The Tamiya TT02 - Just the "02" not a B, not an R, not a Type-S. Just.. the 02.

We're going to start, and end, here.



That is, a metallic blue Mazda 3.  Sitting on a TT02 chassis.  Box art, says metallic red, but I have a red Mazda already.  And my old Mazda 6 was this color blue, so the choice was easy. 

That same table, just a few hours earlier....



Betty can put out heck of a spread.  Oh....... forgot the main course.



Given I own innumerable other great touring car chassis, why are we here with a TT02?  Well I wanted a quality basher I could feel free to leave somewhere.  It's really, very hard to beat the value of a Tamiya kit. 

So about $200 later, I had a car, battery, servo, radio, ESC, motor, body, paint, bearings, wheels, tires....  And a wonderful project to do, while Betty and company were whipping up a slightly belated Thanksgiving dinner.

We need to have a little talk about the TT02.  The car comes in a wide range of configurations.  These range from the $100 specials like I am building here, through to some vague approximation of an actual race car.  My car is very slightly above the bottom of the barrel configuration.  The base model has a ABS tub, and is neigh on indestructible. 

For some reason, Tamiya saw fit to put the hard tub in my kit, with no other upgrades.  I bet this is going to be a very "special" edition. 

Other editions:

• TT02 Type-s - Touring car suspension arms, oil filled shocks, turnbuckles
• TT02 White Special - Hard tub, oil filled shocks white suspension components.
• TT02r - Aluminum motor mount, aluminum drive shaft, steering turnbuckles,oil filled shocks, aluminum 3 deg rear uprights.
• TT02rr - Oil filled shocks, aluminum motor mount, TT02 special upper adjustable arms, aluminum rear hubs, blue hard tub, aluminum drive shaft set, and oil filled diffs.   
• TT02d - with parts to go drifting.  (It's not my thing, if you're a drifter, do your research here)

I don't know where the other models really fall in the "I'd like to drive them" scale, as theyr'e all over the place, price wise, and not all come with all the accessories.  In the case of my kit, I got the $30 body kit, $30 ESC, $10 motor, $20 set of wheels and tires... and then the rest of the car for $40.  The math worked out really well there.  Back to the story.

Just after brunch, the table got cleared, and I got to work.  The Mazda 3 TT02 kit came with the hard red tub. 

The hard tubs... have been out of stock for 14 months.  Last year around thanksgiving, I sold off my spare blue tub, and after a few weeks, settling on that I won't find another.  I suspect, ~this~ car is why I couldn't get a spare tub for my TT02b. 

The TT02, gets all of it's strength from the tub.  All of the bearings are located by the tub.  Speaking of bearings, I bought a set for this car, to get everything set off on the right foot.  If you buy this kit, you won't get bearings....  (spend the $17.)  

Looks pretty doesn't it.

I ended up using the tub as a parts organizer as I went to build the differentials.

We've done this before?  These are the same as all the other diffs, but without o-rings to seal them up.  If you want to make them stiff, you need to use 200k+ oil.  Even 1m isn't quite locked, and is "useful".  

While I was building the car, every 10-15 minutes I would step outside to work on this.



There's a complete can of metallic blue on there, with a white backer.  While that cures, lets get back to the chassis.

And there we go.  At the moment of taking this picture, I was freaking out about not having the right fasteners to get the steering servo installed.  With some digging, I did end up with the right screws to make it happen, but it was about to need an hour round trip to town to hunt down some M3 screws.

Of note, the tires don't come with foam liners.  So they're really soft.  The compound is more vinyl than rubber, so they're not all that sticky, but they worked really well on the surfaces I had to run on.  We'll get back to that though.

While we're here, and can see the heads of some screws.  When you're installing the self tapping screws, put a faint dab of the gear grease on them, this lets you feel when they've bottomed out, so you don't end up stripping any of the screw holes. 

And here's the car all buttoned up.  5200mah battery, some dog slow 20kg steering servo, a FRSky receiver, and as you can see, a little dirt on the tires from doing some laps around the living room.  

Did I say FRSky?  I did.  Mister Spektrum bought a different radio. 



$40 for a 3 channel computer radio. 



With 10 model memory, and all of settings someone might need.



And, with the 180 degree travel servo I bought, I really needed it.  Travel had to be set to 45% left and right. 

After dinner, I sat with everyone doing stickers, while they watched various flavors of youtube and animated stuff.



That car, came out looking really good.  I did some driving around the living room, let another person or two give it a spin.  But it wasn't until the next day I got to really give it a spin.

Sadly, I was alone driving the car, so I didn't get much photo wise.  Bettys place is in the woods, and is serviced by a gravel drive.  That's where I got to drive the car in anger.  Loose diffs, lots of torque, and an ESC that wasn't calibrated made for a fast car with an on-off throttle.  The thing was a blast to drive, and the tires showed almost no wear for all the abuse I put them through. 



I've not done that to the inside of a body for years. 

The rest of the car looked worse. 

So here we are, back at the table with the car on it.  That first photo, was the car after it spent time on the muddy driveway.

If I were clever, I would have set the car up for rally height, which is some 5mm taller I think.  But even the on-road configuration was pretty fine.  A faster steering servo would be appreciated, but i'll need to decide if it's worth the extra $25 to go there.  The choice would have been really easy if I had more time to order parts, but this ended up being a "mostly amazon prime" build. 

Should you get one?  Maybe.  It's way better than anything you can buy from the toy store.  It's better than most of what you can buy pre-built, I think.  $200 can get you everything you need, if you don't mind a slow battery charger. 

There's an on-road track out there too.. that this thing will eventually take some laps of.  

Clearance cars are my kryptonite. The Tamiya FF04 Evo Black Edition

The most intimidating thing for a writer, is a blank sheet of paper.  

And so i'm terrified. 

Aah, that's a bit better. 

I'm not a fan of FWD. (Front Wheel Drive) Though my car collection would make one think otherwise.  Between the M07, two M05s, MST TCR, MG Evo, and FF03, you'd think I was a fan of FWD.  I'm not.  But FWD ends up being where all the interesting racing happens.  In Mini classes FWD has the consistent lap times, and better braking.  In touring car classes FWD has efficiency bonuses, sometimes weight benefits, and you keep the AWD braking strength. 

I had a sky high goal of getting my FF03 down to some disgustingly low running weight, and while I did end up with a light car, it's not as light as I'd like, and it wasn't exactly competitive.  I think the MST TCR is going to take up that role. 

While cruising the Tamiya USA website, I keep an eye out for the "outlier" car prices.  The FF04 Evo stood out to me.  Special edition parts, special edition colors, all of the high end bits...  for $225. 

The FF04, excepting the three gear transmission, is entirely a modern touring car.  But I think that needs some explanation. 

FWD r/c car racing really started after touring cars became a thing.  And like most of the big classes, started with some crazy decision by execs at Tamiya.  The TA01, a descendant of Tamiyas buggies started the touring car craze.  Being the sort of scale people they are, Tamiya wanted a FWD chassis to put under their FWD bodies.  From this, we got the FF01.  

The FF01 was closely related to the TA01.  And this is going to be a trend with the FWD chassis.  It's a tub, but at the time, so was everything else. 

The FF02 was a M03, with stretched arms, and a longer center chassis spacer.  I'd call it at best, unremarkable. 

The FF03 shared a lot with the TA05, and the TRF418.  That is, the arms, and suspension setup.  The FF03 I've covered in the blog a lot.  But the FF03, in the end, was a narrow plastic tub, that depended a lot on chassis flex for what it did. 

Well the FF04, is a full on double deck touring car.  No excuses given, and evidently, none needed. 

Lets start with the bling.  Check out this carbon:



Isn't that a thing?  I was very impressed with what I pulled out of the box.  speaking of which, the box, was shockingly empty. 



I swear there was an echo in there.

I really miss buying kits that, when you open the box, they feel full.  Even the CRC Gen X 10 I bought with it's tiny box, felt like it was swimming in the packaging.  This had better be worth it.  

The manual, is generic Tamiya.  This is a good thing.  Steps are short enough to not be confusing, and make very few assumptions of the users capability.

So time for a little backstory.  I started this build at about 9pm.  I was in my buddys basement, after making a solid attempt at being a plumber.  Sadly, we were not successful in that endeavor.  I had the car with me, to show it off (as he's got a few cars of his own.)   He bought me a present, and suggested we assemble the car so I could use it.  We'll get to that in a bit. 

Much like the FF03, transmission comes first.  

Look at all those little bits.  They're all completely normal if you've built another touring car.  If not.. why are you starting here?  This is "as good as it gets" in the Tamiya stables.  

And here we run into the problem with a black edition tamiya model.  How do you get any kind of contrast?  Here's the complete transmission.  It seems that the drive-train is half of a XV-01.  When I was done, there was a complete separate transmission case.  

Motor plate, and bumper brace attached.  I think these bits might be FF03 compatible.   Amusingly, the aluminum bumper brace, is a Black Edition only part, and not available any other way.

I really liked how the transmission turned out.  It's very rigid, and even with the extensions, the shock tower is nice a stiff.  

It does look purposeful.  I kinda want to get the aluminum anodized some confusing color.  Like orange, or red.  

This is a modern touring car, so it's got a modern touring car bellcrank.  These parts are all aluminium.  This might be the coolest steering rig I have, that's not on my XRay.

Now it's time to build out the pan.  

I couldn't figure out what felt strange about the steering.  Turns out, I was expecting a drive belt.  That's.. not a thing when you're going with a FWD car.

The rear front suspension is in place, ready for the next bits.  That prsent I was alluding to earlier, got their first use here.  I was given a left handed thread forming tap.  These were the most pleasant turnbuckles I've ever built.  I usually end up with bruised and sore fingertips by the time I'm done building a set for a car.  With thread forming taps for both ends, these are a breeze.

The front arms, with shafts and spacers in place.  It's a lot of spacers.  Between the front and back of the car you get something like 8mm of wheelbase adjustment.  

I love the way touring cars look as they get their arms mounted.  Of note, these are TRF418 arms, I think, which match my TA07, and FF03.. I think.  They're also the carbon arms, straight from the factory, which is nice.  Also, they needed zero fettling to flop around as they should, and to have as little slop as I consider "ok to race".  It all just bolted up, and worked. 

And the transmission and bumper brace.

That tap on the right.  That made everything so much better.  If you've read anything else I've written about building cars, you'll know I talk about buying a M3 thread forming tap.  Building the TA07, it knocked 45 minutes off the build.  Well, as you get to better and better cars, you run into more tapped aluminum, so it's less of a deal.  The $10 for a left hand thread forming tap is a major quality of life improvement.  

The car also came with DCJ's.  (Double Cardan Joints)  Color me impressed. 

And now the cars got knuckles.  

The rear arms are a lot like the front.  

And all the spacers and balls installed.

They bolt on using the usual plastic suspension mounts, with what looks like 3deg of rear toe.  

The rear end is standard touring car material.  Two aluminum bulkheads, joined with the shock tower.

The upper links are on mounts that can be spaced out, giving you upper link length adjustment. 

Here's the whole rear tower assembled.

when you get both ends on a touring car, it really feels "complete".  Defintiely on the easy side of this build.

Links installed.

The shocks installed, servo mount, and top deck.  At this point in the build, I was tired.  It was almost 3am.  so.. I just forgot to take pictures.  The shocks are the large diameter ones, and come with the proper springs.  The car also comes with a rear swaybar, with two strengths of bar.  

My local carpet track is still in flux.  So it will be a while before this sees the track.  It's going to be run in USGT for now.  At least that's my plan. 

The build went really well.  The kit parts were the best I've ever had from Tamiya.  For the $225 I paid, my goodness it was worth the money.  I can't wait to run it properly.