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kontemax

TA02 drift model? - advice request

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Hi guys,

I quit the hobby a long time ago for reasons of time and money but a few days ago a friend gave me an old complete TA02 chassis in bad condition.
The first idea that came to me was to make it a drift model even though I know perfectly well that drift models have specific characteristics.
Since I have no money to spend and there is almost nothing to save from this chassis, I came up with this idea, to spend little and have a car to play with at home.
If necessary then I am willing to cut and heavily modify the model, even I was thinking of making it with a front engine, always 4WD in any case.
Any ideas or advice?
I've never had a drift car.

Max

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Hi Actually I think this kind of shaft drive 4wd is not  good for a drift car. It's better for a street or touring or rally car, BECAUSE ideally, you want a rear overdrive or rwd only to drift. You can achieve this with a belt drive and different sized pulley front to rear. But 4wd drifting looks a bit odd driving. That is why nowadays the drifters go RWD. You can achieve this in the ta02 I guess if you remove the shaft. Then you still have to modify the steering to get more angle. Not sure how much effort that takes in a ta02. I am not sure about the chassis balance then, if it will be Twitchy and you need a gyro then to be able to control it nicely at all.  I wouldn't go front engine bevause then you can build a car from scratch as well and you have all the cons like the drive shaft etc. Bottom line : buy a drift car if you want to drift, I think Sakura makes great affordable ones with the perfect chassis layout for it. I think you will tinker too much, spend too much if you're honest, and in the end still have lots of compromises with the ta02. Not saying the ta02 isn't great! My suggestion is: make it a rally car. They can drive in more places so you don't have to lookout for a driving spot so much, and they can 4wheeldrift too. You can really hoon around and not always spin out, no matter on road, gravel, rough asphalt, dirt, etc etc.... Just Exchange the broken or worn parts of the ta02, make the dampers as long as possible (maybe just by opening and getting the spacers out from under the piston plate, possibly take longer springs from a buggy front shock, get some rally block tires, the new Ford Escort cosworth body, make it white or Ken block livery and have tons of fun! 

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Welcome back Max :) 

@GermanTA03Guy raises some valid points, but here's my take on it:

before we had modern graphite, carbon, alloy countersteer and RWD drift cars to play with, we did all our drifting with older 4wd chassis and plastic tyres.  There's no reason you can't have just as much fun now as we were having fifteen years ago.  You'll be outclassed if you go to a proper drift club, but that's to be expected.

In standard trim, all you need to do is add plastic drift tyres.  4wd touring is easy to drift.  It doesn't look super-realistic, as you will often be drifting with the front wheels straight ahead to maintain the slide - in a real drift car you'd be turning into the drift and controlling the slide with the power to the rear wheels.  On a 4wd, if you turn into the slide, it will tend to pull itself out of the slide.

That's why drift cars moved away from 50:50 (where front and rear wheels turn at the same speed) to countersteer (where the rear wheels turn faster than the front).  The aim with a countersteer car is to get the front wheels rolling at the speed the car moves (sometimes CS drivers put black tape around one front spoke so they can see how fast the wheel is rolling), this means the back wheels will be spinning faster and promoting the slide.  It looks more realistic, as you have to turn into the slide in corners to maintain the angle, but it's hard to master.  It's also tricky with the limited steering lock on a standard chassis, the car might want to slide further than the wheels can steer, which means you will lose control and spin out.  You would need to do fairly extensive mods to a TA02 to get the rear wheels turning faster, and to increase the steering lock.

Moving to front motor is good for weight balance - the old TA03F was a great drift car donor before things went all countersteer.  But I don't know how you'd modify a TA02 to be front motor and still have drive to the rear wheels.  At least with the TA03F you have the option to change pulley sizes to make a countersteer car.  In theory you could make a hybrid using a TA02 gearbox in the back and an FF01 gearbox in the front, then you could change pinion sizes to make a countersteer car, but I think it might be very hard to drive, and still not have enough steering lock.  And dual-motor cars are heavy (I have a few dual motor hybrids and they don't handle well at all on track).

The other choice is RWD.  If you didn't care about the TA02 chassis you could hack out the front gearbox parts that you don't need to reduce weight.  Then you can add lead weight where you need to improve handling.  If you have a carbon chassis you could make new battery mounts to balance the car better or use a lighter shorty LiPo up front.  Because you no longer have front dogbones, you have less restrictions for the steering angle - you can modify your hubs or fit different hubs to increase angle.  Look at the angles possible on some drift cars, and the shape of the steering arms etc, to get an idea of how you can achieve this.  You will definitely need a gyro to control a RWD drift car, but it's how most drift drivers run these days.  A gyro isn't expensive, mine was around 15 eur from RC Mart, they are even built into some receivers now.

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It's sure possible, I was just saying I wouldn't start a drift car with a ta02. Especially if you want to stay on a budget. And I don't like 4wheel drifting. I think 1:10 rwd drifting looks more scale than 1:10 4wd drifting which also has a real life counterpart, but there the differences are bigger to 1:1 somehow. I own several ta03f and know about their drift ability. I just think rally is more versatile and better for having casual fun everywhere without need for a special drift track, flat surface etc. I mean there are pebbles and holes in the street everywhere... . And there is even a rain/dust cover ready to buy that you can put on the ta02 which is great. I have modified a ta03f pro into a proper rally car, which works a treat with long dampers, one way and countersteer mod.... The only thing is keeping the dust out even with my custom fitted lexan undertray. But in the end its your project, do what u like. Maybe I will do what I suggested to you haha... No honestly you got me thinking... But then I'm so much into ta03 stuff, with benefits of having to have only 1 type of spares, I don't wanna start ta02.... But a rally escort would be a nice thing.... Maybe I'll just get such a shell for my ta03f rally.. 

IMG_20211007_135032.jpg

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Given that you've said that you want to

On 10/5/2021 at 11:01 PM, kontemax said:

have a car to play with at home.

and not compete in drifting competitions, I would say that @Mad Ax's suggestion to do what people used to do years ago* would be ideal. It's almost exactly what I did with my own TA-02 about 15-20 years ago, except I just wrapped the tyres with a few turns of black vinyl electrical tape. It has very little grip so you can easily get drifting. Sure it doesn't look exactly like real rear-wheel drive drift cars, but it's still fun to drive.

* aren't there also modern tamiya drift kits that are just regular 4WD touring car chassis with hard drift tyres? (i.e., equivalent to putting hard plastic tyres on a TA-02)

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5 hours ago, rich_f said:

* aren't there also modern tamiya drift kits that are just regular 4WD touring car chassis with hard drift tyres? (i.e., equivalent to putting hard plastic tyres on a TA-02)

Yes, Tamiya has the TT02D which is 4WD. There's also plenty other 4WD drift cars on the market.  

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Welcome back @kontemax and thanks for the old threads, they’ve been very useful / inspirational to this relative newbie 👍

As @Mad Ax and @rich_f say, plastic tyres and a smooth surface will work! Also locking the rear diff seems to help. Locking a gear diff is easy enough with blue tac, but since the TA02 has a rear ball diff, you could try this

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Back then also PE pipe (Polyethylene water pipe) was used as drift wheel. Maybe you can get a little rest for free from a company that does water installation. The size was 63x5.8 mm.

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I tried to build a drift car out of a 4wd chassis during lockdown. I decided that the rwd chassis have the motor at the rear, either in front of or behind the rear wheels, with the battery also near the back. As I didn't want to cut up a ta01, I used something different. The specific rwd drift cars have quite a lot of steering lock, and most touring cars have a small steering lock, so that took a bit of thinking about. In the end I came up with this 2006 xray. It now has the original shock absorbers with the steering servo mounted underneath the shock tower, also the original wishbones are fitted again. The steering lock is still more than standard, but it will probably never be as good as a specific drift car, but it cost a small amount to modify.

I would say that just fitting drift wheels and tyres to the ta02 would be a start, I bought a few different sets to try the different body shells, they were fairly reasonable.20201019_075254.thumb.jpg.52747164076330df6fec4716330ffa08.jpg20201019_075235.thumb.jpg.4e289b7c193ae67eae9a80ae01c38ffa.jpg

20201025_170141.thumb.jpg.3fbe933bf7027912f1c805b778a1ad73.jpg20201218_214016.thumb.jpg.50aa765e5f0b89dd07b73d147d617e0f.jpg20210101_160146.thumb.jpg.5df2afa9a7e4fb01a914aa27b00248f8.jpg

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Hi guys, thank you for your answers. I know that today people use RWD models for drift.
I wasted my time with a Facebook group, now I'm out, I got kicked off.
Currently I have not many time for the hobby and I have no money to spent cause I have several problems in this period of my life. My father has been killed in hospital and I'm spending the few money I earn with judges and lawers trying to obtain some justice for my daddy and my mother is in bad shape and I must spent many money for the retirement home where she lives today.
So, my idea was to modify this old battered chassis to have some no budget fun in my home, simply.
I listened time ago that the 4WD drift models had the rear locked diff and the front one way diff to help the model to drift.
This would be easy and cheap modifiction.
What do you think?

Max

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Back in the very early days of RC drift, one would simply lock both diffs. No need for a 1-way.

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The front one way makes it sooo much easier for 4wd though. It's like adding a handbrake to it. I remember I bought a TA03F-S Corolla WRC off ebay with loads of hop ups and one of them was a front one way, it would properly drift nicely for a good 5-6 feet with the stock 540 and Tamiya tyres ! 😂😂👍 

James.

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I'm sorry to hear about your dad and the trouble you're now having. 

For some genuine 'no-budget' drifting, I'd swap the gear diff to the rear, lock it up with blu-tac or similar putty and wrap electrical tape around your existing tyres, then find a bit of dusty tarmac and drift away. 

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On 10/6/2021 at 8:01 AM, kontemax said:

Hi guys,

I quit the hobby a long time ago for reasons of time and money but a few days ago a friend gave me an old complete TA02 chassis in bad condition.
The first idea that came to me was to make it a drift model even though I know perfectly well that drift models have specific characteristics.
Since I have no money to spend and there is almost nothing to save from this chassis, I came up with this idea, to spend little and have a car to play with at home.
If necessary then I am willing to cut and heavily modify the model, even I was thinking of making it with a front engine, always 4WD in any case.
Any ideas or advice?
I've never had a drift car.

Max

I Have actually used a TA01, TA02, and TA03F for drifting.

The TA02 was the most balanced/easiest/most predictable, and more easy to be precise.

Others are talking about counter steer and RWD set ups, but before all that there was quite a long period where everyone just used normal touring cars with a few basic mods.

I think the most important hop up for a TA02 to drift is a front one way. other than that, lock the rear diff, and probable a cheap alu' prop shaft, and some universals, which I think I noticed maybe you can now get cheaply again because of wr02 or cc02? not sure but anyway, drifting is fun, and easy to do in a small space, with nothing more than a couple of markers. 

I say go for it :)

 

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11 hours ago, kontemax said:

Hi guys, thank you for your answers. I know that today people use RWD models for drift.
I wasted my time with a Facebook group, now I'm out, I got kicked off.
Currently I have not many time for the hobby and I have no money to spent cause I have several problems in this period of my life. My father has been killed in hospital and I'm spending the few money I earn with judges and lawers trying to obtain some justice for my daddy and my mother is in bad shape and I must spent many money for the retirement home where she lives today.
So, my idea was to modify this old battered chassis to have some no budget fun in my home, simply.
I listened time ago that the 4WD drift models had the rear locked diff and the front one way diff to help the model to drift.
This would be easy and cheap modifiction.
What do you think?

Max

I made my post before reading this, but yes, you are correct, just a locked rear diff, and a front one way if you can. this way you can use the braking like the park/e-brake in real drifting, and helps the car turn in better I think. when power is on if you use the normal TA one way (not the top force center style) front wheels are locked which seems to pull the car in the direction you aim it.

 

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I will do something now with this chassis.

Thanks everyone.

Max

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15 hours ago, kontemax said:

I will do something now with this chassis.

Thanks everyone.

Max

Cool. I think you will have fun. I think it's a cool chassis, basically the birth of touring cars. Lots of parts are shared with TA03 (c hubs for more castor is a good one) and many M0XX, TT01 locker and outdrives, etc, I'm sure you will figure it out.

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20 hours ago, kontemax said:

I will do something now with this chassis.

Thanks everyone.

Max

Cool! Enjoy the project, and best wishes to you and your family 🤝

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