Well mine is about 3 quarters finished, only have the front steering hubs, shocks, radio installation, and body/wing to go.
The quality of the kit (as expected) is fantastic. The detail on some of the machined pieces is superb
There is plenty to like about this car: steering setup is very smooth and slop free, the anti-squat adjustment on the rear is neat and well thought out, there are plenty of tuning options, overall the car just looks right and you can clearly see the effort Tamiya have put into the design.
Some interesting points are:
No sealed bearings - Admittedly the rear wheel and diff outdrive bearings are very well protected but where I race a few sealed bearings would have been good.
The shock caps have a bleed hole in them with screws supplied but the manual doesn't mention using installing the screws - close inspection reveals that the bleed hole doesnt project into the inside of the cap - not sure if this is an error or that Tamiya simply removed that feature.
A new grey carbon plastic is used for much of the new parts like shock cartidges and caps etc. The composite used for the arms is very stiff.
Inner camber link mounts can be raised and lowered using spacers (as guessed earlier by Jimmy).
Both front and rear hubs have an internal spacer between the wheel bearings like Losi, so you can tighten the wheels right up without fear of binding the axles.
2 different size pulleys are used for the diffs, a white TA05 pulley in the rear, and a smaller black 415 pulley in the front - meaning that the front wheels are driven faster than the rear. It also looks to me that it would be possible to build the diffs with either gear, giving various underdrive/overdrive options.
The diff rings are bigger than those used on the Tamiya tc's - and they aren't locked onto the diff outdrives.
Speaking of outdrives, the diffs themselves feel quite heavy, but I noticed on one of the new parts spures an extra diff nut retainer which is too wide to fit into the outdrive slots - I'm guessing that in the future there will be an alloy diff with blades option.
Both front and rear bulkheads overhand the chassis - with an angled skid plate (rear) and bumper (front) then attached to close off these areas, also giving a bit more ground clearance too. It means that the back of the chassis is not going to get damaged in any hard landings off jumps.
The wing mounts are quite flexible and are supplied with these wedges that can be turned around to vary the wing angle - nice
I'm looking forward to building the shocks - from the design and quality they look like they could be the new standard to which other off road shocks are judged by.
That's all for now. I have to say this has been the most enjoyable car to build