The biggest flaw of the 04 was that gearing was off by 1 tooth, compared to the other minis. I wish I understood why Tamiya did this. Maybe it's because the "standard" mini FDR had only been used in one model by this point, so there wasn't much history to stand by.

Anyway, the 04 was wickedly fast and agile if conditions were good and you set it up well. In very other case, it was a horrendous pig. And for some reason, the last few I ran chewed through stock gear diffs like a fat kid on a cake.

What's the consensus or general view towards the m05 ver ii r?


There seems to be a clearance sale for this kit. Not sure if sales for this kit is bad or just clearing space for the m07 kits.

the m05v2r is the best M05 kit offered. comes with all of the parts that make the M05 work at it's best. the clearance is due to the release of the M07 kits.

I took my M07 out for a test run today. Was a bit twitchy with the Team Powers 36 tyres, but when I switched to the Pit Shimizu 33 front 27 rear it felt rock solid. No idea if the lap times were quicker than my M05v2R as the practice timing system wasn't working for some reason.

I noticed my M05v2R pulls left when accelerating, but tracks straight once up to speed, and tracks straight under braking. Will need to check the balancing on it, and retest with the Shimizu tyres (only ever run TP36 on that car).

The aluminium glass fibre tape used to seal the gearbox didn't last long. This was after roughly 10 laps.

So I think I found out why my M05v2R was pulling left when accelerating. I checked the corner weights using 4 small scales and found that the front right and rear left wheels were carrying a lot more weight than the opposing ones. I checked the preload of the shocks, and the corners carrying the most weight were set quite a bit shorter than the others, yet those wheels touched the ground first when testing droop. I suspected the chassis was twisted, so I loosened all the screws connecting the front half to the rear half of the chassis, gave it a wiggle, then tightened it back up. The corner weights balance pretty close to even now with roughly equal length shocks. Hopefully it runs straighter next time I take it for a spin.

Yeah, you can ignore everything I wrote here. :-) Go and drive minis.

Please, do give us an update. This was one of my concerns while building the M-07. I tried to tighten everything evenly and in a cross pattern so that I didn't distort the chassis.

The disappearing tape on the bottom of the chassis was one of my concerns. Because of this I also put tape on the inside and I'm glad I did. I have an idea to fix this though.

Adjusting springs corner to corner seems vital, especially on the 05. Adjusted mine when it was misbehaving and it was 100% better immediately.

In 07 news, I ordered a super shorty pack, because returning to a full size lipo feels like de-evolution to me. I'm may be wrong, as I often am. The upshot is it was only $20 after discounts. The downside is I still don't get to drive the car until end of September.

I'm seriously considering the super shorty pack too. My only concern is that a lighter battery is going to raise the CG of what is already going to be a pretty tippy car.

My thought on this is centering mass, based on what I notice when I switched from full size to shorty pack in my 05 V2. I thought about a low CG pack and may still give one a try. I'll probably try a full size battery as well, just to cover all the bases.

With how short these cars are, and how fast they can snap into oversteer, I don't think we need to worry to much about polar moment of intertia.

I'm running a 3500mah low cg shorty in the M07, it works well. Just needs a way bigger pinion gear.

I think the full-size battery helps keep the M-07 planted. I think traction will become more of an issue with a shorty.

I nearly destroyed my tape in a short run. Tamiya has to come up with a better fix for the bottom hole.

I'll post back when I next get a chance to run the M05v2R after removing the tweak, it'll probably be at least a week before I get a chance though.

I corner weighted my M07 while I was at it. Perfect distribution with zero effort, I made no attempts to manage tweak or balance it beforehand.

I use shorty packs on my M05 as I don't like dragging the battery on the asphalt when it leans.