Tamiya ReRe Mercedes AMG Petronas Top Force Evo II
TAMIYA RERE MERCEDES AMG PETRONAS TOP FORCE EVO II.
OK, so I inspired from my friend Tomas in Sweden I decided to turn my shelf queen ReRe Top Force into a runner!
The car for sure has potential as he showed us! This is what went into the build:
-Evolution carbon shock mounts front/rear
-Evolution carbon chassis and top deck - love the print on the top deck!
-3Racing alu dampers (DT02 and DB01, using the rear shocks from both). Tried with RC Damper shocks but I found the rear ones being too long.
-YR alu middle shaft and drive cups (must be shimmed a lot!)
-RC Damper alu motor mounting plate
-RC Damper universal drive shafts/joints (take away the original O-ring!)
-Tamiya Speed Tuned gear set (69T, smallest one for most speed)
-25T pinion
-13.5 brushless (Team Orion motor, Inix ESC)
-Lots of stainless and steel hex screws, alu washers etc for a more 'pro' look. The goal was to TRF it as much as possible!
-YR ball bearing kit.
-YR alu hexes with clamp (same width as std)
-RC Damper alu uprights front + alu hex screws upper/lower
-Kyosho dish wheels. White that I dyed black and added stickers for a more F1-look
-VBC Swedish Edition slick tyres (for indoor carpet racing)
The battery is for now fixed to the chassis 1:12 style with fibreglass tape. With it off-center it balances the chassis perfectly as the motor is far off to the left side (you need a SHORTY pack in order to do this!). I checked this using the Hudy balancing tool (two stands with pointy tips). The only thing it misses vs a true Evolution is the torque splitter AFAIK. I have an optional rear sway bar on order. For the front it looks very hard to do (cannot find any original or option parts there)...
TBG repro body with Mercedes AMG Petronas livery, paint by myself. I mixed colors to get close to the Petronas green. I applied the decals first in order to get a good match paint vs stickers as this is a very 'freehand' kinda paintjob. Also added '#KeepFightingMichael' that I made myself.
Sorry that the pics are a bit dark due to very little daylight these days!
Looking forward to race it in two weeks! Comments are always welcome! Oh, and yes! I'm a big F1 fan! Thx for looking! :-)
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BIG sussess at the very first outing! :-)
#KeepFightingMichael
This was the starting point
1
If you liked those pictures, you should see these...
Tamiya Rere Top Force Wannabe Evolution
Comments
stickerbod
Looks great, like it a lot
Tamiya-1990
Looks perfect,great work👍😀
kontemax
There's no front sway bar for the TA-01/02 and DF-01 chassies. It doesn't exist. You must do it yourself as I did. Here my example: [Click here]
Wandy
Nice! Can you tell me where you bought the wheels & tyres?
SHY69
Thx guys! I'll take one of those sway bar kits and a rear arms brace Konte! Pretty please with sugar on top!
Oh! And where did you get a carbon propeller shaft from?
SHY69
VBC slick tyres: [Click here]
Wheels: Sorry, don't recall. But they are just standard white Kyosho rims. I dyed them black using RIT dye.
kontemax
The rear arms brace and both the sway bars are hand made. The brace and the front sway bar don't exist. I searched for them for many time and never found them from any optional part producers, so I made them by myself. I have a question for you: don't you think that the model has a too low gear ratio? 69/25 is most for turing cars with little wheels I believe. I remember I used this chassis with 74/16 or at maximum 74/18. I think that 74/21 is alread too low. I suspect that 69/25 will heat up the motor and the esc and you will loose too much acceleration and speed. Obviously this is only my opinion but would like to know what do you think about it.
SHY69
Thx Konte! I have some sway bar 'clamps' I might use - I'll see what I can do... As to gearing a friend in Sweden uses this gearing on a small indoor track - and it's ideal. Motor only gets hot when he time it a lot mechanically (we run blinky mode). When running mine on the bench there is only a tiny bit 'ballooning' on the tires. So that's not very high I think. I run modern cars with 6.5 turn in 4WD and there's a LOT of ballooning there!
High turn brushless motors that we use in the Nordic Vintage Challenge (13.5 4WD and 17.5 2WD) have a lot of torque, but no revs. For instance for my Hotshot it's faster with 19T brushed vs 13.5T B/L since gearing options are so limited. And my Dyna Storm... I think I went up 15 teeth on the pinion in order to get any speed at all... 
kontemax
Probably with these brushless motors everything changes. I remember on rally races I ran the TA02 with 74/21 gear ratio and Tamiya brushed Dynarun 13 turns motor. My contendents ran the same identical chassis and motor configuration but 66/21 and they lost. Their cars were slower in acceleration and top speed than mine. They didn't understand the reason why but it was funny, they gone crazy for this. I never said them why my car was faster.
bjorklo
Wow, love it.. Great work.
OCD
Kudos to you for having the courage to make this precious model a real runner -- I Never get tired of seeing these old DF buggies. Great work, thanks for sharing!
Plopes
Looks really good.
MAD-BEE
Looks fast!! Love the paint job!
Max Power
Immaculate presentation as always, I hope you have lots of success racing it!
Crash Cramer
Man that is awesome, would love to find a buggy to replicate this past years Martinin livery, now you got me thinking.
I wonder if 2015 will be the year of the runner??? Could be.
SHY69
Thx guys!
Martini? Hmmm... 
SHY69
The result: TQ and 1st!
Video here: [Click here]
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