MF01x pre runner

[Nikko85 4205]

I found I had almost enough spares to complete another MF01x, and was about to purchase the missing pieces when I realised I could pick up a used TL01 for almost the same cost, if not slightly less then the parts would cost. I found a used TL01B* for a decent price and pulled the trigger. I was going to settle on making a trail truck or crawler, using the MF01x arms I have, when I stumbled on this photo:

A FJ45 pre-runner. What a cool idea for an RC truck.

My plan is to use the MF01x as a base with the TL01B arms to really widen it out and put under a 1/12 FJ45  body. I've got a MF01x with TL01 arms, and it hugely softens the suspension and increases drivability, so this should push it even further.

I've actually done something like this before, sadly I left this accidently switched on whilst on a top shelf, and then drove the car off the shelf, cracking the body and a few other parts!

However the version above was only with TL01 arms, so the TL01B version should give a much more stable track width. The goal is to make a fun runner that can go over a BMX track and dirt with ease and just be easy to drive. 

Plan is this:

MF01x chassis with 30 mm spacer to make 200 mm wheelbase
Tl01B arms, internal gears and diffs (parts I don't have)
Either sand scorcher tires on M chassis wheels, or the same wheels as above (£15 amazon jobbies)
MN models FJ45 body, as pictured above (not the actual one pictured above, that cracked into 3 pieces!)

I think I've got a HW1060 somewhere and a decent servo, but hopefully I plan to use up a whatever I've got lying around!

 

*of course this means that soon I'll have most of a TL01 lying around, and will then need to use that up, but hey, it's the Tamiya Club way.

Pics as a start assembling this week when parts arrive

 

[OldSchoolRC1 1127]

That looks awesome! Fantastic start. 

 

[Badcrumble 4432]

Cool project. Toyota had a similar looking crawler at SEMA this year.

FJ Bruiser - SEMA 2024

I've torn a photo out of a magazine to keep as inspiration but so far have only found the little 1:12 bodies or poor knock-offs on AliExpress.

Looking forward to seeing your results!

[Nikko85 4205]

 

23 hours ago, OldSchoolRC1 said:

That looks awesome! Fantastic start. 

 

Thanks! I'm afraid the silver one died a death and the chassis is now below a Pumpkin, but it gives some idea of where this is going. Looking at the above photo of the 1:1 version I'm not sure if the TL01B arms might be too much - but I'll have to see. As I've got an MF01 with M sized arms, and one with TL01 arms I quite like the idea of a third one being something different.

17 hours ago, Badcrumble said:

Cool project. Toyota had a similar looking crawler at SEMA this year.

FJ Bruiser - SEMA 2024

I've torn a photo out of a magazine to keep as inspiration but so far have only found the little 1:12 bodies or poor knock-offs on AliExpress.

Looking forward to seeing your results!

That's awesome. I had considered a crawler, but I'm not sure of the MF01x is the best platform for this, but it could be fun. It would be a case of locking the diffs, lowering the pinion count (the MF01x can go to a 13T pinion) and then looking at a lower turn engine. With all these mods I could then use an 7.4 Li-Ion battery instead of a NiMH pack (the Li-Ions will trigger LiPo cut off under high load) which would then make it look a little nicer! I will think about that as well, I think the first thing is looking at all the different arms and seeing what kind of widths I've got. 

Mine is the 1:12 version, but as all my cars are around 1:12 and I really like the M-chassis it's perfect for me. It's also around £18 posted if you buy at the right time.

 

 

[OldSchoolRC1 1127]

Comical arms would put the track width very close to the 1:1. They are right between TL01 and 01B arms, about 8" wide on my MF. I am curious to see how wide that's going to be with TL01b arms. 

I love this chassis. 4 different track widths, 3 (or more) wheelbase options. It can be almost anything you want it to be. 

[Nikko85 4205]

2 hours ago, OldSchoolRC1 said:

Comical arms would put the track width very close to the 1:1. They are right between TL01 and 01B arms, about 8" wide on my MF. I am curious to see how wide that's going to be with TL01b arms. 

I love this chassis. 4 different track widths, 3 (or more) wheelbase options. It can be almost anything you want it to be. 

I've realised the TL01B arms might make this 60 mm wider than the version above, although if I used smaller hexes I could perhaps offset to 50 mm, now that might be too wide to look good, I'll have to see.

Comical arms might be a fun idea, although that means new arms and new dog bones, which kind of defeats the point of a cheap donor! 

Yes, I love the MF01x too! I also made an STL of the MF01x spacer so I can print different spacers to give even more precision to wheelbase. Add the one way diff and it can be lots of things! I find the issues people have (unequal droop, dogbones popping out) can be fixed really really cheaply (although still are design flaws that could easily, if perhaps not cheaply be fixed).

[Nikko85 4205]

As I thought the TL01B arms are too long, even at this extreme angle, so it's back to the TL01 arm design.

Looking at the TL01 I had an idea. Could I swap the front and rear arms, rotate the steering hubs 180 degrees and put a servo on the front, running it as a front motor drive vehicle? I've no idea why this would be better, I just wondered if anyone had done this?

[OldSchoolRC1 1127]

I've put TL01B arms on a GF01and it looked way too wide with some 1.9's. About to abandon the project, I put some 2.2's on with more positive offset (Slash front offset IIRC) and it tucked the wheel in nicely. 

Pretty happy how it came out. Might be an idea to save the project? 

[Nikko85 4205]

I've been super busy with work, but finally got a little more done.

At the moment I am going for TL01 arms.

I used long ball connectors to move the upper arms forward, stopping the uneven droop on the right rear arm. Using the TL01 arms I had to make my own upper arms with 3mm stainless studding. To keep costs down I am using the shocks that came with the TL01. I drilled out the top of the TL01 shocks to allow them to work with a 5mm ball, drilling 5mm on the outer side and 4.5 mm on inner side, it works surprisingly well.

For the front arms low friction 5mm ball connectors match the grey nicely. I also used them on the bottom of the rear TL01 shocks. I think these are the TL01 C hubs, as I didn't have kingpins for the MF01x ones, however they work perfectly, I just lose the higher suspension option, but I think that would make the dogbones have a too extreme angle anyhow.

Stance looks ok! I've got a body that's already got some drill holes I will try use if I can do it without making more holes..

I am not yet sure what I want this to be.

I could lock the diffs, get a 13T pinion, 35T motor and a smaller battery to make a trail truck/ crawler, or I could enjoy the wider stance to make something a lot faster, perhaps a 20T pinion and 23T motor, however I have that already with my MF01x Pumpkin.

Either way it is coming along nicely, and certainly my last for a while!

 

[Nikko85 4205]

So in the end I went for more of a low down racer. I may move the body up one notch, as I've not completely trimmed the posts.

A few little mods:

For the doors I wanted to use the Li-Ion batteries to keep the profile nice a slim. A large stick pack is just too wide. I made doors using Ikea brackets which use body pins to keep in place.

The front lower arms are kept on with the TL01 bar, to keep this in place I 3D printed little stopper with a small grub screw to lock in place.

Tires are MN models 86mm off road tires. I really like them for this kind of vehicle. Good grip, look semi realistic, and really help the ground clearance. With bigger tires and TL01 arms this is a much better off roader than stock.

It runs pretty nicely. I enjoy the MF01x chassis, it's a great tinkerers platform, and I think handles stuff like this really well. My only issue is that it's not that dissimilar to the one I made before (which I accidently left on and drove off a cupboard!) and also by MF01x Pumpkin.

[JimBear 1305]

Makes me happy to see, @Nikko85! Looks like a fun runner, really.

[Nikko85 4205]

4 minutes ago, JimBear said:

Makes me happy to see, @Nikko85! Looks like a fun runner, really.

Many thanks - yes, a super fun littler runner. Nothing complex, but can blast around a track quite nicely. In my mind it's a much better buggy style platform than realistic runner, just wish they did a front motored one.

I want to explore longer arms, but it's already cost a little more than I wanted! 

[chris.alex 1824]

Congratulations, that looks great! I really like your modifications. 👌

[Nikko85 4205]

Thanks all.

Still thinking about widening it.

I have seen that the GF02 arms for sale which are much cheaper than the comicals, so I am tempted to pick some up.

I am slightly confused by the shaft lengths. These TL01 arms use 39 mm drive shafts all round but the GF02 and GF01CB arms use 48mm front and 45 mm rear.

Can anyone explain why they are different lengths front and rear in the GF02 / GF01CB please? Seems like this would push out the front wheels a little, or does this just remove the need for o rings? 

I also can't seem to source a set of 45 mm arms, all the searches I try find the 48mm arms.

Any help would be great, just confused as why all the hardware compared to a GF01 or TL01 looks the same but dogbones are different and what that means to the consequent changes to track width!

 

 

[ThunderDragonCy 8991]

@Nikko85 I made a mistake on building the wheels for my comical hornet because the front and rear inner hubs were different widths, and I put them the wrong way around first time I built them. That suggests to me that the front suspension had a wider track than the rear on WR/GF series and tamiya use different wheel offsets to maintain the overall width the same. That would certainly explain the longer front drive shafts.

[Nikko85 4205]

On 1/24/2025 at 8:55 AM, ThunderDragonCy said:

@Nikko85 I made a mistake on building the wheels for my comical hornet because the front and rear inner hubs were different widths, and I put them the wrong way around first time I built them. That suggests to me that the front suspension had a wider track than the rear on WR/GF series and tamiya use different wheel offsets to maintain the overall width the same. That would certainly explain the longer front drive.

Thanks! I was hoping that I could keep the c hubs and everything else so I will see.

 

 

[Nikko85 4205]

So I bit the bullet and ordered some. Now they are part of the GF02 parts they are much cheaper.

Hopefully with 6mm hexes this will give me the extra width I want and more suspension travel.

Let's see what happens...

 

 

[Nikko85 4205]

Mixed results today.

I added the GF02 arms and it has certainly got me closer to the look I wanted.

This is with 10mm hexes which I had before. The arms give an extra 10mm width at the front each side, so I might drop down to 6mm to meet in the middle, I will see what works best. However just on a basic comparison with the first image I posted, this does seem the closest by far, which is great. Not only that but of course wider car is more stable, more suspension travel, and this is going to rip! 

So, so far so good, but when adding the rears the dogbones suggested just don't work. ordered the 51216 dog bones which are the given ones for the GF02 rears. As these are GF02 arms I assumed that they would work, but zero joy, they just fall out completely.

This is going to get a little numbers heavy, I apologise, but maybe this is helpful for someone reading this planning the same thing.

As I measure them

•  The TL01 dogbones are 39mm
•  TA05 dogbones are 45mm
• GF02 front dogbones (9803236) are 48mm.

The front GF02 arms are 10mm wider than the TL01 arms (40.5mm vs 30.5mm) measured from pivot points. Although the dogbones are now 1mm relatively shorter, this works fine it would seem, it might need a single o-ring.

On the rear the GF02 arms are 7.5mm wider than the TL01 arms (45.5mm vs 38mm) but the TA05 dogones are only 6mm longer. For some reason this just does not work and despite it only being a 1.5mm shortfall. When I say don't work, I don't mean I'm worried about them coming out on hard running, they are too short to stay in when the car is still.

As a trial I put the 48mm dogbones on the rear and it is perfect. Zero binding at full compression and works perfectly! 

So another pair 48 mm ordered, and I think I can use the TA05 dogbones but can anyone shed light on why this might have happened? Does the GF02 have issues with dogbones dropping out? 

From what I can see the M05RA uprights are the same as the TL01 ones when used it low GC mode, but perhaps the geometry is slightly different?

I could use uprights from the TL01, but I like the mild toe-in the M05RA uprights give.

On the plus side, the car looks great, and I'm happy to have all-black dogbones too!

 

 

[Nikko85 4205]

The longer 48mm dogbones turned up, and are now on front and back.

They seem to work great. O-ring on the drive cups, but I might remove from the front and see how it goes.

The suspension is really plush and lovely feeling. 

Will take out sometime and give a verdict!

Edit: torn about o-rings. On the front they make the dogbones feel less floaty but the diff gets a little stiff on full steering lock. Don't feel like they will pop put however, but certainly rattling without.

Rear is perfect!