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toyolien

TD-4 Super Avante. New Off Road Buggy from Tamiya?

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I'm at work all day so missed the live video.

What's the Tamiyaclub consensus; thumbs up or thumbs down??

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Up imo. 

yeah it’s a bit silly and has issues, but that’s very Tamiya and will be a lot of fun to work with imo, plenty of scope to put your own stamp on it.

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@toyolien It varies. I like it and it gets a thumbs up from me.

But then I think the SRB's are the best handling RC cars ever. Best here meaning most pleasing and enjoyable for me. So hey! What do I know.

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Well I for one think it looks fantastic and I'm definitely up for one👍 who care about sloppy steering and love or hate paint scheme and all the rest of the design qurks🤷‍♂️ this is tamiya and that's what I like even if don't come in the white box.......please tamiya let's have a white box?

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Well we know how tamiya love its quirky design. From first sight, it looks to be a strong kit, reinforced plastic, beefy arms, little worried bout the rear shocktower though.

It has option to gear diff -cmiiw-, that most of us preferred for offroad/bashing or for its less maintenance, too. Now all we need to know about the drivetrain, and motor heat problem.

My first impression is i like it, hopefully the price is affordable. If i bought one, im gonna paint it full green and christened its name: Tamiya Bullfrog

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2 hours ago, Badcrumble said:

Given the different mounting points on the arms, front and rear, I wonder if there might be a future release with outboard suspension and a revised steering arrangement? It might make battery access slightly easier.

Changing to lateral battery placement would solve a couple of problems:

1) steering servo to be placed in the conventional position and use a simpler linkage.

2) Improved access for battery removal.

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I think I would have designed this slightly differently:

  • Provide regular 2.2" wheels and tires instead of the proprietary stuff.  The Avante MkII wheels and dual block K tires would have been just fine.
  • Provide the softer springs from the Durga kit; the suspension looks way too stiff in the running video
  • Provide metal gear diffs instead of ball diffs; the majority of target consumers want less internal maintenance and the option for more power
  • Reconfigure the electronics
    • Mount the servo under the IFS
    • Provide a stopper so the battery tray can accept shorty LiPos
    • Retain the ESC tray with clips instead of screws to access the shorty LiPo more easily
  • I can't see the motor setup yet, but I'd want to have a mount for a fan to force some cooling like the TA06
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Is it me or does the TD4 look like a horse’s head reminiscent of the Frog???

Im a thumbs up on the chassis so far, but down on the body. 

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Body is horrid, chassis and underneath it with all the reinforced plastic looks promising. Definitely will not be cheap, look at the dn01 which was 2wd and reinforced plastic. It was $250ish before tamiyausa blew them out. We will probably see the super avante sometime in 2023 and spares in 2025. Still waiting (patiently) for my top force evo, so to be honest i can give two ****s about this car

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Unless i missed it no one mentioned it actually has hex screws, congrats tamiya 

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I seriously want to know what they were smoking when designing that steering and battery retainer. As @Blista said, it makes the XV-01 battery tray look easy to access. I don't see why they didn't try a similar steering setup as most normal 4wd buggies or went with a similar setup to the Traxxas E-Revo if clearance was the major issue. I guess it's all part of the tamiya charm we all love.

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14 minutes ago, Bash said:

I seriously want to know what they were smoking when designing that steering and battery retainer. As @Blista said, it makes the XV-01 battery tray look easy to access. I don't see why they didn't try a similar steering setup as most normal 4wd buggies or went with a similar setup to the Traxxas E-Revo if clearance was the major issue. I guess it's all part of the tamiya charm we all love.

At a guess the choice to go midship mount motor and longitudinal battery, neither of which the E-revo is. They also seemingly wanted to keep it low slung and compact, again not compatible with that sort of design.

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Would you be happier if they copied the RC10 B4.2? 
 

A few years ago, Tamiya was accused for lack of innovation. Then they released the M chassis concepts, TA07/TB05,  TC-01, TA08. Now we have TD-4.  Do all of these have quirks, absolutely.  Are there work arounds? Yes, that’s what the hobby is about.

Access to battery is far from ideal. My solution, 2 grub screws and thumb nuts to secure. Use them on my F1 and M06 for battery access.

Steering pieces being sloppy, I have yet to met a non TRF kit that didn’t need shimming. It’s also an opportunity for blue TRF hop ops = $, which is what Tamiya is in business for.

Positives I see.. quality chassis, quality suspension arms, adjustable roll centres. All good things that we haven’t seen in prior buggies, save TRF / Zahak 

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I'm just happy they did something new. Am I going to get one of these? Probably not, but you never know. ;)

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Don’t know if I’ll ever buy one, but the running video pretty much has me sold on considering it!

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I wonder if it will fit a shorty lipo?  Could then squeeze the receiver or an esc in front of the battery and save pivoting the shocks to swap the battery?  Either way, I like it!  

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I could see past the ugly wheels, they can be changed.

The ugly paint, it's only paint.

The plastics look like modern race buggy quality, which is good.

But having watched the battery access, I'm not impressed , Tamiya still haven't excepted that lipo won the 'betamax vs VHS' battle ,and that you don't want to strip the car, especially steering and load carrying shock points, every time you want to remove the battery for charging,  big thumbs down from me on that one...😥

 

(Copied the battery removal link off facebook)- 

 

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1 hour ago, matisse said:

At a guess the choice to go midship mount motor and longitudinal battery, neither of which the E-revo is. They also seemingly wanted to keep it low slung and compact, again not compatible with that sort of design.

That's a good point. I just had another look at the chassis and I still think they probably could have done something more conventional, but it seems like having a super low and narrow chassis was the main priority. 

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1 hour ago, Raman36 said:

 

Access to battery is far from ideal. My solution, 2 grub screws and thumb nuts to secure. Use them on my F1 and M06 for battery access.

I thought of that solution but that is not going to work, if you put grub screws in the chassis and clap down the whole front suspension then its under an angle and not straight above the grub screws, so there is now way you can push the grub screws  trough the holes.

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Here's what worries me most about that battery placement: I'd build the car, decide I really do like the looks of it in person (still on the fence from photos/videos), run it once, get frustrated with getting the battery in/out, set it on a shelf, and resent having spent the money on a car that's too much of a hassle to actually drive.

The battery is the thing that gets removed the most on an RC car. It should never require more than undoing a couple of clips or velcro straps. What were they thinking?

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1 minute ago, markbt73 said:

Here's what worries me most about that battery placement: I'd build the car, decide I really do like the looks of it in person (still on the fence from photos/videos), run it once, get frustrated with getting the battery in/out, set it on a shelf, and resent having spent the money on a car that's too much of a hassle to actually drive.

The battery is the thing that gets removed the most on an RC car. It should never require more than undoing a couple of clips or velcro straps. What were they thinking?

For me the same, I run all my cars on the beach, then change a battery, if you drop that tiny screw in the sand you never are going to find it again, I did not liked it on the xv-01 but this is more worse.

I had a lot of tamiya cars and stil own some, even defend the brand on other forums, but this is why my last 4  rc cars that I bought are no tamiya, and that I l become less interested in tamiya cars.

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I've come to the conclusion that I want to like this kit more than I actually do.  It's probably because there's no other Tamiya option other than the TT02B or a re-release.  It's not awful, there's actually a lot of positives and I hope it ends up being popular.  A one make race series with a few different bodies would look be fun to watch.  I have my hopes that it's modular enough for a 2WD release (with more conventional steering please!).

RCKicks gives a good review of it and mirrors a lot of my thoughts/concerns.  There's also a couple of photoshopped paint schemes shown in it which help considerably.

 

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On 6/23/2021 at 6:19 AM, toyolien said:

Tamiyablog.com seems to think it shows some design similarities to the 80s Super Dragon Tornado. I so hope it's not another cheapo character buggy. 

Does-the-coming-Tamiya-TD4-chassis-desig

Spot on apparently!  After some investigation, this manga includes Taki San back in the day.  I'm sure the art-imitates-life is now full circle with life imitating art.

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Remember when we all thought it was absolutely vital to be able to change the battery in a mobile phone. And then we all thought the same of a laptop. 

Is the thinking here that the battery should be LiFe and it just lives in the car?

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Maybe @Howards , I like the theory but the plug is buried down the side of the battery. Not sure how you would access it without undoing the steering. It is all very compact under that body!

Screenshot_20210626-0922142.png

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