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SuperChamp82

Best TRF Buggy

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This isn’t a thread turning over the obvious differences between chassis 

More, if you had to pick one, and maybe hop it, which would it be, why and which hop ups ?

I know the answer depends a lot of entry class, racing restrictions and budget but treat this as a blank canvas !

If we could race whatever we wanted, however we liked which TRF would we start from then (inevitably) tweak ?

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I like my 201's. Simple and fun chassis. Still seems like a buggy. I have a 501x which is great, but it seems more like a piece of machinery than a car.

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I know nothing about them so will be following this thread. For me it would be one of the 4wd buggies but not sure which one,  probably the shaft drive since they are the most common in buggies.

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If you are talking about a bit of development, the TRF211 is my favourite. Slightly biased because i have onr, but with my laydown transmission upgrade (you can buy it on Shapeways) it is right up there with the modern kits. TRF211 are thin on the ground and very expensive, so you could pick up a 201 and convert from there with an aftermarket chassis plate. It's a lot of fun putting all the parts togethet (in my opinion). I am sure the 4wd buggies are incredibly effective with minimal fiddling though. A couple of guys on TRF Off Road on facebook regularly race TRF511 and TRF503s. 

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The only shaft driven buggy by TRF was the 502.
Not sure hiw good they were, but my understanding is that the geometry on the steering rack was all wrong, so many would substitute in one of the steering assemblies from the 501, 511 buggies.

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I believe Tamiya gave the trf502x to it's team to race at euro and worlds level. This was the last 4wd for the team before tamiya gave up. 

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The TRF503 was developed by Lee Martin. It's a brilliant 4wd chassis.

 

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On 1/31/2021 at 12:21 AM, SuperChamp82 said:

Anyone seen / driven a 411x ? 

Yes, since I have one I've seen it :) Never ran one though, but I'm actually building and preparing a runner.

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In 2WD probably the 201XR / XM - I'm building one at the moment in fact :-) - so maybe I'm biased!

Hop ups wise the Big Bore dampers, weighted front suspension block, and the aluminium rear suspension blocks would be the most important ones for me.

Nice to have would be all of the reinforced plastics / arms, alloy rear hubs, DCJs, vented sipper plates, and the TRF racing steering set.

Though many of these parts - or even standard arms are impossible to get hold of these days (though do come up from time to time).

I would have said 211XMW would have been the best having had my hands on one recently - but the kit was so short lived (Tamiya got out of competition off road shortly after its release) and parts unique to the XMW are very hard to find anywhere so it would be very hard to get and run one of these - they had a unique resin chassis in white, a wider gear case (for gear diff) than the 201XM and the motor was more rearward by about 8mm than the 201XM - wheelbase was also different as well as the orientation of the rear arms.

 

For 4WD the 503 would have been the one for me - not sure it would need any hopups. Probably not as competitive these days as the most modern cars, but when it was released it was very quick (pretty much all modern competition cars other than the CAT L1 Evo are shaft drive clones of one another these days).

 

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