TOPIC:

Not new buys, these have been sitting on my shelf for a while. I had planned to leave the (correct) dark blue one there & sell the lighter blue one, but realised there were some bits I wanted to swap over ... but that quickly turned into wanting to strip them both, build the best possible one out of the bits, then decide what to do with the leftovers






Cracks on the front shock tower are depressingly common...





... and this sort of crack is common on lots of Tamiya cars...




Crack on rear shock tower ...




... this tyre is looking a bit second hand




Bits ready for ultrasonic cleaning and/or scrubbing:

No chance of doing any spraying outside, so I thought I'd take another look at these cars, starting on the "leftovers" car:

No idea what someone was thinking here, but I don't really want to spend too much money or time on this, so all I'll do is grind it back a bit to get rid od any sharp points that would encourage cracks ...







Motor mounbt brace was missing, so I made one - genuine one for the "good" car is on the bottom, my one is not exactly dimensionally perfect but is functionally fine:






I was short one brass suspension doodad (right), so modified one (centre) out of a different bit I had in the spares pile (left) - I didn't want to take any more off the base & shred it:






The repro battery holders were not a good buy, this is one of the better ones:





Rebuilt ball diff - this is quite a posh item for this chassis IMO, I'm surprised it was in the kit TBH:






Gearbox in progress, I'll sand the one on the "good" car, but as this one will probably sell at a loss on eBay, I wasn't going to spend a couple of hours on this one:






Crack on gearbox cover ... it's not pretty, but unlikely to fail completely any time soon.





Pinion mesh inspection port cover was missing, so I made something functionally similar from aluminium:




...

...

Both ends nearly complete:






Note the fake brake disks - these are very cheesy, but do at least seem to positively locate on the axles & won't fall off; Chassis almost finished...





Apart from forgetting about the cracks in the front knuckle & front tower









Fix for the knuckles was to grind, sand & polish them back & drill new holes - this is a good thing on this chassis as it gives a lot more steering lock





Fix for the front tower was to saw off the broken bits & make some threaded aluminium spacers:







Fitted they look quite good IMO:




...

Springs I believe are "tuned" springs for the FF03, no idea what the wheels are but they work well enough for me

I still need to find some wing mirrors, a servo & servo saver, and make & fit servo blocks, but for now, it's nearly ready to sell on... body has allegedly been signed by Paul Radisich and Kelvin Burt (team mate in the BTCC), but without proof/a COA there's an 80% chances it's just scribbles

Was the brass spacer mod done on the Unimat?
Really good to see some making/modding metal parts there Jonny! When can we expect to see a scratch-build?

Is that a manta ray tub!!!! Looks alot like the ta-01 with a motor at front. Could you make this twin engine.... please

eddrick wrote:

Was the brass spacer mod done on the Unimat?...

Yes, and the front shock tower aloominum bits ... and an ally bit to replace the plastic winnet missing from the servo saver I'm going to use - I think it would have been easier to just use a washer

DanDare420 wrote:

Is that a manta ray tub!!!! Looks alot like the ta-01 with a motor at front. Could you make this twin engine.... please

The Manta Ray tub is about 20mm longer at the front & has hex shaped ribbing in the bottom, but the fittings & screw hole spacings are the same, so it's theorectically possible ...



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I think they originally planned on releasing the FF-01 as TA02F...
Sounds like a crazy awesome project!

Washers aren't as satisfying as hacking up ally though are they....
I'm thoroughly impressed with the enthusiasm! & now we also know it'll cope with ally AND brass! (If it'll hack brass, it should be ok with mild steel if you get the speed right)