Building a Tamiya TRF416 Worlds Edition

June 7, 2009 · Posted in Maintenance, Touring Cars · by simon · 2 Comments

After a year or so of running used Tamiya’s, I decided it was time I splashed out and got myself a new car. There was only one choice really, the Tamiya TRF416 Worlds Edition.

It’s clearly a very quick chassis and it comes with pretty much all the bits to be very competitive right out of the box.

Finding one in stock was a very different matter. Tamiya stopped production for a while, but it transpired they did another batch, so I found one of the new batch online. Ordered and it was with me a few days later.

It went together like a dream. Being a man, and very familiar with Tamiya builds I didn’t really follow the manual, well, I did, but not the exact order of the manual.

I added JAAD ceramic balls and thrust to the diff, Tamiya don’t seem to do a ceramic option, and I wouldn’t run steel balls since experiencing ceramic, and they’re not that expensive.

I also added low friction ‘V’ parts top and bottom on the dampers, with fluorine shock shafts. Mainly because I had them in the spares box, so it made sense to add them from the beginning.

The only awkward bit was the rear wishbones, they seemed a bit fat, I realise now I should have trimmed them a little, but instead I removed a 0.5mm spacer, and shimmed the gap back up. I’m sure after some use the 0.5mm will go back in there happily.

All the standard screws were used, they’re steel, but we’re underweight these days anyway, so no worries there. And some blue Tamiya threadlock was used with all screws that go into alloy, that’s pretty much all of them as there’s sooo much blue on this car. The weak threadlock prevents the screws loosening, but enables them to be easily removed, it just fills the gaps in the threads a bit.

Some photos are below of the build. I forgot to take photos as I was nearing the end, but some photos is better than none I figure!

First time out I ran it with electronics from my old car, for a direct comparison ‘chassis only’ upgrade. And I knocked 3 seconds off my personal best at Bashley, including a roll that cost me another 3 seconds. It really is quick then!

I was staggered how much more corner speed it carried, I built it pretty much with kit setup (a few very slight changes), and the grip was amazing, it turned in, carried the speed, and you could get back on the throtttlw very early. ’Glorious’ was how I described it on the night, whilst grinning like a Cheshire cat.

If I gave up racing now, I would still say it was worth every penny [cent]!

The final pictures show it with the Team Wave RB50 that was chosen to go in this car, a ‘generation 3′ speedo, with timing advance and ‘full-throttle turbo’ functionality at a bargain price. I look forward to fiddling with all the settings.

I think it’s an ideal speedo to squeeze more power out of the stock motors I like to race, whilst still being able to run 10.5 and mod motors should I desire.