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.
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.
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...
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