FF01-LA EVO

[ThunderDragonCy 7885]

This is a confluence of things that have been sloshing around in my head for a while.

First let it be said: I LOVE my FF01. Hands down my favourite on road car. But I am a designer, and I like to tinker, so think of this as a bit What If retcon of 1990s Tamiya, a little bit "how far can I take this?", a little bit love letter to the FF01. 

Enough of the words. Behold! My half finished CAD model of unproven ideas! 

I have been playing around with ideas for an improved chassis for my FF01 for a while with more battery placement options and a full length skinny top deck, hopefully for more flex and grip. 

I have also been playing around on and off with a replacement gear case design, but defeated by high price of production. We'll, I finally found a place in the UK that has dropped pricing recently on MJF prints, so I finished the design of replacement gear case. These are now almost impossible to get in decent condition, and it's very wet here so I wanted something interesting to do at the weekend. Here it is

It isn't a complete reproduction. The limited gearing and weird motor pinion access on the original could be improved in my (clearly over confident) opinion. It *should* just mount up with all the interfaces and running gear. I guess we will find out with a test print. You can see in the second pic with the pinion cover transparent that there is a 33t pinion on the 71t spur in there. Currently biggest pinion is 27t. Fingers crossed this works. If it does I will do a group buy thing for you FF01 fan's out there. 

Finally, the other thing I have been playing with is a Long Arm (hence FF01-LA) suspension. Although I have never driven or seen one, I am slightly fascinated by how Tamiya turned the humble TL01 into a club meet slayer with the LA edition. Although I will re-iterate that I LOVE how my FF01 drives, I am intrigued by the possibility it could be even better. 

I set myself the arbitrary task of keeping it fairly 90s tech, so rather than adapting TRF419 or 420 c hubs and uprights (which are actually quite hard to find and very expensive), I set about designing the front suspension to use the TA02/3 knuckle, keep the suspension pick up in the same places, just move the lower arm pivot outside the kingpin. Due to the size of the TA02 knuckle this was REALLY hard! It's there, and the upper camber link point is same as regular FF01 because I couldn't fit a ball-as-kingpin setup here like modern stuff. It's not dissimilar to the TL01-LA though, so hopefully I haven't ruined it. I also pushed the track width out to 187mm with a 5mm thick hex. Might need a longer swing shaft for my universals. 

At the rear, it was a lot easier. Again I left suspension holes same as stock, and I did two different arms for 1.5 deg or 2 deg toe in. I also did a version of the bearing anti roll bar I did for my FF03. If there is one thing I would like a little more of in my FF01, it is rotation on corner entry. Maybe the anti roll bar will help? 

The EVO bit follows the Top Force and particularly FF03 nomenclature. The FF03 EVO was all carbon and had quite different layout to the tub chassis version. So it goes here. 

With the motor hanging way out on the left, I balance my current FF01 a little by running a shorty lipo pushed all the way over to the right. I want to retain the across-the-car battery option with my new bottom plate, but having looked at things like the X Ray T4F 19 (the last proper frontie one) it had a bunch of battery options, one of which was something like this

220grams of battery offsetting around 80 grams of ESC and servo, plus motor. The only thing it needed was a 90 deg master steering crank, so I adapted the repro version I already designed ansd have on my current FF01 for this lay out. My new bottom plate will have holes to mount the servo in the regular place as well. In that case the battery will go across the chassis behind it, with some fore-aft adjustment. 

Shock towers are my existing carbon designs. They *should* bolt straight on. 

A need for a bunch of work rapid prototypes meant I hit the minimum order value easily, so these are all ordered and in progress. To start with the plan is to bolt the trans to my existing car and see if it fits, then run it. If that goes well, I think I will bolt the Long Arm suspension to my FF01 rally car and stick some shorter shocks on and run it back to back with my FF01 racecar and see what I think. If THAT seems good, I will switch the Long Arm setup to my racecar and order the new chassis decks in 2mm carbon from fibrelyte. At that point I will built all the new bits onto that for a full FF01-LA EVO spec and get a new body so I can put my lovely current car back to how it is at the moment. I am thinking Peugeot 406 super tourer. 

Bit of a project. Could be great. I could have completely ruined it. Be fun finding out. 

[Mad Ax 9329]

Wow, this looks awesome!  If you have success with the gear case, I will get involved in a group buy.  My Iconic Cup FF01 will have to stay stock (no way all these mods would be approved for Iconic racing) but I have a spare chassis that's been sitting around untouched for an age, and I'd love to see what's possible.  Let us know if you'll offer a full conversion kit to EVO spec  

[ThunderDragonCy 7885]

@Mad Ax Thanks! I really hope the gear case works. Lance who is the tech steward for iconic is a main man at my club, so I am hoping I can talk him into putting it on the approved list. All it does is even up the gearing compared to the FF02. Would be awesome to see more FF01s racing.

As for the rest, let's see. If it works I would love to offer a little kit of gear case, arms (I already have 3d printed regular arms) and 4 deg c hub so people could build FF01s with TA02 parts. The EVO kit will just have to wait until I see how it works. 

[TwistedxSlayer 1290]

Following just because this is awesome!

[Tizer 606]

This is awesome! Once the design is finalized I'd love to build one too.

Did you ever think about having trailing arms in the rear? Like the Yokomo YRF2 used to have, and succesfull FWD buggies to this day also still use? Not sure how well it would work, but it would look great

[ThunderDragonCy 7885]

@Tizer Thanks. Really hoping it makes a great car better. As for trailing arms, I didn't consider those. Don't really have any experience of them. 

[fila1445 19]

I was planning to restore my ff-01, but lack of good gearbox on the marked stopped me quite quicly :/

which means...

 

 

[ThunderDragonCy 7885]

3D printed parts arrived. Gearcase was close, but not quite right. I think I can get it right though:

Also arrived are the Long Arm suspension and a few other bits and pieces

I knew the arm ends would be smaller than I'd like, but seeing them in the plastic it's defintely going to be the eyelets where the C hub pivot goes through that will be the thing to watch. Looks cool though! Need to order some 25.3mm shafts and a couple of other bits and I can rig up my FF01-Ra with these and revert it to circuit racer spec for comparison with my lovely FF01 Alfa 155 DTM race car. 

[ThunderDragonCy 7885]

Few more checks on the gear case. Firstly checking spur and idler fit, which they do

Check spur cover

And motor mounting

The gears mesh fine but don't spin super freely. Might just tweak the gear centres a tenth or so to see if that frees them up. 

The motor mounts up fine, but still a bit unsure about bolting straight to the plastic. Not sure how I can get a metal anything in there, so might need to run it once I have one the correct shape. Suck it and see. 

That gearing is 28/71. Impossible on the stock part, but no problem here. I did have a problem tightening the pinion though. Will need to add a hole in the top with a plug to make that work. 

 

 

[ChrisRx718 4470]

Very cool, fitment looks spot on.

Has anyone ever made the TL01 /FF02 Long Arm suspension setup in 3D for printing? Can't help but feel that would be on to a winner. I have an FF02 in waiting 

[Honza 937]

5 hours ago, ThunderDragonCy said:

The gears mesh fine but don't spin super freely. Might just tweak the gear centres a tenth or so to see if that frees them up. 

The motor mounts up fine, but still a bit unsure about bolting straight to the plastic. Not sure how I can get a metal anything in there, so might need to run it once I have one the correct shape. Suck it and see. 

I found that Tamiya 0.8 run smoothly with 0.2mm extra clearance. 0.6 worked well with +0.1mm

Maybe I'd add a 3x10mm shim to spread pressure from the screw.

20 minutes ago, ChrisRx718 said:

Has anyone ever made the TL01 /FF02 Long Arm suspension setup in 3D for printing? Can't help but feel that would be on to a winner. I have an FF02 in waiting 

I did a setup for MF-01, using TB02 uprights. But those parts became more difficult to get, too...

[ThunderDragonCy 7885]

10 hours ago, ChrisRx718 said:

Very cool, fitment looks spot on.

Has anyone ever made the TL01 /FF02 Long Arm suspension setup in 3D for printing? Can't help but feel that would be on to a winner. I have an FF02 in waiting 

I did some arms on Shapeways a while back that would use current tamiya TRF style c hubs and knuckles, but haven't tested them. I do wonder about getting a TL01 and doing something. The biggest limitation of this design is using the TA02/3 knuckles with their 850 bearings and 5mm kingpins. Makes packaging the c hubs and long arm end really hard. You can't really run kingpins directly in 3D printed plastic as it is quite rough. Would be good to use a slimmer knuckle and smaller kingpin, but I don't know what that would be short of going for the full modern style, and that doesn't seem massively in keeping with the vintage chassis. Be interesting to hear your thoughts on that. 

10 hours ago, Honza said:

I found that Tamiya 0.8 run smoothly with 0.2mm extra clearance. 0.6 worked well with +0.1mm

Good suggestion. I use 0.1mm in my 48dp gear cases which works well, but makes sense the more coarse gear teeth would need a little more room. I'll do that. Thanks. 

[ThunderDragonCy 7885]

Bit more checking of things this evening. Good job I did! Installed the diff. 

First mistake: the diff cavity was off centre so it catches on the front edge. 

First win: screwed the bottom plate on snug and the diff placement and tapers are correct. Or close enough. 

Second mistake : the screw holes for the bottom plate are on the 3 deg kick up angle, so needed to change that. 

Following up on @Honza advice, I reset the idler spacing to 13mm from 12.9mm. The nominal Centre distance with no clearance is 12.8. Having done that I check the diff/idler centres, and they were at 22.6 vs a 22mm nominal. I pulled this back to 22.3 and repositioned everything, redid the spur cover to suit. 

Finally, looks like the bumper holes are a little too far out. Brought them in 1mm and resized the motor cavity to suit. Also noticed I didn't have a clearance cutout on the spur cover to clear the Outdrive properly. There is one on the stock case, so feels like I am slowly creeping up on getting this right. Such a complex part! 

 

[ThunderDragonCy 7885]

Other thing I did was start assembling the front Long Arm suspension. 

Installed some 850 bushes in the c hubs and the knuckles fit straight in

Loosely assembled, looks ace, but still very concerned about those arm ends. 

Because I increased the track width to 187, what I suspected would happen has : the driveshafts barely reach the diff outdrives. I have some TA05 dog bones spare, and still have the long shafts on the bitsa TB03. I figured if I get some flanged 1050 bearings to fit in the 1510 bearings inside the knuckles, and get some 1250 bearings for the outside I can temporarily run regular driveshaft axles in the TA02 knuckles to check things. 

 

 

[ThunderDragonCy 7885]

Got the 25.3mm suspension shafts and some 5mm ball screws from Lord Tony of Tamiya Parts, and the bearings mentioned about from rcbearings. 

First the bearings.... 

1250 has metal shields and replaces the 1260 on the outside. Flanged 1050 if to fit into the 1510 already installed. 

Whilst this worked to get the re hulk axle to fit, it wouldn't push through far enough to get the drive pin for the hex through the axle. I tried fitting the flanged bearing on the inside and it helped a bit, but in the end I just put a regular 1050 in and let it find its place. This leaves the axle a bit loose in the knuckle (about 2mm of play) so need some spacing or something, but it works enough for a quick test.

The 46mm TA05 driveshafts were too long, as were the TB03 universals I took out of my bitsa build to try. Hardly surprising as these are 46mm too. The only option I had to hand were the lightweight 44mm universals from the rear of my TB03R. These fit perfectly, so after a bit of part number sleuthing I found 54078 44mm steel swing shafts on Plaza Japan for longer term use, but will use the lightweights for testing. Here is the front. 

 

And the rear

I checked my racing FF01 and I have 53440 yellow springs front and 53163 blue springs rear. Can't remember what damping, but I do know I went back to old school low friction pistons after trying but not liking the TRF pistons. Ride height is 6mm front and about 9mm rear. Bit uneven, but seems to work. To be honest, it could use some more rotation and a little more looseness at the rear so it clearly isn't lacking rear grip. 

I did an oil change on the 42102 dampers I have spare off my ff03. These have thd TRF 3 hole pistons, so I went for 300cst on the oil. I know the FF01 seems to like light damping and soft springing. As I didn't know what to expect I set it up with same springs as my other FF01, 6mm ride height front and 8mm rear. As I went back to standard wheelbase I also needed a shell, so after some mildly disastrous hole reaming, my Bitty design HCF shell was pressed into service. 

Despite being very battered it still looks nice. You can see the full track width setting the wheels nicely in the arches even on this race shell. I suspect I might need to dial the width back a little to make it suitable for more scale shells. We'll see. 

Anyway, the driving! Initially, lots of oversteer, no rear grip! Drove it a little bit to try and warm / clean the tyres up, but no dice. Put the soft red 53163 springs on the rear to soften it up and drop the ride height and it started to balance out. Given how the balance is on my regular FF01 I am guessing it is generating a bit more front grip. I am also running 1.5 deg rear toe in, compared to 2 on the standard car. 

Now it was working the rear tyres it was really nice. The tyres gripped up a little more, it had a nice, but not ridiculous amount of body roll in the corners, and was planted through the fast sweeper I can do. After about 10 minutes the balance was definitely moving towards neutral to understeer, so I swapped in the medium yellow 53163 springs. So, still not as stiff as the blue originally fitted (and for reference, not as stiff as the 53440 yellow on the front). Definitely made the rear a little more lively without bring too much. Definitely promising. Need to get to the track for a head to head now. This us only running a core rc 21t motor and 71t spur, so noticably slower than my racecar with Iconic motor and 66t spur. Will have to swap motor at least and maybe spur between cars for the test. 

So, first impressions are that it shows promise. Need to work out a proper front axle/bearing solution though. 

Anyone got any thoughts or suggestions for other knuckles or parts to try? 

 

 

 

 

[ThunderDragonCy 7885]

So last night I realised the obvious missing step to get the universals running right was spacing BETWEEN the bearings, not on the outside. 1.9mm of 5x7mm shims per side later and the front axles are perfectly spaced, no play, 44mm shaft drive pins in the middle of the outdrives. Lovely. 

As mentioned above, but worried I might have gone too wide on these, so fitted my trusty 306 Maxi shell 

In terms of on shelf stance, it is pretty much perfect, with wheels almost flush with the outside of the body and tucked up in the arches. Looks amazing. Will be very marginal on running clearance though. 

 

I will definitely be giving it a go though. Front hexes are 6mm thick, so have ordered some 5mm as these should help a little. The rear already uses 4.5mm hexes so I think for any kit made available I need to bring these in a couple of mm per side to give scope to use different bodies and wheels. Glad it's good so far though. I thought it would be too wide for the 306 for sure. 

 

 

[ThunderDragonCy 7885]

Gave it a little run today after work. Firstly it looks so, so cool with the 306 shell. Wheels didn't seem to be catching on the shell either, which is excellent. Track time next with spicier motor, although not sure when. 

Also got some M05 front knuckled today from m'coll @ChrisRx718. Held them up to the TA02 knuckles on the car and they are much wider offset from outer bearing face to kingpin. Would mean completely new arms and c hubs. These would have better wheel clearance so could potentially be a bit meatier around the outer pivots. Regular 1150 bearings also mean the longer driveshafts you need would fit easier. But.....but.....i know it sounds mad given the amount of change already, but would ditching the front knuckles be a step too far? Those blue knuckles are very FF01. Not sure. Anyone care to weigh in on this? 

 

[wtcc5 4899]

Why do you need to use M-chassis axles? TRF415 or other Tamiya tc axles later should be shorter by a millimeter or so. With 3d printed inserts and other inner and outer bearings you can make these work (I did these steps to make djc work on the FF01 and the Dyna Force stadium truck project, both with FF01 blue hubs).

[ThunderDragonCy 7885]

9 hours ago, wtcc5 said:

Why do you need to use M-chassis axles? TRF415 or other Tamiya tc axles later should be shorter by a millimeter or so. With 3d printed inserts and other inner and outer bearings you can make these work (I did these steps to make djc work on the FF01 and the Dyna Force stadium truck project, both with FF01 blue hubs).

I was just looking at different, readily available front knuckles that might be more easily suited than the TA02/FF01 knuckles to more modern drive shafts. The reason I stayed away from TRF or later touring car knuckles is because weirdly they're quite hard to find in the UK. Despite coming on a parts tree, M05 knuckles are cheap and easily available, and use the smaller kingpin which would make the C hub design potentially easier. Just playing around with ideas really. 

[TwistedxSlayer 1290]

Throwing it out there, what about TA04 knuckles?

[ThunderDragonCy 7885]

9 hours ago, TwistedxSlayer said:

Throwing it out there, what about TA04 knuckles?

They would suit nicely but are probably even harder to find than modern TRF knuckles unfortunately. I am trying to think about this project in terms of maybe a few people buying them, so ideally I want to use kit parts or things that will have decent long term availability. 

[Honza 937]

On 3/29/2023 at 9:55 PM, ThunderDragonCy said:

Those blue knuckles are very FF01. Not sure. Anyone care to weigh in on this? 

What about MF-01 knuckles? Same shape like M-05, but red, for nice retro look  (Was there an FF-01W version?)

[ThunderDragonCy 7885]

2 hours ago, Honza said:

What about MF-01 knuckles? Same shape like M-05, but red, for nice retro look  (Was there an FF-01W version?)

Interesting. I'll have a look that those.

[ThunderDragonCy 7885]

Just checking the car over tonight and there is quite a lot of backlash/loose movement of the driveshaft in the hard diff outdrives. Does anyone know of a way to fit those plastic blades the high end touring cars use on the aluminium diff outdrives? I don't think they fit the stock outdrives or do they? Maybe one for @wtcc5. 

[ThunderDragonCy 7885]

Ordered swing shafts and axles, but neither come with the drive pins. What part number am I missing?