TRF211 3 Gear Laydown

[Ann3x 220]

Problem is that the white grubs up super fast due to the texture.

I agree it looks cool initially tho.

[ThunderDragonCy 7877]

After some advice from a guy on TRF Off Road on Facebook I now have a sideways shorty and electrics mounted to the tub. I have to take off the little tamiya carbon piece from the rear battery hold down due to the battery sitting higher on the chassis ribs, but it all fits.

Bit of a rats nest because it's a borrowed ESC and I need some 4mm connectors on the power leads to get rid of all that stuff. Promising though. Annoyingly my plastic aerial tube is too big for the tamiya alloy antenna post. Never seen this before, but I an using 40mhz radio so could really do with getting a proper whip sorted to stop interference. 

I gave the car a little shakedown and it all works! 

The body is an Azarashi Fascia for the YZ2. I much prefer the shape to cab forward bodies but it doesn't fit all that well around the front. Maybe I could have cut it better. First attempt and flames on a lexan shell too. Not brilliant, but good enough for me and I like the colours.

The gearbox worked great. No weird noises, seemed free running. Handled some full power accelerations from the 4000kv motor. I am running a 25t pinion and 79t spur for a FDR or 8.22 which is about right for 10.5. I can go down to 77t to get a little more body clearance and 8.01 if I want to. Got some rubbing on the body by the spur but I am fairly sure that is because it's pulled out of shape by the battery leads. 90 deg direct soldered 4mm connectors should sort that. 

Need to get some proper wheels and tyres sorted now. The front has a YZ2 12mm hex conversion but all my other 2wd are bearing so i might be up for swapping that with someone who wants rid of their regular bearing front end. The wheels are some 4wd used I picked up off eBay for the db01 before I knew that was 10mm hex (gotta love tamiya axle standards!) but they catch on the uprights. They are clearly designed for slim fronts. Rears are also spares, used wheels/tyres a mate at Tamiya Junkies gave me. It's still pin drive rear but I have some of those on my DN01 and DB01 with fresh minispike2 tyres. I have some slim lo pro cut staggers to try. I usually run mini spike fronts on grass but I will give these a go as I suspect this buggy isn't going to be lacking front end grip!#

[Fabia130vRS 2098]

This looks cool. I want one!

So basically it is a copy of a trf211xm or is it completely new designed?

[ThunderDragonCy 7877]

On 10/12/2018 at 9:26 AM, Fabia130vRS said:

This looks cool. I want one!

So basically it is a copy of a trf211xm or is it completely new designed?

It's a TRF211XM modified to fit a 3 gear laydown gearbox/transmission and shock tower i have designed. Gear case was 3D printed at shapeways, and the shock tower and battery strap are from Fibre Lyte to my design too. Hopefully if it all works I will be able to sell a conversion kit.

[ThunderDragonCy 7877]

Got some battery connectors so soldered then in and tidied up the electrics install. Got the body fitting pretty nicely too. It's a bit gappy at the front but that should cool the ESC now so working out ok.

Still waiting on the slim fronts I need but the used 4wd darts from the spares box fit so I got the nice mini spike rears off my DN01 and gave it the first proper run. 

It's a complete front end grip monster! Grass was damp but turn in was so sharp, and picking up the throttle early just got a lot of wheelspin. Grip rolled a couple of times and struggled to get the power down cleanly. Backed off the punch a little and adjusted the slipper, but I think some heavier oil in the diff would help get the power down more cleanly. It's only got 7k in there. I have some 300k so might mix them up. 

Ended up with quite stiff front springs (DF03 Black which is a little stiffer than Tamiya TRF Blue) which helped. Shocks have 350 oil rear and 400 front. Going to wait until I get the slim fronts and cut staggers before doing too much more setup puzzling, but I think a move to 500 front might be on the cards. 

Nothing broke and everything smooth. Still looking good. 

Slim fronts are arriving Monday. Going to run some more next week and got a track day next Saturday. Looking forward to developing the setup and testing the durability of the parts. 

[Fabia130vRS 2098]

1 hour ago, ThunderDragonCy said:

It's a TRF211XM modified to fit a 3 gear laydown gearbox/transmission and shock tower i have designed. Gear case was 3D printed at shapeways, and the shock tower and battery strap are from Fibre Lyte to my design too. Hopefully if it all works I will be able to sell a conversion kit.

I like this kind of projects, it makes me want to buy a TRF211XM, I wasnt aware, so the TRF211XM is a mid motor design, and yours is a laydown, what is a TRF211XMW then?  I have been into onroad and had only two entry level buggys like DT01 and DF02, Next year, God bless, should be a off road year, rally cars, buggys, maybe also a lunch box.. so I will make my mind up, but this topic is very interesting.

I definitely will keep track on this project to see how the parts will hold, since I got my same ideas fora chassis tub, so would like to know more about the wear of printed parts.

[ThunderDragonCy 7877]

2 minutes ago, Fabia130vRS said:

I like this kind of projects, it makes me want to buy a TRF211XM, I wasnt aware, so the TRF211XM is a mid motor design, and yours is a laydown, what is a TRF211XMW then?  I have been into onroad and had only two entry level buggys like DT01 and DF02, Next year, God bless, should be a off road year, rally cars, buggys, maybe also a lunch box.. so I will make my mind up, but this topic is very interesting.

I definitely will keep track on this project to see how the parts will hold, since I got my same ideas fora chassis tub, so would like to know more about the wear of printed parts.

The TRF211XM is a 4 gear stand-up mid motor. Motor rotates the opposite way to mine and is much more towards the rear of the buggy. Good for loose surface but not so good for high grip. It's all relative though, it's still an amazing buggy. It also has the shocks mounted on the rear of the arms not the front like mine. It's behind the current state of the art in 2wd buggy design so I decided to see if I could bring it up to date.

As for durability, I think for parts like a gearbox it should be ok, but for a while tub is might be more risky. Also expensive. Large parts in 3D print are very expensive. Might be better to consider carbon plates. Fibre Lyte will cut you anything if you send thrm a 2D CAD file. 

[ThunderDragonCy 7877]

I have done a fair amount of running with the TRF211 3GL conversion, so I'm pretty happy with the durability. I didn't have the standard mid motor to compare it to but compared to my rear motor TRF201 its a complete front end grip monster. On astro I seriously considered running harder compound cut stagger slim front tyres. So, with that in mind (and with full disclosure, please note I haven't raced it, nor am I a racer) I have made it available to buy on my Shapeways store. If anyone is up for a go with it, you'll have to contact Fibre Lyte directly to get the carbon parts. Just drop them an email and mention me. 

I have tested it on my TRF211 tub, but it's taken some irreversible modifications to get it on there. There is no reason why it shouldn't fit the aluminium XM/XMW/XR plate as far as I can see from the manuals, but the battery hold down on the XM/XMW doesn't have the front stops of the TRF211XM part so I don't know how the battery plate would get held at the rear. Maybe it's possible to source the TRF211 part. I am talking about part BB36 Battery Stiffener, part number 13450694.

http://shpws.me/QO4B
http://shpws.me/QO4C
http://shpws.me/QO4F
http://shpws.me/QO4A

There's a parts and fasteners list on the details of the products on the Shapeways store.

Here it running at a track day last month

If you are interested and have any questions post up on here. 

Cheers! 

[speedy_w_beans 4272]

Nice project!

[ThunderDragonCy 7877]

Couple of little things on the TRF211 3GL transmission, as a couple of people on here have bought them but not fitted yet, so I wanted to add this information.

Firstly, tub modifications: I mentioned you need to remove both rear battery posts to fit this. You can just see the remains of one of them between the pinion and spur in the first picture. I used a full size hacksaw run lengthways along the tub, and taken off down to the stiffening ribs, not right down to the deck.

The other (final I think!) mod is in the second picture. On the drive side you need to pop a 5-6mm hole in the side of the tub to access the lower motor screw. Means you don't have to lift out the whole transmission every time you adjust or change the pinion, or the end bell timing as I was doing tonight.

 

 

Secondly, setup: As the Yokomo front 12mm conversion I got used off ebay using as very old set of parts (which I can't seem to identify), I couldn't get 5 deg caster blocks for it. So, it got a whole new latest YZ2 uprights and steering arms. This is a super easy mod as the latest Yokomo kit uses 2.5mm pins so you don't have to drill the arms out to 3mm like the original one I had. Anyhow, I have been able to move to 30 deg caster, which has calmed the steering down nicely. I also realised I had got roll centre adjustment around my neck a bit when setting it up, so I ran today with inner camber link balls in the highest position for lowest roll centre, and I pulled the spacers out of the inner front links to raise the front roll centre. This and the caster has really calmed the buggy down. Lots of traction (note the appropriate tyres now though!), and calm front end. I'll have a play with roll centres again after running at the track on Saturday and seeing how it feels with the new setup. Only thing to change now is the rear uprights. Now I've realised what's what with roll centres I've ordered up some XV01 reinforced uprights to replace the stock 201 plastic versions. Should give me plenty of scope to get it just so.

Cheers!