essential upgrades for the tt02?

[Uranium]

hey all, i just ordered a tt02, and i was wondering what are all the basic mods i should do. i've already gotten an aluminum propeller shaft and aluminum propeller joints. what else would you guys suggest i do to it? by the way, it's my first kit if that matters.

[Theibault]

Bearings if you haven't got those already. Otherwise, build it and have fun. You can always add things later like universal joints, metal steering upgrade, etc.

[Juggular]

First of all, welcome to Tamiya Club!

Ball bearings are a must.  They allow you to run the car 15-20% faster without doing anything.  And it's rather difficult to replace them once it's built.  So if you haven't gotten the bearings, it's great that you asked.  You can find 5x11x4mm bearings for about 20 cents a piece on ebay.  8x12x4mm bearings for about 80 cents a piece, and 5x10x4mm bearings for 50 cents a piece.  Or you can just buy a packaged set for little more.  "Rubber shielded" will give you the most life.  Bearings will give you 10% more run-time too.  Imagine what they could do for Dynahead with 70+ bearings... 

Aside from that, it's up to you.  Theibault saying "you can add things later" is very reasonable.  Because everybody is different.  If you asked, "what would you change about Jennifer Lawrence?" to 100 plastic surgeons, you'll get 100 different opinions.  You, being your own doctor, will decide what to do with your TT02.  You will have to drive it to see what jumps at you.  It could be power, steering, tires, the latency of your radio, or servos, etc, etc.  Or you might just want some "bling factor" of having shiny parts.  

If you want the best motor for the least money, the Sport Tuned motor would cost you about $17 delivered.  It's been around forever, but it's better than Torque tuned, Lightly tuned, and GT tuned.  If you want to go beyond that, we are talking about brushless motors.  However, even after 24 cars, I did not upgrade the motor in my M06, simply because I haven't had an on-road car for a while.  All it has are new shocks. 

If your TT02 comes with friction shocks, oil shocks would have the single greatest impact on traction (aside from tires, but Tamiya tires are good).   Below are Yeah Racing 55mm shocks, but they are a bit tricky to build.  I kept the Tamiya springs. Yeah Racing springs are too stiff to be useful for M06.  Also I drained the oil for the front.  Friction from the o-rings and plastic guides were enough for the feather-light front, which doesn't even have the weight of the servo.  Piston bore was too tight, I had to drill some.  Because of these minor challenges, I would recommend Tamiya shocks.  

If you are going to build more than 1 car, I would recommend plastic-safe Teflon grease too.  Labelle 106 Teflon (Labelle 206 for outside application) is designed for plastic gears of model trains.  But if you put a dab on anything and wipe away (because you only need molecular coating), that thing will stay slick for a long while.  High-end cars will have pillow balls to keep the arms swinging with less friction.  But you can reduce friction on everything with $12 grease.  If you are going to build just one, it's hardly worth the money. 

 

[TurnipJF]

In addition to the bearings and shocks already mentioned above, I'd recommend a steel pinion. The stock soft alloy one wears out fast, which in turn accelerates wear to the spur gear. 

[nbTMM]

Bearings and CVA (oil filled) shocks are definitely the first 2 things to get if you don't already have them.

Mount the front upper suspension arms backwards which gets you about 10deg of caster which will help with high speed stability. If using the standard fixed length steering links you may want to add a spacer between the arm and front upright since the upright is now tilted backwards and this will introduce some toe. There are some plastic spacers that are perfect for this included as spare parts with the CVA shocks. You'll need a longer screw to account for the spacer - M3 screws will thread into the standard plastic holes if you don't have tamiya screws in the correct lengths. Grease the plastic balls in the front suspension arms to prevent wearing the balls out (instruction manual doesn't indicate to put grease on them). 

Adjustable (turnbuckle) upper suspension arms will give you camber adjustment front and rear. A little camber (~1-2 deg) will give you more grip around corner but less grip on the straights, and possibly some uneven tyre wear. The standard plastic lower arms are fine. Cut the bump stops off the rear uprights and lower arms (little rectangular tabs near where the parts meet) to allow the wheels to droop lower and stay in contact with the ground over big bumps. 

Add some 5mm shims and aluminium wheel hexes (the type with a grub/set screw) to remove the wheel axle slop and make them run true - plastic wheel hexes often result in wobbly wheels in my experience. Hexes with the grub screw also don't annoyingly fall off with the axle pin when you remove the wheels. If the diffs have side to side movement then 8mm shims will sort them out - the standard plastic gear diffs usually don't need this.

Experiment with AW grease in the gear diffs. For a road car put lot of AW in the front diff and just a tiny bit in the rear diff. For a drifter do the opposite. You can just swap the entire diff assemblies front to rear to change the cars handling once you have them AW'ed.

Front universal drive shafts will allow more steering lock. You can cut the lock stops off the front uprights and front lower suspension arms to get more lock, however this will make it easier to break things if crashed.

One last thing which I don't think the manual mentions is to put some thread locker (e.g. loctite 243) on the screws holding the motor to the motor mount. Otherwise they will come loose over time and that will cause your spur and pinion gears to get chewed up. Some loctite on the servo screw will also be needed if you have a servo with a metal output spline. 

[Nicadraus]

Congrats on the first kit! Like others have mentioned, bearings, oil filled dampers (aluminum preferably), turnbuckles (for easy adjustments), universal shafts (prevents them from fying out). There are generic rubber sealed bearings. A set of 10 pieces cost me around $5 only. There are also cheap aluminum adjustable threaded dampers from Yeah Racing (already mentioned by Juggular) and 3Racing.

Here are the bearing sets I got. I've used them on my FF01 and FF03 while I also got  more for my CC-01.

[Nicadraus]

Here's a set of 65mm dampers that I got for $6/pair. I sntalled them on my TC4 which will be used for rally set up. Although I used the stock springs that came with the plastic dampers of the TC4. Because the springs that came with the aluminum damper is too hard.

 

 

[adriandr]

Just want to add something crucial to this old thread. If you will be a running your car in a racetrack, the most important upgrade that you should get is a Rear Upright C-Hub with a 2 to 3 degree toe-in. I would put this above everything else even the ball bearings. It's because the TT-02's rear toe is almost neutral leading to uneven power delivery in your rear wheel (desynchronized wheel rotation). This results to losing your tail which becomes noticeable when you are exiting a corner to straight line. A rear wheel toe-in puts the power delivery of each wheel to the center resulting to a synchronized wheel rotation. If you plan to survive in the track without breaking a thing, then get this.