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GooneyBird

BSR Racing M.Rage 4WD M-chassis build thread

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Alright, I'll be honest here, this isn't my first time straying from The Path of Tamiya. I've owned an HPI RS4, a Corally CCT and an Academy Griffin buggy. But somehow, probably because this car is from the great far-east, it just feels wrong.

But I didn't let that stop me. I've always liked M-chassis cars, having owned an M02 Alpine as a kid. I've owned an M05 Pro VII with all the bells and whistles, but I've never been able to get that thing to handle the way I wanted to. Ever since I've mostly stuck to touring cars, but I've always kept an eye out for something that's as easy to setup as a TC, but can wear the great little body shells of an M-chassis.

On Christmas morning I found this little go-cart under the tree, which is exactly what I've been looking for. This car originally started out life as a Nanda NXR12, a 1/12th scale touring car, before the Chinese OEM found out that with a few tweaks to the wheelbase you could fit Tamiya M-chassis body shells on there. HobbyKing picked up the car, rebranded it, and is selling them for a very reasonable price. 

And quite the car you're getting! Full ball-bearings, CVDs all around, carbon lower and upper deck, oil shocks, and it even comes with a cute little totally-not-a-Suzuki-Swift body shell. The car has a wheelbase of 210mm (the 'short' M-length), which allows for my old Mini Cooper Racing bodyshell to be used.

After Christmas I could barely contain myself, but had to wait for a few hopups I'd already ordered after opening the package. However, that didn't stop me from doing the body shell!

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I'm challenging myself to create better and prettier body shells. I found I've got a bit of a knack for spraying polycarbonate body shells, even though I haven't moved on from using rattle cans. But with some careful masking you can still get decent results. For the colors I chose PS-2 red as the main color, with the accents done in PS-1 white. At the last minute I added a swoopy dragon's tail, something my wife came up with. For the price it even comes with mirrors and a little spoiler, both of which I painted duefully.

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The decals included with the body shell are quite basic. Unfortunately you get full window stickers instead of just the outlines. However, my trusty blade made quick work of that. That, along with a black sharpie to accentuate all the panel lines (and hand-draw things like the fuel filler flap and the door handles), actually suit the body quite well and make for a handsome package.

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Yesterday-morning the hopups arrived, with most crucially a set of ball bearings for the sliding steering rack. You'll see when the build gets to that stage. On with the actual build!

Step 1
Build the diffs. 
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Done. :) The diffs are pre-built from the box. As they are two ball-diffs, I took them apart and checked them for any mistakes during assembly. They needed tightening, but other than that they were fine. After they're run-in I'm sure I'll take them out to be set at their final tightness anyway.

Step 2
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Step 2 involves building the sliding rack steering setup. I've never seen this before on any car, and it's a cool system. That whole thing attaches to the aft front suspension block, and slides back and forth on four ball bearings. From the box you get bushings, but everyone that races one recommends replacing them with ball bearings immediately, or else your steering won't center properly.

Step 3
Attach steering block and suspension bits to chassis
IMG_1419.jpgNothing too exciging here. You can see how the sliding rack works and is attached to the car. The chassis is a nice piece of CF. Quite thick, but on a carpet track you don't want too much flex anyway.

Step 4
Servo-time! They've included a servo saver of similar design to the Tamiya 51000 High Torque servo saver. It's huge though....
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I attached it to a Savöx MG1251 low profile servo, my servo of choice for anything on-road. They're fairly affordable and give great and dependable performance. I had to spacer out the servo saver a bit, or else it would hit the body of the servo when tightening the screw. 

Step 5
This involved attaching the servo to the chassis. I noticed that the holes for the servo were drilled a little too close together, and also offset slightly. I blame Chinese QC. However, my Dremel made short work of that, and the servo (with aluminium posts!) mounted up well. 
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In the same step you also attach the rear lower arms. The suspension blocks are actually mounted to the rear gearbox, allowing the whole unit to come off with just 4 screws. This is done so that changing the spur gear doesn't involve pulling half the car apart. Clever!

Step 6
IMG_1423.jpgThis was probably the step that took me the longest of the build so far (aside from the body, obviously). There is a 48 pitch spur and pinion included, but I wanted to use 0.4 mod gears because that's what both my race cars use and this insures that I've got enough gears. A while back I bought two 0.4 mod spurs for a TB Evo, thinking I could fit them to the TRF419. Nope. However, the 90t spur fit this car well, and combined with a 39 or 40 tooth pinion from my stock this should give me an FDR of about 5.4, which should be in the ballpark for 55mm tires on our small carpet track.

Many shimming happened on both these input shafts so that the backlash was correct for the diffs, which are installed in...

Step 6

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With the backlash now set correctly, the car runs decently quiet and smoothly. Of course all gears need to be run-in some more before I can have any final say in it, but I'm decently confident that after 45 minutes of shimming the living daylights out of it it should run decently well. 

Onto Step 7...

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In which we build the two front C-hubs. I lubricated the CVDs with a bit of graphite powder, and built them up as per manual. Surprisingly it required no shimming at all! Time will tell if that remains the case or that some slop will develop after some running.

Step 8

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Not very surprisingly, step 8 attaches both C-hubs to the chassis. Again, no shimming was required. There is a slight bind on one of the arms, I'm hoping this will simply wear in with running.

And this is where I was left last night. Today, we continue on! Keep an eye out on this space.

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Car looks great and I'm eager to see how yours finishes up.  I went on eBay and found one for $66 shipped. I'm thinking these are a good candidate to use the HPI cup racer bodies on

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I bought two of these back a few months ago.

I built one so far. Fun build.

Haven't had the good weather to run it yet.

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And so the build continues! 

Step 9 has us build the rear hubs. Fairly straightforward, with minimum shimming required to make the axle nice and slop-free. Despite this being a plastic kit, I have to say that the tolerances are very tight. This gives me good hope for the overall handling of the little one.

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Step 10, predictably, has us install these on the car's rear arms, and this is where the Chinese side of the car clearly shows. There are spacers included to take up the slack on the pins, but they are far too short by at least a millimeter. Fortunately I have an impressive stock of spacers and washers and such, and so this problem was quickly dealt with.
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The fact that there was a lot of room to be taken up on that pin is good news. The fact that there currently is a 2.5mm spacer to the rear of the hubs means that I can vary the wheelbase by at least 2.5mm just by moving the spacer around or replacing it with others. As long as the front wheels of any body are centered I can make the rear fit. Yay! 

Step 11 
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This involves building the front and rear shock towers. In a bit of a departure from what I'm used to, the upper arms are attached to the shock tower (normaly they terminate on the bulkheads or something). However, this makes for an easy changing of the roll center. The two lower screws on each shock tower hold in two ball ends, to which the turnbuckles that make up the upper arms connect. An elegant system, though I am curious to find out if the carbon shock towers are up to the forces the arms exert on them.

With the building of said turnbuckles in step 12 we suddenly have something very much resembling a real RC car!

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Building turnbuckles is never my favorite sport, but the softer plastic of the ball cups make for easy threading. There is a little play in them, but not so much that I'd consider replacing them by my favorite low-friction ball cups out the gate.

Step 13 involves building the battery retainer. This is a very simple mechanism, and it works really well! Tamiya, take note and copy this for your TRF420! Most high-end TCs hold their battery in using a combination of tape and/or fingers. This has been less than successful for me, shall we say...
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The white Yuki lipos I use fit these holders very well, save for the connector fouling on the retaining bar. Enter the Dremel again! (Have I mentioned how much I like that thing? Because I like that thing, a lot)

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And here's another example of the manual being rather basic. There are two battery holders, identical to one-another. Or so I thought. One has the holes for the body clip holding the bar in lengthwise, and the other one across. Of course, with it being a 50% chance of being correct I messed it up and...
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..yup, that hits the spur gear. 

Upon closer examination it turns out that I should have picked the other one. Some quick screwdrivering later...
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..and all is well again.

The next step, step 14 has us build the upper deck.
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Not all that exciting, but I found a cool easter egg! There are two holes on the top deck, and they turned out to be exactly the distance required for my tranponder's holder! I drilled a third hole, and now my MyLaps transponder has a place to chill out during races. Sweet!

Step 15 is a bit of an anticlimax. It calls for you to build the shocks, but upon opening the package I was greeted by these four fellows... 
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Shocking! They're built actually rather well, and are completely bled and set-up with about 1mm of rebound. Seems a good a starting point as any.

I was so completely taken aback by this I forgot to take a picture of me popping them on, so use your imagination for this step. :D 

The next (and almost final) step in the building process involves electronics. Because this car is laid out like a TT01, but everything packed closer together, I had to get creative. IMG_1445.jpg

Going from left to right we've got the motor, a brushed Carson Cup Machine. This is the de-facto standard for our club, and should provide plenty of motivation for the little car. To the right of that we've got a Hobbywing Quicrun 1060. Cheap, lipo-ready, and reverse is easily disabled by moving a jumper. Great little device. Underneath that are two things. First, the servo, and to the back of that I've stuck my receiver. This is just as long as the servo is high, providing the ESC with a flat platform to mount on. No idea if this will raise the CoG by a lot, but at least it'll be getting a bit of a breeze to stay cool. Access to the receiver is a bit of a pain in the rear-end, though...

This brings us to the end of basic chassis assembly. The next step in the manual is painting and mounting the body, along with wheels and tires. I'm still waiting for a conversion set that takes the front body posts, currently residing TRF-style in the front bumper, and relocating them to the same place as Tamiya M-chassis, allowing me to use my old Mini Cooper body. I'm hoping I'll get them in tomorrow, so stay tuned!

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Right, so the body post conversion set hasn't arrived yet, and I couldn't help but bring it to the track yesterday-evening. I bought a set of Sweep mini-tires for it, the hot tire for our track, poked a few holes in the not-a-Swift so I could mount it up, and hit the track with it!

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At which point I noticed that I even though I had it up on the setup set, trimmed it correctly and even set the steering throw equally left and right, I completely forgot to set the reverser correctly. Whoops! A quick correction later, and we were on our way!

It was lumped in with 'genuine' M-chassis cars, which makes sense considering its size, but that meant that I really had no equal in that session to compare to. However, the car quickly felt at home on the rug, making very decent speeds, and with razor-sharp handling. It's quick too, despite being only moderately powerful with a brushed Cup Machine. The 55mm tires are smaller than a TC's tire, so I geared it a little heavier than I'd normally do on a TC, but despite that it absolutely flies down the main straight. Its low weight and 4WD traction meant it had no issues outrunning an actual M-chassis in the bends either.

After a few minutes of spirited driving I noticed that the pulling power out of the corners was greatly reduced for some reason, and when I pulled it aside on the pit table I quickly noticed why. Both diffs had slowly undone itself, and started slipping when abruptly adding power. No problem, tightening the main bolt on each diff solved that issue. However, because I'm simply that great of course I forgot which side of the car that thing was... 

The next session went a lot better, and with the steering dual rates turned down a great deal the car felt positively alive. Due to the busy-ness of the M-session I couldn't really open the car up on the straight, but what I felt made me sure that with a bit more tuning this little beauty will absolutely eat any Tamiya M for lunch, and might even make a touring car mind its mirrors. 

Today I had it up on the work bench, and did a few things to it to alleviate som annoyances I had yesterday. For starters, I marked which side held the diff adjuster with a little red dot....

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... and I marked a spot on the shock ride height adjuster collar. Most shocks I've had on my cars have this little notch to indicate where you are (so you can count turns when setting ride height instead of having to pull out a tweak stick just to make sure you're doing it the same on both sides), but not these. I screwed them in all the way, and put a little dot on them as well. This will make quick trackside adjustments a LOT easier.IMG_1172.jpg

Because I had the tin of paint out anyway (actually, an old touch up paint stick from my MX5), I set free my inner boy racer, and spruced up the wheels a bit. The red/white combo looks great in real life, and maybe this'll save the white wheels from getting all scuffed up a bit by giving me an easily cleaned (or repainted) lip instead of porous plastic ready to suck up any track grime it comes across.

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(and yes, I've trimmed the body posts since this picture was taken)

Next Sunday I hope to have a bit more track time with the little one, and hope to have received the conversion set so I can start trying to mount my old Mini Cooper body to it. I held it up, and I think I need to build a different front bumper as the body shell is almost flush with the fronts of the front tires. No worries, I've got spare FRP, and not a very busy week planned at work. :)

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The chassis looks well sorted all built up. Mine came in the mail today and I'm impressed with the quality of materials they used considering the low price

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8 hours ago, Shodog said:

The chassis looks well sorted all built up. Mine came in the mail today and I'm impressed with the quality of materials they used considering the low price

Cool! Are you going to do a build thread on yours too?

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This weekend I had another outing with the M.Rage. I ran into some small handling issues, which were easily solved.

For a start, the back end was very loose on corner-entry. Adding a bit more droop solved this. There was too much weight transfer to the front of the car, lifting the rear wheels. At this point my cornering speeds increased to such a point that the whole thing started traction rolling. I have a set of anti-roll bars to stop the body roll, but I'll have to work out how to install them as they (in good Chinese fashion) came without instructions. xD

The traction rolling, thusly, was solved using the trusted TT01-method; a thin coating of CA on the outside walls of the tires. This prevented the sidewalls of the tires tucking under and flipping the car, instead allowing the wheels to slide and push a bit. This introduced some understeer, but this is far more desirable than having the car flip itself end over end.

This introduced a new problem, namely that when the grip came up the whole car would tilt up on two wheels. This was gentle enough that with a quick flick of the fingers I could correct for it. I hope that the anti-roll bars solve this, but if not I'll take away some droop overall to limit weight transfer to the outside of the corner.

Things to try next time:

- Install the anti-roll bars
- Fix the homebuilt front bumper so I can run the Mini Cooper-body shell
- Stop it lifting both inside wheels in the long sweeper.
 

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Right, long-time overdue update.

I've basically stopped the traction rolling. The thicker ARBs helped a lot in keeping the car planted. I've given up on trying to fashion a bumper for the Cooper shell, and resolved into using the Not-Quite-A-Swift shell for now.

And when I say "I", I really mean my wife. She's grown quite fond of it, and a fun sidestep from her foam-clad F104X1.

One thing I have found is that the ball ends develop a large amount of slop in quite a short period. I'm now replacing all of them with Tamiya 5mm Short adjusters (both low friction and regular ones). Those seem to last well on the TT, and should be reliable in this car as well.

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Again, long time no update because....well, the car has been dead-reliable. It's quick, can punch above its weight class easily (knocking on the rear bumper of a fully-fledged TC running a stock 17.5t brushless motor and then staying there for lap after lap), and it keeps responding well to setup changes just like it did when new. 

A couple of things, should you want to buy one:
- Do it! They're cheap enough to warrant a go.
- Replace the ball ends and ball connectors. The stock ones are soft, and while this makes for easy assembly this does mean they develop slop easily. I replaced them with Tamiya 5mm Low-Friction ball cups, I love how they work on the TRF
- The body shell's slowly falling apart, but with nearly every week being out on the carpet that doesn't really surprise me. The amount of material above the wheel arches means it does retain its shape and doesn't 'roll over its own nose' like a battered TC shell will
- HobbyKing is spotty when it comes to parts. Sometimes they'll have everything in stock, and other times things will be backordered for weeks. I ordered 5 sets of C-hubs and 2 sets of steering knuckles just to be safe. (And really, the parts are something like $1-$2 per set. So in the end getting a large quantity won't set you back as much as you'd think.)

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Gooney I'm just commenting on this so it flags to the top and I can find it again...... I could well be in the market for one of these, do you reckon my chrome painted TBG McLaren F1 shell will fit on it? I've got a thread going in the General section about calling all M Chassis owners - ha, I might have to dive away from Tamiya though to get a chassis to fit this shell to.

Anyway, are you still enjoying it, do you want to sell it???!!!!

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Well, I'm still very much enjoying this car. I haven't given it enough driving time lately as I've been busy prepping my racing cars. My verdict still stands when it comes to the pro's and cons of this car. Parts availability has been improved by HobbyKing somewhat, to the point where parts are usually available, just not from a local warehouse.

The only thing I would have liked are more people running this thing, so we could set up a race class for them. Touring Car guys don't want us, as the smaller wheels mean lower top speeds (and classes are usually governed by a maximum FDR), and the M-chassis guys don't want us because...well...this is easily twice as quick in capable hands.

As for selling it..well... this car's always in my bag as a sort of backup runner on normal track days. Should the Really Expensive Touring Car Made of Speed and Carbon break (which, despite it being a TRF, is always a possibility), or if the TT01E decided to fall over and wither (this actually happens less frequently than you'd think for such a cheap car), then this car can always be used to annoy faster cars with. It takes the same batteries as the TT and TRF, and with the light weight and small size you can pretty much stuff it into a spare pocket in your pitbag. 

While the chassis is really low, the issue lies with the front shock mount. This is higher than the front tires, and on your body the fenders actually bulge upward a bit and the hood is lower than the tires. That means this won't fit.

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Your bleak assessment of my Bodyshell fitting this chassis have barely dented my appeal for either my body shell or this chassis... it will still fit all those desirable ABC bodies.

I saw the spare parts are mostly in stock, what would be beneficial to stock pile?

Why did you have to mark one side of the car chassis with the red dot again?

And have to got Tamiya part numbers for the ball joints you replaced... how many need replacing on the car?

Pity your Tamiya Mini Cooper shell won't fit, I was thinking to get the Tamiya body mounts for it too if I bought this car to run other shells. 

Lastly, does it come with 4 universals as I saw those in n the parts lists but not sure if they were stock or upgrade parts?

Sorry so many Q's, I always try to learn a bit about a car before deciding to buy... but sometimes that just confuses me too much and puts me off aswell!

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No problem. 

Stuff to stock:
- Diff outdrives. I worn through the rears fairly quickly. What I did is I opened up the slots a bit with my Dremel, and got a spare set of diff blades from my TRF. This distributes the load a bit better and the cups have yet to wear further.
- Steering knuckles and C-hubs. Standard crash parts. Get a set of steering bushings too, because the moment a C-hub breaks they go AWOL.
- Suspension arms. I broke one in a crash. Don't think you'll need them immediately, but it's something I broke.
 

Also, hopups to get:
- Steering rail bearings. Stock are bushings, and while they work, they can bind. Bearings make the steering system work a lot better. Be careful not to overtighten them and squish the bearings.
- Anti-roll bars. Stops most of the body roll.
- Tamiya-style front body posts, so the body post positions match up with an M-chassis. Doesn't matter much for your initial build, but makes sharing bodies between this and an M-chassis a lot easier.

It's a good little car, but require a careful touch when building as the manual isn't 100% correct. Some things require a bit of creativity (see notching the battery hold-down bar), or other parts (my spur gear solution). 

I put a red dot on the side of the gear cases to indicate on which side the diff adjustment bolt is. It comes with two ball diffs, which can be adjusted for tightness. That's done through a bolt going through the center of the diff, and in order to get to it you need to remove one of the drive shafts. Because I'm a idiot I kept forgetting which side that was, making something which is essentially a quick adjustment double the effort. 

The Cooper shell fits, but I had to fabricate a new front bumper as the stock bumper will stick out from under the Cooper's grill. That...didn't go well, and after two hits the whole front bumper broke off. (Hint: Don't make it out of GRP)

The universals are stock. :)

Ball joints number? Errr.... the 5mm adjusters. I used the gray ones as...well, they're stock on the TRF and are from the parts pile. I suppose the black ones work just as well. 

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Thank you, this is on my list to buy, right after I get the ABC Gambado FWD Mini... that will then make 4 x FWD M chassis cars and at that point I'll sell one of my M03's and then it's M Rage time - I'm sure I'll fancy a 4WD M chassis then and this is hard to beat for value.

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Quick update, just to say...well... there's not much to say. :P

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I've had the car for a year now, racing it off and on as a backup car in case the TRF or TT breaks at the track. My wife's had it for a while, and absolutely loved it.

Last night we were at the track, and the Touring Car group was swamped so I decided to go with the M-chassis guys and have a more relaxed time there. The M.rage did not disappoint. Despite receiving only minimal care and maintenance (really, a good dusting and a quick check if everything is still properly attached is about it), it ran beautifully. It's quick, on-par with a well-driven M07, but much easier to handle and controlled than a 2WD car. Afterwards a few guys came to check it out, as they simply couldn't fathom a SWB M running this well. (Our track favors MWB, SWB is just too twitchy)

In terms of breakages, not much. Earlier this year I noticed the rear drive cups starting to wear, but I notched them and am now using TRF diff blades on the output shafts. This seems to have stopped any wear on those parts. I broke 1 or 2 c-hubs (blame the borders!), and that's about it. It seems to be going through tires a little faster than a touring car, but they wear more evenly than those of an 'actual' M-chassis so you can just replace all 4 at the same time.

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Grip roll is a continuing issue, but a coat of CA on the sidewalls of the front tires keeps it in check. I'd love to get the chassis set up in such a way that it's no longer needed, but with the high CoG and tippy body shell I doubt that's possible. Compared to a Tamiya M I still get away with less CA, so I'm still calling it a win. :D

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Case in point. Pro-tip. CA is smelly and horrible.

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The other M-guys still share their track reluctantly with my car. Yes, it's an M in size, but really, it goes like a touring car.

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(Also, Hi @No Slack! :D )

 

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As the old not-a-Suzuki was starting to look a bit battered, I decided to get a new body shell for it. I'm on a mission to hunt down touring cars with it, and I feel the thing that's costing me tenths right now is the rather high body shell, making the car a bit roly-poly. Fortunately, there are a few companies making race-inspired body shells for M-chassis'.

As this car is a short-wheelbase M (210mm), the choices are a bit limited. Since Tamiya no longer seems to produce the venerable Mini Cooper body shell (in all its variants), I've been forced to look elsewhere. So I came up with this:

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This is a Blitz C30. Instead of a totally-not-a-Suzuki, I'm now running a totally-not-a-Volvo, in the only color that any properly fast Volvo should ever be; Polestar Blue.

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Since those generic shells usually don't come with any decals besides head- and taillights I dug into my stash and turned it into a WTCC-esque car, inspired by thisLOGO_WTCC_VolvoC30_30Dahlgren_2011_Front

I'll have to take some better pics tomorrow, as the blue (PS3) really is quite vibrant.

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So, the new body shell really helps to stop the traction rolling. Plus, having an actual rear spoiler makes the rear a lot more stable in the fast sweepers.

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It's now quite capable in holding its own against touring cars, and is at home running in their class. Which is funny, since by looking at it you'd think it's ridiculously underpowered and outgunned. It's not. As the evening progressed I tried a few setup variations, and re-tightened both ball diffs. Especially tightening the front helped a lot with corner exit, where first it would wash out slightly. Now it keeps a neat line through the bends, and can out-turn most TCs. If I manage to stick a nose in between their doors and the apex, 9 times out of 10 I'll be able to keep a sharper line on exit and pull away.

In short, this thing is hilarious to drive. I made a bigger front bumper to suit the totally-not-a-Volvo body shell, and I feel that might help with absorbing crash damage too.

I do need to get new tires though, the front ones are starting to peel away on the inside... High-traction + high cornering speeds eats tires.

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First actual breakage? Yes, unfortunately.

As the universals included on this car are a bit simple in their design, there's not much holding the pin in aside from a single grub screw. This, obviously, is far from ideal, and why most other manufacturers switched to using a ring clip to keep the pin in place.

Of course, this problem revealed itself last weekend. The car suddenly stopped, and rotated around its left side. I figured something must have caught the body shell or something, and carefully reversed out. A small bump later, and the car was back on track (literally).

That bump was the pin in the universal launching itself through the front steering knuckle and into Narnia.

The steering knuckle has a gouge in it, but I think it's still serviceable. If it breaks it breaks and I'll replace it then. The pin, fortunately, is the same size as the wheel hex pin and was easily replaced. Someone gave me a tip to slip a bit of shrink tubing over the universal to stop the pin from launching out again (along with a bit of threadlock on the thing, obviously)

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Perfect!

It's a tight squeeze in the rear hubs, but it fits and rotates freely. It might even help to keep out some of the crud.

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(Honestly, I have no idea if cross-posting a video from FB works or not. If not, let me know)

Here's to prove that little Basher is still up-and-at-them. In above video you can see it nipping at the heels of my dad's car, the black and white car. It's an Xray T4, with a 17.5t brushless running on 2S.

My car's the blue one. That's my BSR Racing M.rage 4WD M-chassis with a 27t brushed stock motor, also running on 2S. Now sporting a set of (badly-needed) fresh tires. Hence the insane traction. :P

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Well, still running the car semi-regularly. It's a great thing to have next to a 'proper' TC, and the low maintenance I have on it means more time to drive it. (Or to work on the TRF, my other track beasty)

I have an old Mini Cooper Racing body shell left over from an M05 I once owned. It's a little scratched but still very servicable. I found it again while clearing out some unrelated things, and hey presto:

(And yes, those are actual, moving googly eyes. :D )

bashermini1.jpg
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I'm already using the other body mounts which gives me the holes in the same location as the Tamiya M-chassis cars, so nothing needed changing there. The only thing I had to alter was the front bumper. The car comes with a large foam TC-style bumper, which obviously doesn't fit under the Mini shell. So I ordered a spare front bumper (a whole €4 including shipping! Ooohh) and cut off a bit to make it so that it would fit under the shell but still provide a little protection. I added the two posts. Those interlock with a bit of foam I put on the inside of the body shell. It's not great, but it's all I could do in the limited space.


bashermini6.jpg
bashermini7.jpg

 

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Long looong loooooong overdue update:

I believe the Basher has died. The last time out it suddenly swerved out of control, had a nasty crash, and ended up at the back of the closet. I took it out today, seeing what's up with my little guy, and found the chassis plate has cracked from the servo hole all the way to the side of the chassis, not only making it impossible to mount a servo, but also leaving the chassis very floppy. 

And of course, 6 years after the fact, spares are all but unavailable. Not sure what to do now....

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As it's just to bash around and not compete could you glue the crack and reinforce the chassis with thin layers of woven "CF" and epoxy glue? If you now someone with a CNC mill and you have a CF plate of the right thickness you can have a new one made... or maybe (wishfull thinking) Tamiya finaly makes a readily available (not limited edition) 4WD M-chassis car.

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