Tamiya 511 Build Review
After a short delay of doing other things, I’ve finished the Tamiya 511 build. It worked out real nice, probably the nicest kit I’ve ever built.
Last year I built a Tamiya TRF-416WE touring car chassis, and the 511 is remarkably similar, but chunkier, more robust, and just more more more (no much).
The build was sweet, it went together no problem at all. Mark and I did 80% of it one Saturday afternoon, and built it to kit settings, apart from ceramic balls in the diffs (from Ghost RC), Ghost damper o-rings and a couple of other bits here and there, including some titanium turnbuckles.
And of course, wishbones are (or will be) 501X kit items after my embarrassing wishbone breaking incidents: I dropped it breaking a rear, and I drove it into the living room door breaking a front, before it was even finished…
Very few parts needed adjustment, everything is mentioned in the manual. Shimming of the wishbones and steering is worthwhile, so spacers and shims on hand are very useful.
Getting it up to rolling chassis stage was easy. The electrics install was hard though, it easily took as much time again. There’s a lot of things to avoid, the spur gear is right where you want to put everything, and the belts are close by too.
Electrics for now are Losi Xcelorin speedo and 6.5 motor, Futaba S9550 low-profile servo, Futaba 2.4GHz receiver, AMB PT.
After a lot of perseverance, the install was done, and it’s neat. The lipos I used are only 3200s so no clearance issues, higher capacity lipos need the bulkheads trimming, or lipos moving out a little. I located the lipos with some lead strips on the bottom in the cell slots.
The weight distribution is okayish with 845g on the rear axle and 795g on the front. Total weight comes in at 1640g. So that’s 52/48, so I need a touch more over the rear. There’s space between the lipos for some weights, but I’ll probably run it first to see what it’s like, once I’ve got the race tyres on it, currently it’s just a set of Tamiya wheels and tyres from the DB01 kit.
One thing I’ve not done is remove the rear spring adjusters. The ‘TRF boys’ all remove them to get the rear end low enough, but with kit springs (which are arguably too soft?) the rear driveshafts are almost horizontal. I’m as yet undecided whether to run Tamiya springs or Associated, I’ll end up trying both I’m sure.
A quick shell in my usual colours topped it off, and a few stickers and it’s almost ready to race. I’ve got to do final camber/toe adjustments .
Very nice car, I’m looking forward to getting it on the track this year. I’m keeping the DB01 to run along side it, and to compare the two.
Brilliant!
Written by simon.
Tamiya Minis at YMCC
Dan from Blink Studio got in touch with this ace video, the Yateley track looks ace fun for the little front wheel drivers.
Prediction: in-car / on-car video is going to be big in 2010…
Written by simon.
Tamiya 511 / 501X / DB01 Wishbones Arm Breakage
Written by simon.
Nasty, Lazy and Cheap (12v 5A Charger Power Supply)
I don’t know about you, but I think the cost of RC power supplies is simply ridiculous. I have a hefty 30A bench supply that I was fed up of lugging around. I wasn’t about spend £50, £100 or even more on a ‘proper’ RC supply.
I wanted a small and light, and above all, cheap power supply to run my HOT POWER (AMAZING name!) charger off. So I made one…
In my Graupner Ultramat 14 charger I knew there was what looked like a laptop power supply to provide mains input capability. I know other chargers use something similar.
My charger only needed 5A input, so I trawled ebay for a laptop supply with 12v 5A output. £8.99 including delivery! Bargain.
Chopped the cable off short, soldered on some 4mm sockets. Then I ruined it by Shoe Gooing the cable to the side of the supply.
I could have gone to the trouble of putting it in a nice box etc, but that would have made it bigger. I could have left the leads dangling, but I wanted it neat and tidy.
The end result is brilliant, perfect for running a regular charger, or a soldering iron.
The boys laughed at my nasty construction skills, but funnily enough they agreed it was a perfect solution for less than a tenner.
Make one today. Hell, if you really want one I’ll make you one, for about £50.
Written by simon.
Petit Race 2010 Day Two
*Beep beep, Beep beep*. ”What time is it?” ”OH SHIT!!!”
That was the start to the day, luckily it was only mild panic as the alarm that didn’t go off was set about 15 minutes before the text came in from Crazy Bob…
Rapid getting-up and down to the track for practice.
Mark went out, stripped a spur gear in about 5 feet. Nice start. That’s about the 123rd spur gear he’s stripped on that Cat. And he has no idea why.
Rob goes out, fine and dandy. I go out and the bloody plastic Durga went just ace, admittedly I was playing very safe with an 8.5, but it was a hoot. Hitting the window off the tabletop was a worrying moment, I thought that was game over, but no, back on the track and it was just fine. Don’t worry, I’ll break it later.
After practice I snorted some chocolate soya milk, for breakfast. So cool.
Just been reading Jimmy’s Oople Report, and he’s got pictures of Fabien’s ZX5 conversion, and it seems a Durango 2wd made the A Final yesterday. I knew nothing of this, I was far too busy breaking things to notice anything exciting or exclusive. Jimmy’s way more professional at this reporting lark than I’ll ever be, so I’ll leave it up to him to provide cutting-edge information.
This morning I was watching top heat practice, and Lee Martin was running a Tamiya 511X (correction, it’s 511 not 511x, there isn’t a Tamiya 511x, yet, and not until after a 511WE? or something. There is of course a 501x, that’s what was confusing me…) This foxed me somewhat, but again, it’s no news apparently, everyone knew.
Round 1 resulted in a quicker time than I did all day yesterday in 2wd. The car felt a bit soft, so I’ve increased the pack in my emotional dampers. Yannic Pruemper was in my heat, so four laps I was getting out of his and others way. (The ability sorting is possibly the only thing that could be improved at this event…)
Popped back to the hotel to collect stuff and found a button with a green star in the lift. I pressed it: it illuminated. Nothing more happened.
Round 2: Holy Snappage! I committed to the corner ramp a little too hard, fell off and someone whacked me one. The result, a broken front wishbone, snapped shock shaft and hinge pin bent to 30 degrees. Mark measured it. He carried a protractor in his pitbox, just in case.
Round 3: It stayed in one piece! I gave the track, and other drivers lots of respect, kept it steady and only had one roll in the whole run. Smashing. Discover my damping was too stiff at the rear in comparison to the front, so I’ll tidy that up. A faster time. Maybe even J final!
Rob’s round 3 was an okay run followed by giving it large up the death wall after the final buzzer and removing his front bulkhead. Good work Howett. Moss came to the rescue for the price of a curry.
Round 4: nothing happened, people raced, some got faster, we didn’t, we were too untidy. Oh, I did fiddle some more with damping and the car went ‘fine’. I think I’m sitting in the low hundreds from 127. So better than yesterday, and certainly less far behind the faster
The time came around for the finals, I was 9th in the K final, better than yesterday’s L final by a whole ten places! Woo! Rob was up in the heady heights of the H final, mark in the I.
My final run was spectacular if nothing else, I managed to go from 9th to 2nd to 10th all before the 2nd corner… I then faffed around for 5 minutes trying to break it, but failed! It held together and completed 5 minutes and a huge amount of fun was had.
Both Mark and Rob broke theirs in their respective finals…
So that’s it! We legged it quickly, and had a smooth drive home, buzzing from the best weekend’s racing we’ve had in years. Touring cars is SO much easier than this off-road malarky.
HUGE thanks to everyone: Maritime, Nicolas Petit, racers, supporters, etc etc.
2010? It’s all about the jumps baby.
(Look, even more photos of broken things, including protractors and sweets!)
Phrase of the day: emotional damping.
