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Watts

New Member, just bought an original Top Force

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Hey Folks,

Just joined the forum this week, was a huge Tamiya fan back in the early 90s when as a kid I bought and built a Manta Ray.  Getting back into it now with two sons of my own as well, and like a lot of Tamiya fanboys have an over-developed affinity for the Top Force :) .  Was browsing eBay the other day and came across one that looks the worse for wear, but a perfect project car to get back into the swing of things.  Before I really knew what I was doing, I bought the **** thing, not sure if I just got ripped off or if it was an okay deal, lol (it was less than £100).  Now comes the hard part of waiting for it get all the way to the UK from Japan.

Plan to restore this one to its former glory then use as a runner, and buy the re-re to be a shelf queen.  Thoughts/comments/roasts welcome :)

Mike

 

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Welcome to the club :) 

I agree with @Novamadcars but at the end of the day the choice is yours mate ;) 

What I will say is, in 3 months time when you have a negative amount in your bank account, have used every friend, relative and click and collect location in a 30 mile radius to sneak every Evo hop up part made under the "home radar" and anodised blue is your new favourite colour, don't say we didn't warn you. :) 

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4 hours ago, jonboy1 said:

What I will say is, in 3 months time when you have a negative amount in your bank account, have used every friend, relative and click and collect location in a 30 mile radius to sneak every Evo hop up part made under the "home radar" and anodised blue is your new favourite colour, don't say we didn't warn you. :) 

Yeah, that is totally my future!  Lol

 

What do you think of the car though, not a bad deal for £100?  Maybe you're right, maybe the re-re will be the runner, we'll see

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Welcome. Looks like a pretty good deal to me, just dirty. My only concern would be if the chassis plate is delaminating as costs for parts can quickly add up. I have a rerelease Top Force with some hopups and it runs beautifully with a Superstock TZ motor on 2S lipo. It feels like it could handle a lot more power but keeping it how 14yo me would have wanted it. Such a good looking buggy

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Yeah, now that you mention it, the chassis does look to as though it might be delaminating.  That's kind of why I was originally thinking to make this my runner, as swapping in new parts doesn't feel to me like "restoring", more like replacing.  We'll see...

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Looks fine to me I've bought a lot rougher for a lot more so if that's what you got for less than £100 happy days;) clean it display it I wouldn't even restore it I think war wounds have a certain charming character (obviously if they are completely wrecked that's different) 

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Thanks for all the input already fellas.  And of course, now that I've spent a little time on it, I have some observations/questions:

1) Is it always hard to find replacement tyres?  Am I looking for the wrong parts or something?  Thought standard Tamiya front/rear tyres wouldn't be much of a challenge...

2) Appears as though the front and rear diffs are brand new.  The car is quite dirty, but the innards are spotless.  That said, as you can see from the pics, parts of the chassis quite discolored - any thoughts what that might be and whether it's, mechanically/structurally speaking, an issue?

3) It appears as though the previous owner has the standard ball diff in the rear, but replaced the front diff with a Manta Ray gear diff - any idea why they might have done that and what effect it would have on the handling?

4) lastly, I've not had much luck with the search function on this, but I'm looking to get an appropriate ESC and servos to get this thing up and running, how do I go about finding out which one is the right one?

 

Cheers guys!

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Tyres are pretty easy to find - type "tamiya square spike" into ebay and you should see loads - same ones are used on neo scorcher, gravel hound, super astutes (rear only)

part numbers are 53008 for the fronts and 53084 for the rears.

a good simple and inexpensive esc would be something like a hobbywing 1060 for a brushed motor. Servos - really depends on your budget. I'd suggest looking at somewhere like modelsport or fusion hobbies to see what they have as a guide. Others on here will I'm sure be able to offer more advice though :)

The discolouration may just be a mix of sun bleaching and general weathering. The darker spots are where the esc and receiver have been stuck down protecting the surface. It's nothing to worry about. You could probably wet sand it all down and polish it all back to a nice even colour.

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Well, you were all correct of course!  About to start a new thread with my now rapidly expanded Tamiya collection, but wanted to update this one from nearly a year ago now.  Of course, the world in general is a very different place, but for me and my family especially.  June of last year we moved 3000 miles to the US, by end of July we lost a family member (not from Covid), and by September moved into a new house, so it's been a bit of a whirlwind to put it mildly.

But anyway, focusing on the positive, spent a good deal of time with my sons cleaning this one up as well as starting a 2017 TF re-re build, so here she is my 1991 Top Force in some intermediate parts of the project as well as how she now stands:

 

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On 3/4/2021 at 5:16 AM, jonboy1 said:

Looks awesome mate ;) 

B)  Thanks mate, got to get out and run it now!

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On the gear diff in the front- I run all of mine with that setup I.e. gear diff front , ball diff rear. Prefer the steering that way.

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