1983 The Frog
 

Today I saw an ad on craigslist for an original 83 tamiya frog. The guy said it was worked fine, and was complete, and he wanted $55 for it
So I drove out to him, and met at a starbucks, where he informed me that his son managed to blow the battery. fortunately I had my tt01 in my trunk, so I just took the battery to test to make sure it worked right, and it did
Tires were thrashed, and I was going to need a battery, so I offered him $40, and he accepted. So I'm not the proud owner of a 30 year old rc frog :)

So anyways, what I'm wondering is if anyone has any recommendations for ways I could possibly bring this into the 21st century?

wow
pics ?

a soft brushless motor and a light lipo and you're good !

+ a good cleaning and check of the whole car !

well I'm thinking I'm going to want to switch over to an esc, 2.4ghz receiver, and retrofit some front shocks. Possibly some new wheels as well, I don't have any experience with offroad, so I don't really know what size tires these are, or if they still make ones that fit.
I don't think the rear axles or gearbox could really handle a new brushless motor, unless there's one that's making the same power, or available upgrades for anything a stronger motor would otherwise break


I would love to upload some pictures, but I guess I don't have enough posts to post URLs, so I can't unfortunately. I've already started taking it apart and forgot to take pics beforehand, but I'll upload some when I can

Pictures please

Great find! Clean it all nice and pretty and set it on a shelf in it's original condition. It isn't worth trying to make into a track car by putting the wrong shocks and modding it. If a track car is what you want, then you made the wrong purchase. It's not a good track car, So just enjoy it for what it is, a collectable. my $.02

Head over to the Tamiya Club forum. Plenty of info there but yeah wouldn't go brushless in it

They have extremely weak gears in the "diff"..... I wouldn't run it. If you do check how tight the gears mesh, eliminate the slop with some shims.

I understand where people are coming from when they say to keep it in it's original shape and just leave it as a sort of collector's item, but that's just now what I do. I got it to play with it, which I feel is doing it more justice than just having it collect dust on a shelf. I know it's never going to be competitive, but I would just like to upgrade it a bit for my own personal use.

I took it apart further today (specifically took apart the diff)
What actually grenades itself when putting in a stronger motor? would it be possible to just get stronger gears and not have to worry about it?

If I remember right (have two og frogs sitting my garage from when I was a kid), the gears themselves are pretty stout. Metric 32 pitch I believe. The issue I always had was the little spline shafts from the outdrives to the diff they used. Those were no where near as stout as the other tranny gears were. Not sure if they made any changes on the re re they put out.

The good thing is because of the re re they did, you can now at least get just about any stock part you'd need for it.

Tires/wheels are the old 1.9's in stead of the newer standard 2.2's. Don't think there's much options for those on either side. Tires or wheels.

If you really want to pop a brushless setup in there, I'd probably go with something like a 21.5. It'll be super slow compared to anything else used these days, but it should be just slow enough to maybe keep the tranny in one piece. Good car to play with, but that'll be about it.

The gears will not be a problem. The axles will go first. A 21.5T would be a good choice in that car. The old archaic suspension isn't going to like anything much faster. You cold always convert it into a Blackfoot or Monster Beetle!

If your goal was to drive a frog, why not purchase a tamiya re-make? You can buy them brand new (http://www.tamiyausa.com/product/ite...oduct-id=58354)

If you bought an original, I would replace all the worn parts with new vintage parts, and clean it up as a shelf queen.

These cars a blast for beach driving if you happen to have one near you. As someone already mentioned, Tamiya makes this car again so parts are plentiful including tires. they handle like crap, but that is the charm of a 30 year old car and also what makes it so much fun for beach driving. Hop-up parts like front suspension are hard to come by and these things handle so bad, I don't know if I would bother trying too hard to get it to handle well. Just replace what needs to be replaced and enjoy running it!

If you plan to do much street driving, the stock spike tires won't last. Subaru Brat wheels and tires bolt right on and will take years of on and off road abuse. When I take mine to the beach, the spike tires are always back on though.

Enjoy!

There is a C.V.D. set that Tamiya offers that will eliminate the weak point in the rear. Bought one for my re-pro and it seems pretty good. I think the part number is 53908.

There is also a 12mm hex adapter that will allow you to run modern rear rubber. 53913 and it will fit the Hornet & Grasshopper (probably others too).

The front end is another matter. I tried Durango 2wd front rims and they fit with 5X10X4 mm bearings. But only if you fit them outside in. Not aesthetically pleasing, but it gets the job done.

Biggest issue so far has been the chassis. It is very brittle and will likely crack on hard packed modern tracks. If you've got access to a period correct 80's/90's style track you'll probably be ok. Luckily there are replacements available as I'm on my second, soon to be third.

A fun bit of nostalgia and it would be fun to run at events like the VONATS, but running on tracks tailored to modern cars will destroy it.

I bought this because it was $40. I've never seen a re-re that cheap. And again, I think it's a bit sad to have a car as a shelf queen.

Duly noted! I live in SoCal, so I have beaches-a-plenty
I'll run it how it is for now, but eventually I'll fiddle around with fabbing up some front shock towers. Saw the shock tower, and CRP shocks, but $100 to mount some shocks for this thing sounds a bit absurd for something I'm never going to race

Thanks! Are you running yours with a brushless setup with the new cvd? if so, what motor did you go with?
53908 is right, and I'll go ahead and get it ordered
I'm not really worried about different wheels, just as long as I can find tires for the current ones I'm fine.

double post
I filled up the shocks with some 40 wt oil, cleaned everything up, and none of the shops around me had tires in the size, so while I wait for the tires to come in the mail, I just taped the current tires back together
modern batteries don't fit between the two antenna towers, so I had to relocate those
the radio (futaba fp-t4fg) for whatever reason steers backwards (left turns right, right turns left)
but regardless, I took her on her maiden voyage
and the car's a blast! :nod::tire:
steering backwards was pretty awkward, and none of my batteries are properly charged at the moment, so it was a pretty short run
I definitely want to at the very least upgrade to a 2.4ghz receiver.

http://i110.photobucket.com/albums/n...ps7f86f52d.jpg
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