My mini Cooper Body
 

My mini Cooper Body

There is some side-to-side play in the diff, more than a high-end TC, but it shouldn't affect the operation of the car.

It uses the smaller bearings that need to go into the plastic outdrive bushings, it is exactly the same fitment as the Tamiya gear diff, bushings on the outside.

The TA03 ball diff should have come with the appropriate outdrives. The splines are a different length than those on the gear diff. The odd bit is that they're shorter, which would appear to be a problem. The chassis halves are completely together? If so, just drive it and see what happens.

17.5T motor guys, you should find this entertaining: I got a Novak Ballistic 17.5T today in a trade. It's my first sensored, adjustable timing brushless motor, so I thought I'd get as much wrong out of the way as possible right away. I popped it into my M03 with the speed gears, big pinion, etc. I cranked the motor timing all the way up and added maximum boost on my ESC. It sat there on my bench looking all eager and ready to go.
It was...for about half a second before the tire blew off the rim and the gears made funny noises. Oops!

This is so cool!

2c Mini
 

One more 2c worth: The 17.5 experiment was good. Found out if the chassis could take it, which it did, and how many actually enjoyed going faster, which is still up in the air.
The problem with Mini class is that some still view it as a beginner's class, which it no longer is (TCS has a spec beginner's class). Mini is usually the largest entry, hardest fought class at TCS! Because it's the most fun. But the experiment also proved that if it's broken into 2 classes it is most likely doomed. Which is exactly why Fred's decision this year is important, at least to all of us on this forum, and why 21.5 may be the best compromise...

rave1010hk Great Paintjob!!!!!!!!

No motor limit :D

+ YouTube Video

Chassis can take it. It's the tires that may have problems.

Got my new S spec chassis built today, will get the body done up and will post a picture soon. got to finish tweeking it some :)

Found a better pic of the M-06R on RC Driver. Yup, silver and red plastics and aluminum. But...what's on the rear upright there? A brass weight of some kind?
http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w...ps3df96cbc.jpg
http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w...ps5be79f41.jpg

Been racing and building Minis for quite awhile and NEVER, EVER have figured out how you can measure the end play in the diff. Also have never bothered to ever shim the gears after my first attempt many years ago. Never could figure out how many shims to use and where to put them.

Now, I just build the diff, install the gears, install the outdrive with the pin, put the diff on that outdrive. These parts are placed in the right chassis half, then the left chassis half is placed and it's all screwed together. As long as it's spinning free with no binding, I never give it a second thought. How can you tell if anything is shifting from side to side ?????? And if it does, how can you tell if it does and by how much?????? The chassis is screwed together and there is no way to look inside.

Just for academic interest, can someone post the procedure for measuring end play for the diff and the gears.

Erik, ol' buddy, just make sure he built it exactly as the instructions say, and hasn't shaved or modified any parts. Build the ball diff per the instructions, use the outdrives with the short splines that came with the ball diff. Do not, I repeat, do not use the outdrives made for the gear diff with a ball diff. You cannot get into trouble if you follow the instructions.

Also check that he built the suspension arms correctly, cause it's really easy for a newbie to get those all wrong.

I'm Erik's buddy, I built the diff per instruction and slapped it in just like you said Granpa. All is good after a few runs and I am pretty sure the arms are built right i mean i did follow the directions.

Not sure how you can build arms wrong but then again I'm a 1/5 scale guy and ever thing is much bigger ha ha :)

Ok here it is, I come from the 5th scale off road so i am known for not spending to much time on my bodies LOL.

Well !@#$% cant post pictures.

Here is something else I've been wondering about. It has been posted that the steering linkage in the M05 has a lot of slop which is BAD, BAD, BAD. Sure enough, when I checked mine, which has the Tamiya metal bits, it did have some "slop". So without too much thought, I shimmed out most of the "play" which was a real PITA to do. On test driving, I did not notice a significant improvement in performance, in fact none at all. I just "chalked" that up to perhaps my not being a good enough driver to notice the difference in "feel".

Then, guess what, I lost the gears at a race. Anyone who has ever done this, knows you have to partially disassemble the steering linkage to split the chassis. Yep, you guessed it the extra shims fell on the floor. Crawled around on the floor and could not find them so just put everything back together and let the left steering arm have a little slop. My lap times did not suffer. "How can that be" you might ask. Surely your car was wandering and the steering must have turned to mush. No, not really.

So to all you would be Ellery Queens out there, can you tell me why this happened. I think I know, but would like to hear from the shimmers and non shimmers.

I seem to recall the RC mini boys writing about the acres of steering slop in their minis and how it just works...

Mine works fine without shimming. The one time I shimmed it I hit something and bent things...

thanks guys for the help on the balldiff install. looks like hidezertmini got it figured out and signed up here on the forums too.