M04 - Is It Raceable?

[Hopperboy 0]

Hi all,

I am thinking of importing a Tamiya Roadster (MX5) M04 chassis as they are quite cheap and our club is running a class of stock or Sport Tuned Minis this year and say the M04 can run in with them. Kit tyres only.

I already have an M03 and its very stable but as many know, its not so good at laying the power down particularly on the kit rubber. Question is, will an M04 be able to hold its own or is it a bit of a pig as far as oversteer goes? I want to have fun but spinning out at every corner eventually gets to be frustrating so I'd like to know what I would be getting into before I commit to buying a kit.

Thanks for any advice.

[Dazza1 18]

i would advise against the mo4 as there are no great gains from having rwd as they are terible under braking.

[WillyChang 1814]

M04 won't do well in race situations, have even more trouble putting power down

M03 can be driven what for the whole race & you just steer

1 extra tooth on pinion doesn't give much advantage

Invest in some GOOD tyres for your M03 instead.

[ryanbored 3]

I would go for it, just for the challange, it's meant to be fun after all! And lets face it, they're not expensive, and you can get your money back on ebay if it all goes wrong!

[HunterZero 76]

I would go for it, just for the challange, it's meant to be fun after all! And lets face it, they're not expensive, and you can get your money back on ebay if it all goes wrong!

And if you decide you want FWD, just drive backwards.

- James

[Origineelreclamebord 45]

Well, everything is raceable They also do rallies with Trabant's and (Polski)Fiat 126's, so why not?

I think an RWD will have the edge on acceleration from standstill compared to an FWD, but will have the tendency to either understeer, or if you throw the car into a corner, oversteer. FWD's are in general more stable, but the RWD's can be made stable by the right driving style and the right settings on the car.

I think the best example of a competitive RWD is TC member Grahoo's Wasp M-chassis. He mentioned in a showroom entry he won races with his beautiful custom creation

I think though that the M03 and M04 aren't really competitive M-chassis cars. I think M-chassis cars should be 2WD, not 4WD, but the M03 and M04 are partially based on the TL01. It also has the build quality of a TL01. It is made to be pretty tough, on some places maybe overengineered. So we're still awaiting a Tamiya M-chassis with TA05R or TRF416 heritage...

[Butler 338]

That wasp is awesome.

[stulec52 50]

I think though that the M03 and M04 aren't really competitive M-chassis cars. I think M-chassis cars should be 2WD, not 4WD, but the M03 and M04 are partially based on the TL01. It also has the build quality of a TL01. It is made to be pretty tough, on some places maybe overengineered. So we're still awaiting a Tamiya M-chassis with TA05R or TRF416 heritage...

But aren't you missing the point of the cheap simple spec cars that these are?

Our club has done great by adding these as a class where very little is allowed, so new racer guy can compete, at least in terms of equipment, with long time racer guy.

I hope Tamiya don't mess with the formula, they work just great.

as for the 04 as a racer, I have both an 03 and an 04, both in very similar build spec, i.e. fully ballraced, ball diff, CVDs, oil filled shocks, etc.

THe 04 can be the quicker car, but it is a handful to drive, and I find that if there is a fair amount of traffic, and especially on a tighter track, my 03 tends to ba about 1 lap faster. That's not huge in a 25 lap race, but enough that I usually just stick to the 03.

[terry.sc 16]

I think though that the M03 and M04 aren't really competitive M-chassis cars.

The M03 is very popular all round the world as a cheap spec class. Not much you can do to them to make them go faster and many clubs run them as a separate racing class. Japan and Hong Kong are the only places where the 4wd cars are popular for racing, here in the UK a big mini grand prix was organised, the most popular class was using the stock minis, the 'any mini chassis allowed' class didn't have enough entries to fill one heat.

Having a TRF carbon and alloy version won't make them go any faster, in fact those using lipo batteries in them are discovering they are too light and lead has to be added to get them to handle again.

As Stu says, ultimately the M04 is faster, as long as you can drive a smooth line around the track. The kit tyres aren't praised for their grip and if you have wheelspin and understeer problems with the M03 this will be converted into spinning out and donuts for the M04.

[skip665 169]

You should be grateful you can race M-chassis' at all - there is nowhere within reasonable distance from me that does an M-chassis class

I am happy to be proved wrong though

[stu22 12]

Reviving an old thread here.

I finally got my M-03 Mini-S and M-04 MX-5 out to the track to run a few laps and get some times. I built the M-04 and it is completely stock. The M-03 is an eBay purchase that has front and rear sway bars, oil dampers, metal front hub carriers, and I believe a ball diff. Both are have silver cans, 101BK ESCs, and were run with Trinity 3600 stick packs.

I found that the M-04 is just over a second faster, at about 13 seconds, than the M-03 on my local track. My times with the M-04 are equal to, or better than, the times more experienced M-03 drivers are turning. To put this into perspective I run an Associated TC4 (17.5 brushless/2S LiPo) around the same track in the low 11s. I consider the track to have a good balance between speed and cornering sections. Running through the different sections though, I could match the Minis through the corners and found that there was no real speed/acceleration advantage on kit tires with the M-04.

One important thing to consider is the M-04 behaves like a touring car with on throttle push, which is the setup I like. The fwd M-03 also has an annoying way of swinging the back end around, and end up facing the wrong direction mid corner, when coming off throttle. With more practice, and some tuning to get the M-03 to suit the way I drive, I'm sure I can cut my times with the fwd platform down to where they could be equal to the M-04.

[HereBeMonsters 9]

The fwd M-03 also has an annoying way of swinging the back end around, and end up facing the wrong direction mid corner, when coming off throttle.

Lift-off oversteer! Just like a real mini...

I absolutely love how my Mini handles now - M grips on front, S grips on rear, AW grease in the diff...I'm still way behind others in the same class, but it's great fun.

[DuaneB 2]

Hi,

I am sure its not allowed by any racing rules, anywhere, and as I don't have anywhere to race anyway its not a problem for me, but I am going to try a gyro in my M04 to see if it will stop the back coming around under braking.

I will let you know how I get on, the Gyro should be with me by Wednesday next week.

Duane.

[stu22 12]

Hi,

I am sure its not allowed by any racing rules, anywhere, and as I don't have anywhere to race anyway its not a problem for me, but I am going to try a gyro in my M04 to see if it will stop the back coming around under braking.

I will let you know how I get on, the Gyro should be with me by Wednesday next week.

Duane.

Not sure how well a gyro would work, or what you would hook it up to, but it is a worthy experiment. Let us know what happens.

We had a recent layout change at the track. The layout is now much more technical than speed. On this course I still drive the M-04M much better than the M-03L. It may be because the track is big and has wide lanes that are needed for the faster classes. Both cars can be run wide open through most of the course.

There's another track near where I live that I'll have to take the M-series cars out to to see what happens. It has half the overall foot print of my regular track. It is too small to run touring cars so they run the Minis and 1/18 or smaller.

[DuaneB 2]

Hi,

I tried the Gyro in the M04 over the weekend, and to cut a long story short it would need an awful lot of development effort to be able to say whether it could work in the M04 or not. For comparison I tried the same gyro in my TA05 and the additional stability exiting corners and under braking was instantly obvious.

There are a whole range of factors I would need to work through the get the Gryo working effectivley in the M04 but as I enjoy the quirky handling of the stock setup anyway I have no plans to progress this - while the gyro allowed me to bit a lot more reckless with the throttle in the TA05, it was a novelty that I don't think I will keep in the car long term. That said I think a class of gyro equipped cars would make for an entertaining race as an occasional break from the norm.

If anyone is interested, I would have looked at the following list to develop the M04 -

1) a better mounting point for the gyro with less vibration

2) straighter front wheels - mine have a wobble

3) a decent servo - mine is a S3003 or similar budget servo

4) The amount of steering slop seems okay to me, but I have read that this can cause difficulty for the gyro

5) Lowering the car and fitting stiffer springs - the thing I enjoy most about this car is its character, the way it leans into corners, I don't want to loose this so thats the main reason I am not planning to take this project any further.

Lastly I had a great time nursing the stock M04 around on the dusty roads near my house its so much more engaging than my other cars in these conditions.

Duane.

[Origineelreclamebord 45]

One important thing to consider is the M-04 behaves like a touring car with on throttle push, which is the setup I like. The fwd M-03 also has an annoying way of swinging the back end around, and end up facing the wrong direction mid corner, when coming off throttle.

I think the lift off oversteer can be reduced by removing the rear stabilizers and increasing the droop on the rear suspension. Removing the rear stabilizers will make the rear end roll more. With more droop it will take more roll to have the inside rear wheel come off the ground - in theory

A Gyro might work, but only kicks in once the car is already oversteering, you would end up with quicker lap times preventing the oversteer or strongly reducing it. As mentioned before it probably won't be legal in races either.

And as I stated before about the low spec of the M-chassis... I know it's nice to have a budget M-chassis, but that doesn't mean there can't be more hopups and tuneability in/for the car, maybe even a Pro version. I know the M05 Pro is on it's way, but from pictures I've seen it's still not really what I was hoping for.

I can't complain since I really like reliable cars and I am not the guy that will buy a TRF416 or something - but I think a more competition based M-chassis or hopups for it miss out in Tamiya's lineup.