streetracer745

I had a maxamps 5000. It was TIGHT and I had to cut some of the top of the battery slot to make room for the wires to come out clean. it was stupidly fast. No matter how fast I was going it would spin around if I hit the throttle hard

nexxus

iTrader: (315)

Ahh ok maybe the Losi or Reedy 3s will work

Had nothing but problems with maxamps.

streetracer745

You wont fit anything bigger than 24-25mm thick. Especially with a hardcase. I wouldnt run a 3s lipo... It was honestly useless. Even for bashing. ALl it did was cause problems and rip my drivetrain apart. I melted atleast one gear or bearing almost everytime I drove... Stick with 2s. Plenty of power and speed for this little thing. And my maxamps pack did great. Got almost a year and probably 300+ cycles through it. And I think the only reason it died was because I was using it in my brushless revo for a while.

T Fears

iTrader: (1)

I am reallllly fortunate to have an AMAZING track only about 25 minutes from my house durning the winter and it is indoor. I am looking to get into the 4wd class. No one has a tamiya of any kind at my track and we get well over 100 entries a night. I think the smallest turnout has been like 133. This is EVERY WEEK! Its awsome. Everyone runs b44's but there are a couple of losi cars and a few kyosho zx5's. I am hoping to get a df-03ms. I am going to buy ALOT of parts straight off the bat so I dont have to wait on parts. Thought I might ask some questions:

What breaks the most?

What are the ms shocks like compared to the trf501x's shocks?

How easy is it to swap spurs with a b4 spurgear?

Do kyosho zx5 rims fit on this car?

Does shotgun style batteries fit? What about soldered bar type batteries?

Planning on running a novak havok 8.5 brushless. How well do you think the drivetrain will hold up?

Here is a list of hop ups I am going to run straight off the bat:

3racing front and rear shocktowers, front and rear outdrives, rear suspension brace, and eithor the gpm front end or the 3racing graphite front suspension brace.

I also plan on trying the swaybars linked earlier in this thread. Also, if anyone has any track set up sheets I would be interested in looking at them if you found they did anything for you. Thanks guys! Looking forward to joining the club

Here is a vid of my track and my rustler (on ebay) so you can see how awsome the track is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMJpH0JdAJg

streetracer745

That track looks awsome! Can you PM with everything you've done with the rustler? Dont want to polute the DF thread with traxxas stuff.

Anyways. The buggy is pretty tough. I havent broken any part other than gears actually... I would recomend building the diffs with good bearings and carbide balls and all the fancy stuff. Especially for racing. The 3racing parts will do well. I have heard nothing but good about them and Im considering getting a lot of their parts once my df is functioning completely again... Swaybars are always a good thing on the track and that one is really smooth so they won't cause the car to tip or anything from bumps. I am almost positive that the B4 spur is simply get B4 pads and gear... Someone who has run it before can correct me on this? I believe the shocks are the same as the ones from the 501x basically. They are good shocks though. TRF parts are quality. I feel like the biggest thing for you to upgrade will be tires... I dont know about the wheels though. Never tried and likely never will... Hope some of this rambling is helpful

leerjet1

iTrader: (85)

To use the B4 spur you just have to enlarge the center hole on the spur slightly. I used a body reamer. Go slow, its easy to go too much. You can use the stock tamiya slipper pad, you just have to do some trimming with scissors.

Stick packs [shotgun?] fit and also side by side, although with side by side you have to get creative on how you run the wires. Also the wires you use can be no thicker than 14 guage. Reason being they have to run along the side and there just isn't room for 12 guage.
Another thing you guys should know, the front end can be made considerably stronger just by replacing the front a-arm pins with the u shaped pin from the df-02 buggy. They fit perfectly, just have to be shortened a little if I remember correctly. It acts like a front brace. With a little creativity this part can even be used on the rear to strengthen it. I did it to mine. LMK if you guys want pics of it.
Larry.

streetracer745

I'd love to see some pics. Do you have the part number as well? I need to order a bunch of tamiya parts sometime soon so might as well add that one in

valyau2002

iTrader: (6)

I believe this is the item you are looking at;

https://www.tamiyausa.com/product/it...oduct-id=51082


Val

leerjet1

iTrader: (85)

Yes that is the part. Here are some pics;

leerjet1

iTrader: (85)

Some more pics of the electronics and battery layout.

streetracer745

And you say that you can possibly use the u shaft on the rear to stiffen it up as well? Is there any cutting of the chassis or just shortening the shafts?

leerjet1

iTrader: (85)

No cutting or grinding needed for the rear brace. You will need to remove the rear assy and tranny to get it in though. It will limit the range of pinion sizes you can use. I am using 26 pinion, 81 b-4 spur with my mamba max 4600. Kind of tall gearing, but its still fast and never gets too warm.
The front brace is ground a little shorter, thats all. With these braces on your front bulkhead, a-arms and tranny case are well protected.
Larry

streetracer745

Just might have to do that. They are cheap so seems like a good way to strengthen everything up

tom_chang79

iTrader: (13)

Hi All,

Let me try to answer some of your questions T Fears

What breaks the most?

The part that I broke so far is the pair of front outdrives. One of ball cups popped off in the front so the suspension arm traveled beyond its limits and the dog bone end of the drive shaft tweaked it and snapped in half. This was the 3Racing steel outdrives. I'm now using the kit's steel outdrives.

The arms too if you race long enough, but not sure, I haven't broken one yet...

What are the ms shocks like compared to the trf501x's shocks?

Not really sure, I have never used the TRF shocks... All I know from comparing it to AE's shocks (which I've been using all my life on AE's vehicles) is that the MS shocks are very nice and smooth. It was a pleasure to build. The only thing is, the piston holes seems too big, so I had to use thicker oil. Where I used 45wt for my front AE shocks on the B44, I used 55wt for my DF-03MS for the same track. My DF-03MS still uses the stock "white" springs.

How easy is it to swap spurs with a b4 spurgear?

VERY easy. I was very surprised how close the shaft size were. Like what leerjet1 stated above, I used a tapered reamer. All you need to do is ream out jus a tiny bit. If you choose to use Tamiya slipper pads, it's exactly what leerjet1 said, just need to trim it a bit. You can buy AE slipper pads too if you want to skip the trimming...

Do kyosho zx5 rims fit on this car?

Not really sure, can someone answer this? There's another poster on here, Orange I believe, that used Durga/501x axles to use Losi rims... You can try those if Tamiya parts are hard to come by.

Does shotgun style batteries fit? What about soldered bar type batteries?

The chassis was originally designed for "shotgun" style batteries. With the stock chassis, you can cram side-by-side I believe, but with graphite chassis like the one from 3Racing, you must be VERY careful not to short out side-by-sides if your battery bars are exposed like on mine for the B44. Mine are exposed because i use the equalizer tray on it.

Since the packs for my B44 are exposed and saddle, I just ended up buying 3 more shotgun style packs and just left it like that. Just discharge the pack down to 6.0V (assuming you are using NiMH technology) and you should be fine... NiMH aren't really memory prone but they do develop a "personality" over time...

Planning on running a novak havok 8.5 brushless. How well do you think the drivetrain will hold up?

I think it will hold up well. Take note that Tamiya included ALOT of shims in the kit for a reason. The number of shims it takes to properly mesh gears is merely a suggestion. Each DF-03MS units are probably unique.

My experience, just shim it until it's fairly tight. Run a single pack through it on your bench. Take the drive train apart and see if the gears have seated correctly. If you don't see too much play in the meshing, you're good to go. I recommend running it on your bench so that your motor won't be seeing an extra load if your car is on the ground/dirt/floor and have to propel itself...

bender

iTrader: (4)

Kyosho wheels will fit but their offset is different. I think from memory this makes the back of the car too wide for sanctioned meetings - the front is ok though. A picture of my old car is attached which has Kyosho rims mounted.

The B4 spur/pad method is the easiest way to use 48 pitch gears, but you can also get a Kawada adaptor which allows you to use any pan-car type spur gear because it uses those little slipper pegs inside the gear (similar to a Losi XXX4). Whilst more expensive and fiddly than the B4 method, it does mean you can use smaller spuer gears like 75, 72 etc (or even 64 pitch gears if you wanted to).

As for the shocks, I have a DF03-MS and although the shocks are very good quality I still dont think they are that good for racing as they are designed like touring car shocks - which means they have a lot of re-bound which is hard to get rid of. The 501X shocks are much better, in fact they're one of the best off-road shocks you can get - better than AE or Losi shocks.