Tamiya Firedragon

[JohnM]

Terry, is there anything you don't know?

[topher2009]

Thanks Terry, great explaination! second video...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eSVf6fZrH4

[terry.sc]

Originally Posted by JohnM

Terry, is there anything you don't know?

How to earn enough money to pay for my r/c cars!


It was a cut and paste job from having written it out in an earlier thread on TC http://www.tamiyaclub.com/forum/inde...howtopic=46830 shortly after reading Shunsaku Tamiyas autobiography, so it was pretty easy at the time.

[Colinevan]

Great vid, car looks to go quite well as well ... I had a firedragon that i started to restore, the thing for me about the old tamiyas was painting the old shells up in the proper livery...

My dragon - mid restore...



Eventually i replaced virtually all the plastics and it would have been easier to just buy a new car because in theory thats what i did lol.

[topher2009]

Looks good, I agree they should be painted as per the box art although there is a green machine on another website that looks great!

[Power Surge]

I'm a big Thundershot chassis fan and have built a few of these cars recently, with my latest one being quite modernized in parts and design. I also raced the car at my local off road track, and quickly found areas of the car that needed improving.

To lessen the chance of having to replace parts on your car, I suggest the following:

Buy or make a brace plate to go over the A5 part. There used to be a guy on ebay that sold them, but you can make your own from some sheet metal.

See those blue solid upper control arms? Get them off there! They are quite hard to come by now, but try to find yourself a vintage Terra Scorcher upper arm kit. The gearbox plastic is very brittle, and the force of the upper arms moving front to back from good jumps and impacts will fracture the ears that the hinge pins go through. Switching to the ball end upper arm kits will eliminate that stress and save your gearboxes. Hell, you can probably MAKE your own uppers if you are handy.

Those are really the two main breakage spots on that chassis. The rest that I would suggest is all performance related. Not sure how far you want to take your car.

Here's my heavily modded "Terror Scorcher". It weighs 1550grams with a 3000 NiMi pack and was easily keeping up with B44s and Cat SXs at my local track. Well, in between breaking, that is

(BTW I have since changed out the rear upper arms, and also switched to a carbon fiber front shock mount)

[topher2009]

Thanks for the comments, I will look at the arm replacements. I dont think i will seriously race this car, I normally race a 2wd B4 offroad and quite enjoy it, but when it is wet, i dont seem to be competative, most probably due to the fact I have one set of tyres and one set only! I was thinking that when it rains, I may just join the 4wd guys for a race rather than not enjoy the 2wd, fortunately our local offroad club is outdoors on grass and we have a limited number of large jumps so hopefully will be ok but I will look for replacement upper arms just in case they are ever needed!

Your car looks great by the way! Obviously a lot of time spent on that!