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Jason1145

Tamiya Wheelie cars for a 3yr old child?

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I love the idea of a Lunchbox for customability.  Parma make a lexan Lunchbox body but it's not always easy to source in the UK.  Naturally doesn't look as good as the Tamiya body but should survive crashes better and has lower weight for better handling (= less rolling).

Also as other say you can add weight to the tray under the rear bed.  You can probably mod it to fit a shorty LiPo there, then you save the weight of the underslung battery too.  That should keep you wheelying with a slower motor installed.

It's also worth considering a better wheelie bar.  The stock bar makes it a bit unstable.  Sometimes mine would pop up and roll over sideways.  You can fabricate a wider wheelie bar using aircraft wheels to add stability.  Same goes for the WR02 cars too.

My daughter is only 2 but yesterday she had loads of fun watching my G6-01 Truck of Many Wheels project bomb around the garden.  She's too little to have a play with it yet but I've promised I'll get her a GF-01 dump truck when she's older.  We have a lot of pebbles in our garden and she loves to pile them up in the back of her vintage 80s Tonka dump truck.  I figure she could have lots of fun piling them in a Tamiya truck then driving it around to dump them out somewhere in a year or two.  GF-01 with 4x4 power should handle the slopes on the garden a bit better too.

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The Dump Truck is a great choice, doubles up as a bucket and it would be really good on the beach. 

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Update - You know you have a problem when you get mixed up as to what NIB kits you actually still have!

I went to storage today to look at my Lunchbox only to find its turned into a Pumpkin.. or I never had a Black Lunchbox and it was the MP all along... that makes more sense.

Soooo this Midnight Pumpkin will be my car of choice to build now... but I still want to fit a pink Lunchbox shell, does it just need different body posts to fit?

This kit came with a black Sport Tuned motor lol... typical I need to be slowing it down from stock not making it faster so that will be replaced with a silver can to start with.

Great idea on adding weight on the rear shelf, will slow it down a bit too ;)

Thanks for the offer @Grumpy pants for the WW2 but I'm sold on the pink Lunchbox now.

 

Last question, can both the white and black Lunchbox shells be painted over just as easily?

 

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2 hours ago, Jason1145 said:

Last question, can both the white and black Lunchbox shells be painted over just as easily?

Shouldn't be any different for the black one as far as I know. It's cheap to buy too as I'm sure you've noticed.

There's a reason I run mine with the black shell lol! I didn't paint it either so the scratches don't show *quite* as much.

It should paint like any other shell though whether you like to sand and prime etc or just give the shell a good clean and slap it on.

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2 hours ago, Jason1145 said:

Last question, can both the white and black Lunchbox shells be painted over just as easily?

If you want to paint a lighter colour, you can shoot the body with a light-coloured primer first.  I'm not sure if Tamiya's fine white primer will give sufficient coverage from a single can (IME it's very good paint but expensive and doesn't go very far).  For hard bodies I usually use Halfords rattle cans, they sell plastic primers in white and grey.  The colour can will tell you what colour primer to use for best results.

If you paint a black body in a light colour then any scratches will show through black and be more obvious, but otherwise I wouldn't worry about it.

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Cheers guys.... I'm going to try and get this Truck made in super quick time... talk about project queue jumping lol, this wasn't even on the radar this time last week... it's been in storage for 8-10 months!

buuXucY.jpg

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That’ll be fun! Couple of 3 year olds and a 2 y/o had heaps of fun with my pink  CW-01 Unimog on the beach over Easter. I am impressed with the durability of it and the handling  improvement of the AMPro wide heavy duty front suspension arms. A 5000 mAh nimh battery lasted a very long time.

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That's cool James glad to hear it, speaking of Nimh batteries is there any way to test them to see if they still hold charge other than physically running them in an RC as intended lol?!

I recently ran a 3300Mah Nimh in my Blackfoot which stopped after 5 minutes... looking back now it must be because I had it set in lipo mode and it went into lvc duh! That would explain why the RC suddenly came to a complete stop and not the expected gradual slow down of a Nimh battery, does that sound right?

 

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Look forward to seeing your pumpkin built.

maybe it’s possible to measure battery discharge rate without complicated equipment? Too technical for me though! Do ESC have a battery type setting?

The kids enjoyed chasing & being chased by the RC as much as they did driving it. 

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The table-02s can manually set to run either

5 hours ago, Jason1145 said:

That's cool James glad to hear it, speaking of Nimh batteries is there any way to test them to see if they still hold charge other than physically running them in an RC as intended lol?!

I recently ran a 3300Mah Nimh in my Blackfoot which stopped after 5 minutes... looking back now it must be because I had it set in lipo mode and it went into lvc duh! That would explain why the RC suddenly came to a complete stop and not the expected gradual slow down of a Nimh battery, does that sound right?

 

Nooooooo no no no!

The table-02s only has Nimh battery mode but it can switch between brushed and brushless motors

Youcan run a 2s lipo but you must have an LVC to stop it getting drained too much.

Thats right I think.

Now to wonder why my Nimh battery didn't last!

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2 hours ago, Jason1145 said:

The table-02s can manually set to run either

Nooooooo no no no!

The table-02s only has Nimh battery mode but it can switch between brushed and brushless motors

Youcan run a 2s lipo but you must have an LVC to stop it getting drained too much.

Thats right I think.

Now to wonder why my Nimh battery didn't last!

Do you have a charger that will do a cycle charge? You can often revive nimh batteries that way. It's a good thing to do for maintenance anyway.

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1 hour ago, Biz73 said:

Do you have a charger that will do a cycle charge? You can often revive nimh batteries that way. It's a good thing to do for maintenance anyway.

I don't think so, will have a check on the specs cheers

On to the build.... this isn't worth a proper build in the Builds section so it can go here, starting with making a mess out the box

 

HelZk80.jpg

First thing was to replace the yellow wheels with black ones..... and then I had the idea to paint the yellow wheels pink too so that's will be done at the end.

UVKoELc.jpg

The manual starts with having all the electrics talking to eachother which gets the servo centred as it the next step

TBLE-02s with silver can and a standard stock servo with a 2.4g radio set... lovely

RrYlIKi.jpg

avm9aUc.jpg

Electrics all installed and body posts mounted.... these are the MP ones but I will need to order the Lunchbox ones, luckily they come on the same parts tree as the chrome front bumper for the Lunchie, result.

I won't lie... it took me an hour and a half to get this point haha... I'm not the quickest.

HM4AgnZ.jpg

NO building tonight as footy is on ;p

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2 hours ago, Jason1145 said:

I don't think so, will have a check on the specs cheers

On to the build.... this isn't worth a proper build in the Builds section so it can go here, starting with making a mess out the box

 

HelZk80.jpg

First thing was to replace the yellow wheels with black ones..... and then I had the idea to paint the yellow wheels pink too so that's will be done at the end.

UVKoELc.jpg

The manual starts with having all the electrics talking to eachother which gets the servo centred as it the next step

TBLE-02s with silver can and a standard stock servo with a 2.4g radio set... lovely

RrYlIKi.jpg

avm9aUc.jpg

Electrics all installed and body posts mounted.... these are the MP ones but I will need to order the Lunchbox ones, luckily they come on the same parts tree as the chrome front bumper for the Lunchie, result.

I won't lie... it took me an hour and a half to get this point haha... I'm not the quickest.

HM4AgnZ.jpg

NO building tonight as footy is on ;p

Haha that’s 6 months for me 😳

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I should know better than to do a build in the General Section!

Gearbox done with minimal problems.

aNj70r0.jpg

jCzg3Qi.jpg

Silver can and 13t brass pinion

sxBVofg.jpg

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Now to attach the gearbox to the chassis

9296yw8.jpg

QJKIHLx.jpg

One worrying part I haven't fitted is this little white plastic gear looking bit,  but can't see it listed in the manual either?

LR6W6gY.jpg

 

 

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That gear goes unused. The gear train was originally used in the first Wild Willy, which did use that gear. The Hornet, Lunch Box, Pumpkin, etc. do not. 

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That's a relief.. thanks you, anyone want that part let me know lol

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Keep it in your toolbox. It's handy for scraping grit & grease out of your gears later :) 

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Let my daughter loose with the decals and I think it came out pretty well ....................but ....................mummy  did end up helping the little one who lost interest after 2 minutes of decal applying lol

9iDMzY9.jpg

HPINdH6.jpg

bZ7y3Ld.jpg

S1AlWYI.jpg

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Aaaaaaaaand done, ready for a test outing this weekend if the weather doesn't spoil it ;p

I hate the front wheels at this angle.. any fixes?

laug4CD.jpg

x2aKqd2.jpg

Doesn't look too bad from this angle... so I just need to keep behind it!

zgvuA0e.jpg

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31 minutes ago, Jason1145 said:

Aaaaaaaaand done, ready for a test outing this weekend if the weather doesn't spoil it ;p

I hate the front wheels at this angle.. any fixes?

laug4CD.jpg

x2aKqd2.jpg

Doesn't look too bad from this angle... so I just need to keep behind it!

zgvuA0e.jpg

For a start that front right tyre is on backwards ;)

For the camber issue, there is some rubber tubing in the kit, think it's used for the shocks. Cut a couple of 5-7mm ish lengths of that and put them on the front shock shafts (well screws really), so they sit between the head of the screw and where the screw passes through the chassis.

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Or...even easier, stick a 6mm cable tie round the shaft just under the front shock bolt head.

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Cheers fellas both good ideas and most importantly, cheap n easy to do ;)

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