Hey guys! So... when I just logged in... it said that my last login to this forum was on 4/21/2005.... so... over 12 years ago... which kinda speaks for itself. Basically... I am juuuust getting back into it. Sold all my old stuff. I'm 33 years old now and I gotta admit... i'm pretty overwhelmed by the shift in this hobby. I am... lost. Brushless motors? Transmitters with LED screens for under 50 bucks? WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE!?!?!?! haha... ok... so... why am I posting this all randomly on THIS particular thread? Well... I just ordered a TT-02R chassis to start with, which is supposed to arrive on Monday. I used to have a TT-01 so I guess my first question is, how much difference is there in these two chassis? Secondly... I did NOT realize when I bought this recent chassis that it didn't have sway bars available, so I am curious if anybody knows how to rig up a set so I can order those parts soon to have them on hand by the time it's built.

Lastly... and i'm mentioning this in a seperate paragraph because it's the biggest question I have: I have been trying to read, and understand, and watch videos about these new brushless systems... and maybe i'm just mildly retarded... but, I cannot seem to figure out exactly what type of setup i'd need. Allow me to walk you back in time... and explain what I want... and if someone, probably an older guy like me haha, could please direct me towards what i'm in need of, that would be great. I'm looking for the brushless modern equivalent of a Novak Super Rooster (an old bashers ESC from yeeears ago, that had reverse, but could also have the reverse locked out for racing), a brushed 12t motor, and i'm looking for the longest run times possible in regards to my battery, and I don't care how long it takes to charge, or any of that, as long as the charger is good enough to handle the battery without shortening its life. That's literally it. I am looking for a parking lot basher that I can occasionally race type setup, for as cheap as possible. In fact, if anybody has old brushless gear they grew out of... hit me up! Bang for the buck is what i'm all about... which is why on Monday a belt driven track monster is NOT what UPS is bringing me. :-D

I'm sorry this is off topic guys. But... please trust me when I say that I HAVE tried to do my research... but I don't have the money to waste on buying stuff that won't work well in this car... so, I remembered this website... and I came back, after 12 years, to get some actual help! Thank you so much! I've missed this little community!

You were out for 12 years.. why did you fall off the wagon man! lol..

Don't feel too old.. I have 15 years on you!

1. TT01 vs TT02 - Its improved slightly but not by leaps and bounds.. come on its tamiya after all, they need to sell hop ups
2. Sway bars for TT02 - There presently aren't any and you will most likely not need them
3. LCD screen Radio for $50.. blame China lol
4. The ESC questions - When Novak closed its doors last year, Charlie said to me.. if you can't beat them.. you might as well join them.. who is them.. its HobbyWing (Blame China again)
5. ESC part deux - I recommend HobbyWing JustStock $50

https://www.hobbywingdirect.com/prod...ant=4734196356

Its what I run in my TT02. You can run it with or without reverse. You will need to pick up a program box for settings $20

https://www.hobbywingdirect.com/prod...ant=1181193952

Now regarding the motor. A brushless equivalent to a 12t would be a 6.5 turn.. honestly that is way too much motor for the TT02.

I race in a stock class with a 21.5 brushless which is about the same as the stock silver can that Tamiya includes in the kits.. but geared down to a final drive of 4.0.

For bashing and adrenaline rush.. I would say maybe pick up a 13.5 brushless (Equivalent to a 19t)

6. Batteries - LiPo batteries last forever.. you will no longer have the issue of car progressively slowing down after a few min.. If you go with a name brand like Reedy you will pay a fortune and end up getting the same battery as a cheaper brand. I recommend SMC 2S batteries .. great bang for your buck http://www.smc-racing.net/index.php?...ory&path=67_97

7. LiPo charger - You will need to pick one up there are many out there depending on your budget.

this is a decent charger for cheap

https://hobbyking.com/en_us/turnigy-...g-charger.html

8. Charging LiPos - I advise you to charge them in a charging bag and do not leave them unattended... in rare cases, people have burned down their homes..

Raman! Thank you SO much! This is EXACTLY what I was looking for! I will start off with the slower motor and maybe goto the 13.5 later. I appreciate all of this so much!

Also... I just have to say, when you started off "why'd you fall off the wagon?" I literally laughed out loud... and i'd like to take a second to quickly explain why:

I am currently living in a 3/4 house for drug and alcohol addicts. I have been in recovery for some time now and I am just about to celebrate my 14th month clean from drugs and the bottle. The longest i've been sober since I was 16 years old... and the first time i've ever had my life pieced somewhere back together. Unfortunately, as is the case with many drug addicts... I sold pretty much everything I had, and started travelling the country as a street musician for money to support my bad decisions. My R/C equipment, and my old music recording equipment, was the first stuff to go once things got really bad. As stated, I am now living in a 3/4 house, where we can't have things like our own TV, video games, my bow, my rifle, etc... many of the other interests i've had are simply not allowed in this house. This place is geared towards making a lifestyle change and trying to rebuild our lives. Come tax season, I am fixing to move out of here, now that I am being responsible with my decisions again... but, in the meantime, my old R/C car love has come back, along with a heavy nostalgia factor. Luckily, this IS a hobby I am allowed to pursue as per our house rules (you sign a contract when you move into a place like this, which states you will not participate in any activities which encourage reclusive behavior)... so... in a very real way, this hobby is helping me to get my life back, since, as an addict, you tend to lose interest in pretty much anything except the substances you choose. So, when I read that "fall off the wagon" thing... haha... that was pretty much the most dead on opening line you could have possibly had. haha

Again, thank you so much! I literally could not have asked for a better response! Much love!

Raman! That is EXACTLY the type of reply I was hoping for! I will definitely take your advice and start with the slower motor and upgrade later if it suits me.

I would like to add as well... that when you opened with "why'd you fall off the wagon?" I literally laughed out loud. The truth is, I am currently living in a 3/4 house sober living house... just coming up on my 14th month clean from drugs and alcohol. The longest i've been clean since I was 16 years old... and the first time since then i've had my head on straight. When my addiction started to get out of hand, my R/C equipment was one of the first things I sold to support my bad decision making. The rest soon followed and I started travelling the country living out of a backpack and playing music on the street to further fund my journey to the bottom. See, in this sober house i'm in now, we're not allowed to do or have anything that promotes reclusive behavior... so, no televisions, no video games, which obviously would also include things which I had previously done to pass time like shoot my bow, or go plinking with my rifle. You actually sign a contract when you come here that agrees to not have hobbies like that. However, R/C cars ARE something I am allowed to have here, to give me something to past the time and tinker with. In active addiction, you tend to lose interest in anything that doesn't have to do with the substance of your choosing.... but, the R/C love has come back with a vengeance. I suppose one could say that in a very real way, this hobby is helping me to get my life back... to feel human again... since i've been numb and lost for all these years, in a life where I literally did not care about anything. So when you opened with "why'd you fall off the wagon?".... haha, that was actually the most accurate thing you could have said.

Raman! That is EXACTLY the type of reply I was hoping for! I will definitely take your advice and start with the slower motor and upgrade later if it suits me.

I would like to add as well... that when you opened with "why'd you fall off the wagon?" I literally laughed out loud. The truth is, I am currently living in a 3/4 house sober living house... just coming up on my 14th month clean from drugs and alcohol. The longest i've been clean since I was 16 years old... and the first time since then i've had my head on straight. When my addiction started to get out of hand, my R/C equipment was one of the first things I sold to support my bad decision making. The rest soon followed and I started travelling the country living out of a backpack and playing music on the street to further fund my journey to the bottom. See, in this sober house i'm in now, we're not allowed to do or have anything that promotes reclusive behavior... so, no televisions, no video games, which obviously would also include things which I had previously done to pass time like shoot my bow, or go plinking with my rifle. You actually sign a contract when you come here that agrees to not have hobbies like that. However, R/C cars ARE something I am allowed to have here, to give me something to past the time and tinker with. In active addiction, you tend to lose interest in anything that doesn't have to do with the substance of your choosing.... but, the R/C love has come back with a vengeance. I suppose one could say that in a very real way, this hobby is helping me to get my life back... to feel human again... since i've been numb and lost for all these years, in a life where I literally did not care about anything. So when you opened with "why'd you fall off the wagon?".... haha, that was actually the most accurate thing you could have said.

I replied to this twice now and it said it had to be approved but never showed up... but... the gist was thank you. I then explained why I got out of the hobby.... which is a pretty harrowing tail... but, I don't have the time to type the whole thing out a third time at the moment haha

Super fun last night at the tennis courts. I had not run the SX4 body and the 26MM Ride Radials since I changed up the the suspension on the TT02 so I switched over last night. I get to the tennis courts and it looks like someone power washed the courts since the last time I was there. Anyhow, I set up my course using field markers and added a slalom section this time. It took me 5 minutes to get comfortable with the "new" course but I started to really get the rhythm and was able to really balance the car well using over/understeer to my advantage.....It was a bunch of fun and really the first time the car has felt truly balanced.

BTW, I have to say that spending the $12 on field markers is one of the best "upgrades" I have made to running my car. Being able to "make" a course to run on makes it so much more fun and will prove to be a big help in both chassis tuning as well if I decide to actually run at a formal track.

Cheers,
Jim

It's vaguely TT02 related... and at least some of what I've run into may relate here.

A Real Life Tinker Gnome: The TT02b MS - Answering the question, again, of what happens when you turn a touring car into a buggy.

The stuff that is "tt02" directly related... I find the steering servo mounts to be soft, and I've had my mounts strip in a crash. I also managed to rip/crack my hard blue chassis.

Welcome back. 12 years is a lifetime in terms of electronics. You'll love brushless, LiPo powered RCs all on a budget!

Nice piece. Here in the U.K. we run these buggies once a year in a 2hr box-to-track buildathon, then 2 days of team racing including a 2 hour endurance round. They hold up really well, usually the only weak piece is the rear diff ring gear - shimming is not allowed. The car has to be as kit with the only permitted upgrades being bearings, an 18x2 brushed motor and Hobbywing 1060 ESC plus you can use a decent servo saver (but nobody bothers, the kit one seems fine).

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 :-)

Exactly that pretty much. Our team car went into a free entry raffle. We serviced it then installed the kit speedo and motor, and put in some old (but new) 27AM radio and a servo so it was good to go. Then we gave all the young kids at our club who come with their parents a ticket. and picked one at random who got the car to get them into the hobby.

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

Edit: I see that was covered in the article Read before you post

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

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.