The 3 Racing Sakura XI Sport ver.Nu - The first 4 hours.

WHAT'S IN THE BOX!

Well, what's in the box, is a 3 Racing Sakura XI Sport ver.Nu.   This is the "Hey, I just wanna race" version of the Sakura XI.  The full XI is a full boat touring car, carbon, aluminum, adjustments everywhere, and the price to match.

The Sakura XI Sport, is a little bit different.  It's cheap.  Dead cheap.  This one was $110.  I got it from www.tqrcracing.com, if you wanna get one from the same place I did.

I picked up this car, to see what "building a really cheap conventional touring car" would end up like.  And then compare it to the better chassis out there.  That's a subject we'll come back to in another article.

So... lets get into this. 

The kit is packaged really well.  Those plastic bags are like 8mil, and beefy.  Nothing got out of the bags.  The box is expensive, a custom job, with good ink.  Real money was spent on this packaging.

Happily, the car comes with a set of shoes, again that makes me wonder where the money on the car went.  Looking through the bags, it seems to come with the right stuff.  The diff oil is 2000wt, and the shock oil is 350w.  This, so far, is better than Tamiya.

So, lets get started.


Manual, kit, towel.  What else might you need?  Oh yeah, parts bag number 1.



The manual is very good.  If Tamiya instructions are a 10/10, these are a 9/10.  I'll note the bits that could be improved when we come to them.  There aren't many points.  The parts are in numbered bags, and each bag is labeled on the pages that use it, and are sequential in the build.

The instructions start with building the driven pulleys.  So the diff out back, and the spool out front.



Huh, I wonder where my picture of the built diff went.  I had some trouble with the screws that held the diff shut. The allen wrench didn't really feel right, and popped out a couple times. 

But here's a spool!  Of note, the front spool is of the all plastic variety.  Lightweight, to say the least.  But it does look a little bulky.  It almost looks like it's got a diff hiding in there.

After the drive pulleys, you get to build the driven pulley.  This whole assembly has 4 screws in it.

After the drivetrain bits are assembled, we get to build the chassis.  The car is "mostly" a flat plate of fiberglass.  This is one of the parts that differentiates it from a full XI.



Enhance *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* Closer....

Enhance *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* Closer....

There we go.  Each mount, is clearly labeled.  First letter tells you which end of the car.  Second letter tells you front or rear mount.  Last letter tells you the side.  The rear suspension mount even has the degrees of toe clearly indicated.  Instead of the "dot" (X-Ray, Team Associated, etc) method or cryptic letter language of Tamiya.

And so you can see the rear mount.  This is labeled "Rear of car", "Rear suspension mount", "3.0 Degree".  Nice!  

Those mounts need to go on the car sometime.  We start with the center mounts.  It's here where I first seriously considered that the fasteners with the car might be a problem.



Next up is building the arms.  The front arms are actually "somewhat" built up, but not quite at this stage.  Here they are with the droop screws and pivot balls installed.

Then like any other car, the hinge pins get trapped between the mounts.  The suspension parts have a very tight fit.  Expect to need to sand/file/smooth the ends of the arms to get the clearance you need for free movement.

And then we swing the chassis around, and do the same thing out back.

That's it for bag two.  Bag 3 has the motor mount, and steering.

The steering rack, is surprisingly good.  It's plastic, but fully bearing supported.  A nice touch, are the aluminum steering towers.  It feels "stiff" but it's not binding.  I believe the bearings that came with the car are packed with some really stiff lube.   This usually breaks in after the first pack or few, but if it doesn't, I'll need to strip and clean them.



After the steering, we move rearward.  The motor mount itself, is aluminum, as is it's front mount bracket.  That's where we get to build this monstrosity.



The center drive isn't captive, so you don't need to strip it to pull the spur.  Just take off the top deck, and undo three screws, you can have the spur assembly in your hand.

The motor mount then gets bolted into place.  You need to take care of belt alignment as you get things lined up.  There are no locating pins on this, and it's centering is done entirely via the tapered screw heads.



The steering rack goes inside the front belt, because racecar.

It's starting to look like a car now.

We should talk about a cheat I use when building plastic based kits.  They expect you to huff and puff and drive screws into the plastic, and have the screws build their own threads.  And it sucks.  And it's slow.  That's where thread forming taps come in.  Most taps cut material away, and we don't want that.  Thread forming taps push the material away, plasticly (they do it in metal too, look up plastic deformation.).  Your reward for using a thread forming tap, is screws that go in easily, tell you clearly when they've bottomed out (so you won't strip them) and have deeper thread forms, so are stronger.  For $7-10, you can pick up one of your own.  I recommend a slow speed drill to run them in and out of all of your 3mm holes when you're building cars.

It saved more than an hour while building the TA07.

Finally we reach the distinguishing feature of modern 1/10 touring cars.  The bulkhead assemblies.

The bases get screwed down first.  To help in the tweak department, they have locating pins, so they can't really be pushed around by other things on the chassis.  I like that feature.  they are molded from a very soft plastic.  For a part that can get severely loaded in a crash, I think this is a design choice, and one I agree with.

the steering tower gets

The front towers are FRP, and the tower mounts are the same soft plastic as the lower bulkheads.  It's just peaking out from behind there, but there's a bracing aluminum post that links the tower mounts.  I wonder how much that helps, or hurts.

Lets turn that tower around..



There we go, there's the reinforcement post.

The instructions have us get the front diff in first.  They also specify a belt tension.  The tension seems, rather high, but like most asian models, I'm assuming they intend for this car to be run with a 10.5 turn motor, as opposed to say, a 21.5 motor.  The belt tension is adjusted by twisting the bearing carrier, but instead of popping them out, and moving them to a new notch, you can just pull out that tiny silver screw, push the carriers around and put the screw back.



This seems like it's something I wouldn't mind adjusting, while doing belt tension on a Team Associated or X-ray requires popping the bearing carriers out.

Shock towers are one of those spots in building a car, where things really change, and the car seems to make a great leap towards completion. 

Next is to prep the upper deck.  It gets fitted with a belt guide.  I suspect it's not needed for lower power models, so I may be removing that bit. We'll see how deep I get into this car.  

Putting the upper deck on, means threading it through the drive belt.  It's mildly annoying, but no real trouble.  I could see it being "a thing" if you were fixing something between rounds and being in a hurry.  

Suddenly, it feels like a car.  

I've always done swaybars as a "we'll do it later" part.  So I was a little caught off guard when before the knucles and such, the instructions called for doing the swaybars.  The kit comes with 1.2 and 1.3mm swaybars.  As well as labeled collars for them.  The bars themselves are color coded too.  The 1 is assumed, and the number of stripes show the thickness. 

The front swaybars go into pockets that bolt into the lower arms.  This is the first time I've seen this implementation.  I wondered how that setup worked on other cars.  I believe this is the "normal" method, as opposed to the Tamiya method.

The front swaybar with their linkages attached.  Oh wait, is that a knuckle I see?  Yes it is. 

The knuckles are STIIIIIF if you don't take time to file them down.  Take your time, and you'll end up with nice, free, slop free knuckles.  You'll also need to take a few hairs off the lower pivot, as that's tight in the lower arm.  

You need to do the same treatment to the rear uprights.  This is also where I deviated from the plans. They want you to build and install the turnbuckles before switching ends of the car.

Ok, lets get some control over those floppy bits on the end.

And, really, that's where I ended for the night.  The turnbuckles are steel, so should be ~rather durable~.

To hint at what else is coming, I also ordered the full Sakura XI suspension bits.  We're gonna get a comparison between the sets of arms and knuckles sometime. 

... after I do that on the TA07...

The Tamiya TA07, a first blush review.

Lets play a game, can you find the TA07?  It's in there... 

The TA07 is the latest generation of "anything but carbon" chassis that Tamiya has brought to market.  It's legal in their "tub" classes.  It's also something like 80% of the way to being a TRF419.

The TA series of cars has an interesting pedigree.  They have their start back with the DF-01

That car was given shorter swingarms, and became the TA01, the first of the 4wd touring cars made by Tamiya.  The TA01, and TA02, were shaft drive, which has little to do with what we're here to talk about.

The TA03, could be an article on it's own.  It's front motor, mid motor, plastic tub, carbon plate, and just about anything else you could think of.

Our story really starts to come together with the TA04.  The TA series starts to become what it is today.  That's a "lower cost high end car".  The TA04 is a lot like a TRF414.  You swap out the carbon or FRP plates for a plastic tub and superstucture.

The TA05 was another long life article worthy chassis like the TA03.   It's got it's ties to the TRF418.  Multiple motor positions, varied motor positions, and wildly varying shock layouts.  The TA05, shares a bunch of things with the FF03, which matters to me... but not much else.

And really, this is the "same" car as the previous..

The TA06 was more of the same.  The TA06 originally was released with the pushrod shocks, like was seen on the TA05.   

Brass tacks time.  This is the Tamiya TA07.  It's, in essence, the plastic chassis version of the TRF419.  The relation is close enough, that by swapping one diff, and the motor plate, you can give the a 419, the TA07's unique drivetrain.

And a very unique drivetrain it is.  Instead of using the usual two belt setup, as you'll find on almost every other modern belt drive touring car, the TA07 uses a single belt.  This allows the motor mount to be moved fore, and aft, to one of three positions, without needing different length belts.

This ability to move the motor around, is something that Tamiya seems to care about, as several of their cars have this feature.  We'll talk more about the car as we go through the build.  Before we build, lets talk about the bits and peices that my friend and I decided to buy off the bat.

First, we bought some M3 thread forming taps.  Get those. You will not regret it.

The car, is typical Tamiya, in that it comes with Module gears.  In this case, Mod .04.  Well... we don't do module gears if we can avoid it.  Also, USGT uses very different gearing from what Tamiya thinks is "normal".  64 pitch gears were bought.



You can also see the swaybar kit.  SwitchElectricians car was a "R" versus my "Pro".  His came with swaybars, mine.. did not.  I run on black carpet, so I definitely need those swaybars.

I considered a few more things vital to my build.  The front spool, metal motor mount blocks, the aluminum servo mount, and carbon shock towers.  While I didn't build the car up with them initially, I also got all of the hard plastic bits for my car.



The build is not a difficult one, just a long one.  Not Awesomatix long, but definitely plan on having two or three evenings to do this car.

So, lets get into this.  SwitchElectrician and I did most of the build on two nights.

The manual is typical Tamiya.  That's the highest compliment I can give.  And the build starts in the rear of the car.



Since Tamiya, like Xray, sells their parts in several different materials, SwitchElectrican and I have decided to color code the parts.  Red is soft, just like the Tamiya spring color code.  ... I hope we can remember that in the future.

The "R" comes with some nice parts.  In this case lots of little aluminum bits, like the suspension mounts.  I'll point out the differences as we go along.  SwitchElectrician also elected to go with hard parts throughout.  See the blue on his swingarms?



Once you do the back end, you move to the front.  Here the steering posts are installed, as well as the suspension mounts and the differential bulkheads at both ends.



The swingams, are normal TRF417-418-419 parts.  As are the suspension mounts.

Once the floppy bits are attached to the tub, we get to dive straight into building the drivetrain.  This, other than the big, cagey, plastic tub, are what make the TA07 unique. 

We start with the center pulley.

Then the front spool.  I'd give more detail, but... there's really nothing to it.



Then the rear diff, which I filled with 7000w oil.



Before the diffs (spools?) get installed, you need to drop the power pod in.

The driven parts of the drive-train are retained by the belt covers at either end.  Eventually these get bridged to the tub using corner reinforcements.  We'll get to those eventually. 

The plastic steering components, are plenty stiff, and have almost no slop.  I don't see any reason to swap those for aluminum unless they start breaking for you. 

Now comes the TA07's party trick.  The s-bend belt drive.



The "R" comes with some nicer parts.  Such as a metal counter pulley.  I don't see the advantage, but it does look good.  I think that's the least "needed" thing that comes with the R package.  I will say, I think that the R is a real deal for what you get.

Steering, and setup, are where things get a bit annoying in the car.  Thankfully, you are instructed to get the steering components done "now" instead of later when you'd need to pull off the upper brace bracketry.



Both the R and Pro come with those lovely blue turnbuckles.

The drive knuckles are identical to the FF03 I built previously, and really, aren't a whole lot different from most of the cars on the market.  The only things to watch out for, are getting the short, versus long, bushings on the right end, and the button head versus tapered head screws the right way up.



That was more or less the end of build day one for me.

The front corner braces got installed.. and now



What use are knuckles, and swingarms, if you've got nothing to hold them up with.  The shock build is very normal.  Nothing special, just the usual mess of e-clips, well machined pistons, and in this case, very short bodies and shafts.



I know that this is the size they're supposed to be.  But geeze they seem small.



The front and rear of the car build up much the same.  You slide the outer pivot pin through the swingarm, then push it through the upright, and install a pinch screw through the upright.  Then you throw some turnbuckles on up to to control camber.



It's a formula nearly as old as cars have had four wheel independent suspensions.

And there we go, all four corners are done.  Time to get to the electronics.

Due to my weight obsession, I typically go with shorty servos.  The TA07 isn't known for being light, so I think this was a good decision.

Though I am still "out" on the aluminum mount decision.  It's a floating servo mount, so only contacts the chassis right on the centerline.  I suspect that the servo case itself is stiff enough, and the aluminum isn't really doing a whole lot.

We'll need to test that later.

And then here's the car ready for a test drive.

You can see that color coding continued throughout the build.  The swaybar is colored.  all of the plastics got colored too, eventually.

SwitchElectricians build went a slightly different direction.  He went full stiff, everywhere.  And due to some brownouts he's gotten with his choice of servo, went with a massive BEC.



The build was fun.  It was also time consuming.  I highly recommend having a thread forming tap and a drill handy, as that cuts the time almost in half.

Once built, the car is reasonably easy to adjust.  The only really tricky bit, is to get to anything steering related you need to pull off the front chassis braces.  It's only a few screws, and really, better than a lot of off road buggies.  You shouldn't be in there much anyway.

Lets talk about the driving experience.  Straight out of the box, the car pushed a bit, but push is better than trying to chase your own tail.  It was reasonably fast with the gearing we chose.  Setting it up with 2mm of droop, and 1 deg of camber all around, 2 deg toe out, and soft swaybars seemed to work fine.

It's fast!  it has the belt drive car "zing".  It's a lovely noise, or lack thereof.  I normally drive gear drive 4wd cars, my TC4 and Euro Truck, and both of those sing the song of clashing teeth.

This car is definitely one I can recommend. I.. may be buying another.

There will be more to follow, as I will run it in USGT.