promptly forgot about it. As I trimmed the body the pop/bump showed up again. :(  It looks like it is in a spot where there will be a bracket to pull the body in and hold it, so hopefully it will be a non-issue once assembled.  With the deep draw between the wheel wells, the lexan gets really thin.  I was using an Xacto knife for some of the cutting and was able to cut right along this part without effort.  It was very easy to make a mistake there though, so the edge isn't quite straight. :(   The lexan gets thin under the taillights too; I'll have to see how the tail light buckets line up.

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The body is trimmed and masking started.

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I want to know what colour you’re going for!!!!!!

Let me know if you get stuck on the battery front - happy to help send it over (a friend of mine travels between the US and the UK a lot, and acts as an RC parts mule for me…). 

And do let me know when you’ve managed to post the manual. I’d be seriously grateful for it. 
 

And as a final point - does your user name indicate you’re into Subarus…?(!)

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22 hours ago, Golden said:

I want to know what colour you’re going for!!!!!!

And as a final point - does your user name indicate you’re into Subarus…?(!)

I'm going to paint it black... and white. :D

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/71HMVjNcEUL._SL1500_.jpg

we'll see if that link works...

Yeah I bought a WRX back when they first came to the US in 2001 as a 2002 model year.  Lightly modified, I drove it for ~6 years before getting a Mustang (I worked at Ford at the time...)

The internet being young then, that was my name on the Subaru forums, and I kept it for any other forums I went to.  Still hang out with several people I met because of that WRX.  Eventually other things happened, marriage, kid, and I haven't secured the funding to get back into a fun car.  I mean technically I drive my mother-in-laws Forrester (like I stole it...) but that might not count. :D

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While painting this week, I also got my battery!  Proper 2/3A size 6 cell NiMH, lined up side by side 6 in a row, because these batteries aren't square.  Two sticks of 3 would be too wide for the battery tray.  And this one... ARGH. :( DOESN'T FIT.  Literally by a millimeter or two! *SIGH* I knew I would have to attach a new plug to it anyway; The plug is for a little Losi buggy. I stripped off the heatshrink to see what could be done...

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If I run the wire *above* the cells, not beside them, it fits.  Barely.  I think if I had put in the silver tape back in the first steps, it might not fit.  I think Tamiya went a *little* too tight on this battery tray.  a millimeter here and there would have made things a LOT easier.  Looking at the individual cells, some are slightly off from the next, by *maybe* a millimeter total, but glued together so I can't really adjust it. That contributed slightly to the extra width of this thing.

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With some twisted wires and some solder to be sure, I re-wired it for a standard Tamiya connector.  The esc uses a standard Tamiya connector as does my charger.  I also have a bunch of xt60 plugs; I might convert all of this to xt60 at some point.

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The body is painted!  In the last 'warm' days here (barely hit 60F / 16C). Here it is drying. The black had a couple spots go through my masking for the white, but a little nail polish cleaner, microfiber cloth, and well, fingernails and it cleaned up.  You may have surmised the color from the previous post.  I am waiting for some stickers to arrive still.  Since I didn't go with the red, I'll have to paint several sprue parts black.

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I couldn't find any classic style police lights for 1/12, so I had to trim down a part from ebay.  The led setup has electronic bits in the area I trimmed, so I can't easily adapt the flashers to the new part.  I originally had some sockethead screws holding it together, but grabbed some countersunk screws so that I could use double sided tape to hold it down and not worry about scratching the roof. starting the transition to countersunk below.

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Excuse me, do you know how fast you were going? :D

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Interesting thing here, the black sprue is from an earlier lambo kit.  Instructions use the driver and dash from it, but nothing else.  It has a set of older style mirrors on it if you  want to figure out how to mount those. I want to use the wiper instead of the sticker for a wiper that this kit uses.

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A question for you painters out there.  I have several pieces I need to paint black to match the body.  It looks like TS-13 (Edit:TS-14 black) is the way to go.  to get a finish similar to the lexan, do I need to worry about a clearcoat or anything?  The instructions don't mention any clearcoat, but do you out there do it anyway?

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I’ve used PS paint for the colour match and then ts clear over the top for the shine… so on one of the Subaru Impreza cars I've done, I used ps16 in the shell and also on the spoiler - leaving the spoiler the correct colour match, but very matt. A couple of ts clear coats on top, and it looks perfect. 

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Do you s’pose one of the Traxxas LaTrax battery packs would fit?  I can measure one up for you tomorrow if need be.  It’s been awhile since I had my paws on a GT-01 and I’ve long since forgot it’s dimensions…

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My NiMH is working; I gave it a run last night and everything is working, so I'm not going to mess with that part. :) :D

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Nearing the finish line!

The front attachment is held to the body with some screws through the front license plate bracket, and some sticky tape.  Those posts slide onto holes on the chassis,stop at the clips shown, and clips below the hole hold it in place.  The front fog lights have LED holding brackets on them.

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The rear tail light buckets have wire holders for three lights.  The rear attachment is actually a hook system, so you only clip the front.

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PRE-THREAD EVERY HOLE FOR THE BODY PARTS!!  The holes in the chassis haven't been too bad, so for the side brackets that pull the lower trim of the body tight I just tried to screw in the supplied flat screws.  Bad idea. :(  These hole seemed extra tight, and I somewhat stripped the head on the first one.  I was at least able to remove it and instead of the + head screws I replaced them with black hex head button screws.  M2.6 screws are fairly rare out there.  I picked up a bunch of random hex head sizes at hobbyking.com.

on a side note, looking closely at my battery shows the variability that made it slightly too wide.

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7 hours ago, Golden said:

Wow - that’s amazing!!!!

I’m doing mine in red. 
 

I hate myself. 

Don't hate yourself.  I was very tempted with the red, but I started seeing all the trim lines, and masking to do the vents... The are are stickers for the vents, but they look like a pain in the butt.  Black paint hides a lot of issues.

I'm specifically showing the side with fewer black paint bleeds into the white.  In hindsight, maybe I should have done the whole thing black and tried to make/print out white door/roof stickers on a cricut machine.  It would have taken longer, but no paint bleeds.  The stickers are a pain in the butt all around, to be honest...

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MODIFICATIONS!!!

Yeah - stock, this thing is bouncy!  TamTech CVAs are not for sale anywhere, so improvisation was needed.  I tried some cheap generic Amazon/eBay shocks that were the right length, but they wouldn't install right, with the odd angle the front laydown shock does. I tried just getting some friction into the shocks.  I had some expandable sleeving available that was the right size, so I slipped htat over the springs to provide at least *some* friction/damping.  It worked a bit.  When I dropped the rear end I got one bounce back in the air instead of three when stock.

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I ran some Postal Racing like this and it was mostly controllable.  Occasionally on the sharp turns I would end up fishtailing, and this is still on the stock, slow motor.

The front suspension geometry for the Countach is a little odd too.  the way it is angled up means any little bump during a turn and you bottom out the front suspension.  The steering arm is a lot longer than the suspension arms, so there is a lot of bump steer.  I used the uprights & steering knuckle from the GB-01 to clean this up a bit.  The steering arm got a fair bit shorter, similar in length to the suspension arms, and the bumpsteer is gone.  The arms sit nearly flat now and bumps don't cause the suspension to bottom out in a turn.

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While the expandable sleeve added some friction damping, the car was still bouncy.  After a lot of digging through threads I found one where @No Slack had used some dampers from a Latrax buggy on his GB-01.  I picked up two pairs of #7660 and got to work!  They are oil-filled dampers that come assembled, but you have to add the supplied oil.  It is listed as 20wt, with is 200cst according to their website.  pretty light oil, but the shock were fairly heavily damped.  I might have to drill a hole or two to soften them up a a bit, but I'll drive them first.

They come with ball mounts that are 2.5mm thread instead of the 2.6mm that Tamiya uses.  They thread on a little easily, but seem to hold well.  The balls are 4.2mm diameter, while the Tamiya balls are 3.8mm.  just enough that the shocks don't 'snap' onto the Tamiya balls, so you need to use the supplied pieces.  The fronts are straight forward, just add oil.  The rears need an internal spacer because the GT-01 uses the shock for ride height control.  I used the spacer from the stock parts and the Latrax shock was just 1-2mm shorter.  I moved up to the next mounting hole on the arm and the ride height was virtually identical.

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On the fronts, one end uses a fairly long ball stud, so I couldn't replace that one with the Latrax part.  The shock didn't snap onto the ball at all, so I added some thick plastic from a parts bag to take up the slack.  You can kind of see a bit of it behind the top of the shock in the picture above.

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All four shocks used up half a container of fluid, so I have plenty left over.  dropping the rear end now I get NO bounce.  I'll drive it for a bit and decide if I need to drill a hole in the damper piston to soften them up.

I'm using the stock wheels/tires for now, but the tires are very hard to find, so I have some M-chassis wheels/tires coming so I can save the Lamborghini wheels and original tires for display.

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Does anyone know if the ball diff is adjustable at all?  My instructions don't mention it so I suspect not. :(

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Updates!

1. I tried to adjust my pre-assembled ball diff, and being pre-assembled for ~14 years in the box means the plastic was strained and it immediately broke.  Replacement parts or the metal upgrades are virtually impossible to find.  The only real option I could find is the gear diff from the GB-01S.  Below is the ball diff, the GB-01S gear diff, and the SW-01 diff.  obviously the SW-01 diff is too big, but in pictures online it looks exactly like the smaller version. Correct part number is 51685, pretty much only available in Japan as far as I have found.  It uses an 2x18mm shaft down the middle to hold everything together, but who knows if it is really needed.  What *IS* needed is some friction/resistance so it isn't a completely open diff.  Instead of the 2mm shaft, I actually used a piece of typical plastic coated wire.  It happened to be a little bigger than 2mm so it fit tightly down the middle and provided some friction :D I even used a little bit of Elmers wood glue on the shaft to fill it out :lol:. I never actually let it dry solid; I would turn it every minute or so.  The end result has been a stiffer diff.  I've run ~10 packs through while chasing Postal racing glory and it is still similar to the original condition.  I need to open it up and take a look at it to see how it is holding up.

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2. Dampers - I have been using the LaTrax dampers without issue.  Or rather, after drilling 4 holes in each piston (0.8mm each I think?) There haven't been any issues.  These are extremely stiff to start, with 200 cst oil in them.  That is the lightest oil I have so more holes was the next option.  Even now they are on the stiff side in my opinion, but they are working well.  I still get no bounce from the rear on a drop.  Here are some better pics of the plastic on the tamiya ball studs that I use to take up the slack so they don't pop off.  It is just some plastic cut from upgrade packaging...

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3. Sport Tuned!  I noticed on some Postal racing circuits, when the battery was low I could basically run most of the course with the throttle full open on the stock motor; I wasn't pushing the car very much.  I needed an upgrade!  In addition to the Sport Tuned, I stepped down from the 16tooth pinion to 14tooth. Even then, with the sport tuned I have my throttle turned down to ~70%.  Donuts for this cop are readily available. :lol:

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4. Tires - The original slicks that come in the box are not for sale anymore, so I want to save them on the original wheels.  I got some M-chassis wheels and tires.  I didn't know there were two sizes,  60D(diameter) & 55D.  The 60D scrape the body and don't fit.  The 55, however, *barely* do!  I put some camber on both front & rear tires, and I think technically at full compression they might scrape a bit, but so far it hasn't shown up in running.  I will have to get some pics of this. :)

5. Springs! - lastly I acquired the TamTech Setting Spring Set (Short) for some tuning options, since the springs for these are completely different size from CVA springs.  I currently run Latrax springs front, Stock spring rear and it is good enough.  The springs from the Latrax shocks fit nicely between the stock springs and the hard tuning springs.  Here are the rough spring rates:

Tamtech Tuning Black		160g/cm
Stock GT-01 Silver		220g/cm
LaTrax Black			320g/cm
TamTech Tuning Silver		400g/cm

 

That is about it...

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