88887: Any Tamiya RC Model not listed. from OCD showroom, Surging SA60 Celica Supra TA02W

Model: (Click to see more) 88887: Any Tamiya RC Model not listed.
Status: Extra info
Date: 4-Oct-2009
Comments: 26

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I've been working on this for a few weeks now and I think it's pretty close to done. I have a TLU-1 LED unit to go in there but am currently having trouble finding some light buckets for it - Was going to fab something up but I may just wait and see what comes onto the market. (Any suggestions welcome!)

The body is the Surging SA60 Toyota. Also known in 1:1 form as the the Celica XX or Celica Supra, depending on which market it was sold in. I owned a couple of these cars when I was younger and have been looking for a radio controlled scale equivalent ever since. Earlier this year I came across the only known RC street version of this car, the Kyosho 1/12 Laser Celica XX, and proudly added it to my collection. While the kit was nice, it was extremely simple, and I felt it was too rare way to be built anything different than completely box stock. Sad as it was, I finally had the kit that I wanted, but now realised that that I really wanted something in 1/10 that I could fully detail. Not long after this I stumbled across a SA60 1/10 bodyset on the Genki Dori Dori website and immediately bought two. My plan was to do one as a right-hand drive 'tribute' to the first 1:1 Supra that I owned, and the other as more of a 'Bosozoku' wild-style car.

Having a complete vision from the beginning was a real driving force for me. Although it took several weeks to finish, I had the most fun building this car from the ground up. The color choice was an easy one, attributable to the fact that Tamiya's PS-52 Champagne Gold Anodized Aluminum backed with PS-12 Silver is an exact match for Toyota's Haze Gray Metallic, which was the color of my first Supra. I really have grown to love Tamiya's new anodised colors: The extremely fine 'flakes' make the paint appear more scaled to me. The downside to the paint is that it has such low amounts of pigment, it looks basically translucent until you back it with either silver or black. This means that you must be very careful to apply the paint evenly, or the final result will look variegated. (In other words, it will look like poo :D ) The signature black front bumper was done afterward by carefully trimming away the outer over-spray film with a sharp knife, and spraying PS black over top in two thin coats. The rear hatch and bumper blacked out as well, but masked and painted from the inside instead.

Surging® does happen to sell a decal set for the SA60 body, which includes window trim pieces, body mouldings, light lenses, and etc. They don't stick very well at all, but it does give you a few items like grilles and door handles that were quite useful. Conspicuously absent were the Toyota and Supra emblems (my guess is this would require licensing) so I went ahead and made my own with some foil tape, Sharpies, and clear decal material. The rear 'Supra Celica' emblem was painstakingly lifted from a reference photo, printed, and then gone over with gold and flat black acrylic paint with a fine brush. I wish I had a decal printer!!

After making my final choices for color, I then procured some wheels and tires. Though I was pretty set on using the Speedway Pal SSR chrome and gold mesh wheels I had just bought, the gold just didn't seem to go well with the 'Champagne' paint, so a set of four black mesh with silver lips was ordered. I went with +10 offset for the rear, and a slightly shallower +7 for the fronts.

As mentioned before, I have an LED unit lined up for this, so I left all of the lens areas clear and covered them with the decals provided by Surging. I may have to undo this later since the Surging decals simply won't stay stuck, and I already painted the tail lights with Tamiya's much better looking PS-37 Translucent Red. Again, the only thing I need is a decent fitting set of light buckets, and I could get this thing properly lit!

The dashboard is a clever bit of Lexan made by Tech Racing; It includes a dashboard and two types of steering wheels, all made in clear polycarbonate. The fact that it's clear gives so many options for detail and is really quite easy to work with. I masked off several areas where I was going to add my own decals later, (Tech's kit doesn't include any) and masked the front of the instrument cluster to create a clear housing for the gauges. With the scrap lexan and spare decals I made the inner gauge cluster and a rearview mirror from what was left. The rearview was accomplished by painting the Lexan PS silver first and then backing it with PS black. I cut out the shape with scissors and gave it a little bend to create the mounting stem. I trimmed the outer edge of the mirror side with black micron tape to give it some depth. I like how the mirror came out and may have to do more of these in the future! The hood mounted mirrors were a final nod to the JDM look; I trimmed the bases down a bit so they fit properly and added some micron tape around the edges of the lenses. These along with the muffler that I used are both made by ABC Hobby. The intercooler and wipers came from the new Tamiya #54130 touring car accessory kit, which is very nice for the money. Your $15 gets you the wipers and intercooler, along with muffler, faux antenna, several mounting parts, and some chromed brake rotors. I had to skip the rotors since I couldn't get them to fit correctly with my axle setup, which is fine since the thick plating looks kind of cheesy anyhow. Instead I used an old set of Proline etched metal pieces that look much better in my opinion. The intercooler was my favorite part of the set. With the mounting parts included by Tamiya, it was quite easy to get the radiator to mount perfectly on the old TA bumper! In an effort to give it more realism, I added more black line-tape between the cooling fins and some gold wash over the weld seams. Clear flat acrylic was brushed over top of the chrome plating to create the aluminum effect. The wipers were simply painted flat black and mounted as per instructions.
The extra details such as the washer nozzles were also done with a little flat black paint.

After I had the body done, I had to come up with a plan for a chassis to hang it on. Having had the the TA02W chassis recently on my mind, and also having loads of parts for the TA01/2 series of cars, a wide format TA02 was the obvious choice. As this was to be built entirely from spares, I decided to really raid the parts bin and do a complete 'harlequin' build-up with multicolored plastics. The shock towers are leftovers from a Taisan gearbox pair, and the white arms are from the #49573 D parts set. To get the wide wheelbase, I had to be tricky with my hub selecttelection and wheel offset. The suspension components are all standard TA02W configuration, but 4mm thick clamp hubs were necessary up front to keep the +7mm wheels under the fender. In the rear, I used the +10mm offset wheels and added a 1mm spacer on top of the stock 6mm thick hubs. (I should mention here that this forced me to use thin wheel nuts in the rear to accommodate the spacers.)

Other hop-ups include:

• #53118 Skyline Hard Joint Cups for the front and rear.

• #49141 Low Friction II silver dampers, from the TA04 series. I went with these since the threaded bodies gives me finite control of the ride height

• #50152 Reinforced Short Propeller Shaft

• #53499, 500, and 505 parts for assembly style universal shafts. The wide chassis still uses the same 39mm Skyline/ TA01 style shafts in the rear, which aren't easy to find. The TA04R set is an exact match, and is widely available. Rebuildable too!

• #53225 TA02W Universal Shafts; Still somewhat easy to find and just look plain cool. I probably could have used the TA05 assembly shafts, but why?! ;)

• #53200 Front One-way Diff Unit. Actually intended to be used in the TA03, but it fits in the TA02 just the same. (I'd honestly rather use the old Manta Ray #53071 torque splitter set, but these have gotten quite hard to find!) The Supra was a RWD car with four wheels disc brakes -- I can make the TA02 rear-wheel driven if I remove the center shaft, but that means I will lose four wheel braking! Solution: Use the front one-way diff, but install the bearing backwards in the housing. This way I get two wheel drive under acceleration but four wheel braking and coasting - Like it should be!!

•Aluminum motor mount from eBay. A Korean knock-off that I had to modify to get it fit properly -- Guess you get what you pay for!

•Generic Epic 27-turn stock motor, mysteriously missing the label. ;)

• Robinson Racing 21 tooth hard steel pinion.

• Rear sway bar, sourced from the TRF 415. I tried to bias the suspension so it handles more like a front-heavy rear wheel driven car, so the rear bar was a necessity. Unfortunately I didn't have one at the time, so I fabbed together an adequate replacement from what I had around. Parts list includes: TRF 415 front stabiliser bar, 2 sway bar ball ends, two 3x5mm spacers, 3x12mm countersink screws, and two wing washers. I then used short 5mm ball links and 3x15mm threaded shafts to make the arm links. Haven't tested it yet, but the feel is just slightly stiffer than the kit version.

• Ansmann ART-4 Radial tires - The realistic street pattern seemed to be a good match.

• Full sealed ABEC 5 grade bearings from WalawalaStore.

• #53070 standard ball diff in the rear.

• #53570 TRF 4mm clamp type hubs.

• Take-Off brand black anodised THIN locking wheel nuts. Out of production absolutely forever, I wish I knew where to get more. :(

After getting the chassis together, I next needed to find a way to mate it to the body. Considering the lack of factory punched body mount holes, I decided that a velcro mount would be sufficient. The front mounting was easy with the adjustable intercooler mount falling just below the inside of the front bumper. With a little bit of velcro along the top of the radiator housing, I managed to get a solid enough grip to hold the body straight in mild bumps. The rear, featuring a larger contact area, used a couple of reversed TA03 long mounts, a random plastic bit from my parts bin, and a custom aluminum plate I made in my garage. The result turned out to be far more solid of a fixture than I had expected. I haven't run it yet, but you can in fact lift the battery-loaded car by the body without seperation of the two. ( Will have to see how long this lasts or how well it works in actual use! ;) )

If you liked those pictures, you should see these...
Kyosho Laser Sport 1/12 Celica XX

Comments

Blacque Jacque

4-Oct-2009

Quite nice you say ? You do yourself a gross disservice Steve, that is a beautiful creation. The chassis has a very tasteful selection of hopups & that's a clever trick with the one way too. Another for my favourites. My parents had acouple of SA60's back in the day, I will have to keep an eye out for this shell. The euro version looked awesome in white with black trim & no chrome.

technical.burP

4-Oct-2009

Oh my god! This is absolutely fantastic!!!

OCD

4-Oct-2009

Thanks guys - I put a lot of thought into this one

53HRA

4-Oct-2009

Lovely

TheLordOfHoard

4-Oct-2009

That is amazing bit of work you have done there. Time well spent mate I would say. Well done.

TIMECMDR

4-Oct-2009

Classic and superb Supra

Tizer

4-Oct-2009

The best one I've seen till now. Damn this one looks really good! still want one myself, might order it very soon, as I don't think they will be produced very much

neobrunox

4-Oct-2009

11-Mar-2010

Thanks VS - You have a sharp eye brother That paint color was a result of lots of experimentation and very careful application of Tamiya's new translucent metallics. (I highly recommend them!) That first coats must be painfully even or it ruins the pale coloring effect.

7-May-2020

Hi mate,do you have part number for the dashboard? Or links? That would help many of us wanting a nice dash. Thanks

OCD

7-May-2020

Sorry, but I haven't seen this dash being sold anywhere since 2010! It was made by Tech Racing in very small batches. Rare to find, but you just never know Good luck!

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