Originally Posted by Nerobro (Post 15037060)

Thank you. It's rougher than I'd like it to be, but hey, I'm just an ameatur at writing this stuff.

That sounds like cheap, fun, racing. What do you guys do with the chassis afterwords? Sounds like a great way to get feeder cars for newbies :-)

Originally Posted by Nerobro (Post 15036016)

Originally Posted by gigaplex (Post 15037950)

The irony is that the TC class started with the Tamiya TA01 - a buggy chassis converted into a touring car.

Originally Posted by moistAF (Post 15038010)

Did he really have to get so verbose to state the obvious? :rolleyes: It's a budget tub car to putt around, not a serious racer. Tamiya never made any pretense of it.

Originally Posted by Nerobro (Post 15038048)

And so the r/c car world goes round and round. I find it amusing that buggies becoming road cars, and road cars becoming buggies is seemingly a common thing. It's not just Tamiya.



What makes it a budget? Why's it not a serious racer? How does any of Tamiya's marketing material indicate that any of that might not be the case? The sheer fact that there's a "upgraded" version of the buggy says something about what Tamiya thinks the buyer should think about the car.

Did you know where the car came from? With Tamiya models that starts to be very important. Knowing the root of cars, will tell you what parts might be compatible, and might give up upgrade paths.

Now those questions are facetious, the reason I go into that detail, is I wanted to cover the things I didn't know when I bought it. I knew it was budget, but ~why~ is it budget? What makes it cheap? What are it's failings? What traps are you getting yourself into?

Those are things that matter for ~most~ cars. For example on the TC4, the chassis strips screw holes easily, so you need to be ~careful~. The stock drive shafts are a liability, and I broke both of mine in the first day a the track. The servo saver, doesn't work, and should be disabled. The battery strap is adjusted by screw height, and you should start out with the battery forward. The axle drive pins are mechanical fuses, those should be retained as roll pins.

That sort of stuff, isn't usually compiled. Even here, there's a 2-300 page thread with that sort of information, but reading 3000 posts isn't something that's nice to suggest to someone.

I've got a couple other articles posted, you might want to try one or two of those. :-)

That said, when I get around to it, there's going to be a TC 7.1 and TC4 articles coming. You can expect just as thorough of an explanation there. Though, being higher quality cars, I suspect those articles will be a lot shorter, or will emphasize history more than how to deal with the car.

Originally Posted by julieng (Post 15042263)

My 7-year old son wants to learn driving. He is already doing offroad on my old Losi XXX but he is really willing to progress. We have a great touring track very close to our place. My elder 11-year-old son and I have Sakura XI Sport which is a great cat but not the perfect car to begin with.

Hence my question L How durable/robust is an entry-level TT-02 like Porshe 911 RSR?
His driving will not be perfect first but he needs to learn!

Originally Posted by Raman (Post 15042270)

It's a pretty durable and forgiving car and parts are cheap and readily available.

I'm a big Porsche fan personally but for racing I'd avoid the RSR body. The kit wheels and tyres are uselsss on a track and no one makes good quality 26 and 30 mm tyres for racing. So you would need 24 mm and those will look silly under that body.

Originally Posted by julieng (Post 15042263)

My 7-year old son wants to learn driving. He is already doing offroad on my old Losi XXX but he is really willing to progress. We have a great touring track very close to our place. My elder 11-year-old son and I have Sakura XI Sport which is a great cat but not the perfect car to begin with.

Hence my question L How durable/robust is an entry-level TT-02 like Porshe 911 RSR?
His driving will not be perfect first but he needs to learn!

Originally Posted by julieng (Post 15042761)

Does regular 2S lipo size (not shorty) fit in a standard TT-02 using out of the box strap?

What about adding the bearings during the initial build?

Does the kit come with servo saver?

Originally Posted by LJH (Post 15040714)

I think we all know why it is a budget chassis but with that said for a guy who just wants to have fun with it and has no intention of doing any serious racing it makes a lot of sense. *snip* I for one think that it offers a lot of bang for the buck.

Originally Posted by Raman (Post 15042800)

1. Standard LiPo fits. I drill two lower holes i battery post so that the bar sits snug on battery
2. Get bearings for sure
3. servo saver included is crap. Pick up a X-ray (best) kimborough, or Tamiya

Originally Posted by Nerobro (Post 15043473)

"We" might know. But I can tell you that "I" didn't know when I was first getting into R/C.

The $100 for a TT02, that comes with a motor, ESC, and a Tamiya quality body?... that's a steal. Bang for the buck is high on these. :-)

"what makes it a cheap car" is something I did not cover in my article. I should do that, as I have a followup I need to do too. Part of it being "cheap" is also what makes it so durable.


I use some close cell foam under my battery strap. The drilling idea is a good one, but is a permanant change to the battery posts.

Bearings for sure, but don't buy tamiyas. Get rubber sealed ones if you can, and don't spend more than $20 for the set.

The heavy duty tamiya servo saver is $9-10 on the usual websites. As long as you've got a strong servo, it's a good choice.