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Jonathon Gillham

F103 help

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I picked this up today from a big sale of a collection.  There were a lot of immaculate cars that were tempting, but this was all we bought.  I regret not asking if they had a damper they could sell as they must've had some in amongst all the parts.  I paid $150 for it which I think is fair given it doesn't look like its been used and the shell is very nicely done - its the best shell I'll ever own.  Until Jamie ruins it.  The plan is to run this and my TRF102 at his school which is a 5 minute walk away, and take them racing when we can fit in the onroad racing.  Off road takes priority for us (well me, and he's 5 so has no say in the matter).

It came with a silver can that looks brand new and a servo, and the tyres are in pretty good condition.  They may be brittle but other cars had some that couldn't be used at all.  I'll put in a TBLE-02S with the silver can for now, and then probably put my 21.5T Speed Passion from my TA07 into it as I have to replace that with a Reds VX as the club has gone to a spec motor for 21.5T touring.

Anyway, there are a lot of different F103 versions so I'm wondering if anyone *cough* @TurnipJF *cough* can tell me what it is based on the photos.  I don't think its anything special but it has a different top deck and purple motor mount which I haven't seen anywhere before.  Photos below.

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20190406_131603

 

20190406_131545

 

 

 

 

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Love the shell!

I once spent an obscenely long time looking at the ex Senna MP4/8 at the Donnington  Park motor museum, simple & stunningly beautiful imo.

sennamclaren.jpg

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Very nice!

What you have there appears to be a hopped up F103RS. The long upper deck (53186), purple alloy motor mount (53277), turnbuckle tierods (53150) and high torque servo saver (50473) are genuine Tamiya hop-ups.

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9 hours ago, TurnipJF said:

Very nice!

What you have there appears to be a hopped up F103RS. The long upper deck (53186), purple alloy motor mount (53277), turnbuckle tierods (53150) and high torque servo saver (50473) are genuine Tamiya hop-ups.

Great thanks. The ball diff was loose so i've tightened that and it has bearings on the shaft. Is there anything else that I need to check before giving it a run. 

Its weird how you adjust the ball diff using the wheel nut, my TRF102 has the adjuster hidden away. I suppose this way is easier to adjust on the fly.

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With what appears to be a new build, you won't have any wear issues to look out for, so as long as the diff is tightened appropriately, you should be good to go. It is a good, tough chassis.

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8 hours ago, TurnipJF said:

With what appears to be a new build, you won't have any wear issues to look out for, so as long as the diff is tightened appropriately, you should be good to go. It is a good, tough chassis.

How can you tell its a F103RS? And do you know anywhere I can read up on them? The thread on rctech is about 150 pages and too much to trawl through, and rcscrapyard and tamiyabase have basically nothing about them

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Different versions of the f103 have different main chassis plates, motor pods, differentials, front ends and/or servo mounts. It was simply a case of looking through pictures of the different chassis and finding the one which matched the spec of your car.

(Well, actually it was a case of looking through pictures and finding one which matched the spec of one of my cars, which happens to be identical to your car.)

The link I used:

https://tamiyabase.com/chassis/73-f103rs#all-f103-variants

 

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56 minutes ago, TurnipJF said:

Different versions of the f103 have different main chassis plates, motor pods, differentials and servo mounts. It was simply a case of looking through pictures of the different chassis and finding the one which matched the spec of your car.

(Well, actually it was a case of looking through pictures and finding one which matched the spec of one of my cars, which happens to be identical to your car.)

The link I used:

https://tamiyabase.com/chassis/73-f103rs#all-f103-variants

 

Thanks for that.  I tried looking at pictures but the top deck threw me, then I realised its a hop up. Also, they all look pretty similar to me but i'm sure they are quite different to a trained eye. Amazing that the chassis was Tamiya's F1 chassis for 15 years.

The friction damper plate thing is interesting. It seems very loose to me but according to manuals I've found its setup correctly. I'll need to try it out on the netball courts to see how it handles.

It doesn't fit any of my batteries, except the 2 nicds I have from the 90s. The batteries still seem to charge ok and hold a charge so i'll just keep using them. They are older than the car!

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If you want to upgrade to LiPo power, I find that the Core RC rounded lipos are an excellent fit, unlike many others which are a smidgen too long to fit the battery bay.

The friction damper setup on the f103 is a bit tricky to get optimised, as it relies on both the tension of the springs and the consistency of the grease between the plates for adjustment. To add to the complexity, the springs seem to get tired with age, so if your car was built a while ago and the friction damper was tightened to the standard settings according to the manual, the springs may have compressed over time and you might need to tighten it down further to get the same effect. Either that or replace the springs with new ones.

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I should probably just have PM'd you @TurnipJF about this car!

I received some F103 wheels, 51349, which are recommended to mount the Shimizu rubber tyres even tgough the rims are for foams. It looks like the wheels on the car have a washer or something in them which is used to tighten the ball diff, but these don't have anything like that. Am I missing anything here or will these wheels just bolt right on and work?

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12 hours ago, Jonathon Gillham said:

I should probably just have PM'd you @TurnipJF about this car!

I received some F103 wheels, 51349, which are recommended to mount the Shimizu rubber tyres even tgough the rims are for foams. It looks like the wheels on the car have a washer or something in them which is used to tighten the ball diff, but these don't have anything like that. Am I missing anything here or will these wheels just bolt right on and work?

 

The F103 diff is a bit odd in that the thrust bearing assembly is contained within the wheel itself. When changing wheels, you would either transfer the thrust bearing assembly from one wheelset to the other, or if you are likely to need to change wheels in a hurry, buy a thrust bearing assembly (p/n 51346) for each wheelset.

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3 hours ago, TurnipJF said:

 

The F103 diff is a bit odd in that the thrust bearing assembly is contained within the wheel itself. When changing wheels, you would either transfer the thrust bearing assembly from one wheelset to the other, or if you are likely to need to change wheels in a hurry, buy a thrust bearing assembly (p/n 51346) for each wheelset.

Thank you once again, part ordered. I don't want to take the original wheels apart as the tyres are glued. Now I know I will need to order the thrust bearing for each set, not that I expect to buy more sets.

Will they work on my TRF102 with the thrust bearing or will it cause binding or something?

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3 hours ago, Jonathon Gillham said:

Thank you once again, part ordered. I don't want to take the original wheels apart as the tyres are glued. Now I know I will need to order the thrust bearing for each set, not that I expect to buy more sets.

Will they work on my TRF102 with the thrust bearing or will it cause binding or something?

It won't work on the TRF102 with the thrust bearing assembly in place, not due to binding, but rather because the threaded portion of the axle is not long enough to pass through the thrust bearing assembly and still have space to fit the wheel nut. You would need to remove the thrust bearing assembly to use the wheels on the TRF102. 

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