Today, after waiting much too long thanks to the postal service, once again another RC car arrived at my home today. This time it’s a Tamiya F103LM Audi R8R. The Audi R8R was prototype racing car built for the 24 hours of Le Mans (linky linky). I’m not going to talk about the real car, just click the link if you’d like to know more about that. The F103 on the other hand is a very interesting chassis and the F103LM is an interesting variation on that chassis.

The Tamiya F103 is a 1 to 10th scale formula 1 chassis mainly used for formula 1 models, but Tamiya soon realized that there are more possibilities with this chassis besides the formula 1 cars. Well, it wasn’t really soon as they did not do this with the F103′s predecessors, the F101 and F102, which could also be the perfect base for other car types. On the other hand, Tamiya had their group C chassis back in the days of the F101 and F102, so this kind of variation was not needed for the F1 chassis’ back then. So what is so special about the F103LM? Like the F103GT the F103LM is basically the  same as it’s formula 1 counterpart. The suspension is the same, they’re all rear wheel driven chassis’, they’re all very low and light weight, the motor mounts are the same, so what is the difference? The difference is the main chassis plate and the type of wheels to be mounted on the chassis. The F103GT only takes standard touring car wheels as the F103, F103RM, F103LM and F103LM Special TRF take only F1 style wheels. The F103GT is the only variant that is not 200mm wide as it’s only 185mm wide making it suitable for fitting 190mm touring car bodies. The original body was a Le Mans type car though (Courage LC70 Mugen) and that is where the F103LM comes in. This chassis variation was meant for 200mm Le Mans style bodies. The F1 style wheels are slightly smaller in diameter as touring car wheels and they are also quite a bit wider giving the F103LM it’s wide tread. The main chassis plate of the F103LM is also a bit different and so is the upper deck. The main chassis is wider than the original F103 chassis giving it more room for electronics and the possibility to mount the servo horizontally instead of vertically. Also the upper deck doesn’t reach all the way to the front.

On the next few pictures it’s very obvious that the F103GT and F103LM are based on the same basic platform. The 3 main differences are the orientation of the steering servo, the width of the main chassis, the shorter upper deck on the F103LM and the plastic “bathtub” on the front half of the F103LM’s chassis. This bathtub was the first thing to be removed though. It hardly adds to the chassis’s stiffness and it prevents the mounting of a full size servo. Some aluminum hop up parts are already on the way to give the F103LM a slightly higher bling-bling factor and also improve setup possibilities. You can also see that the front bumper piece is slightly different and also has different body posts. The rear body posts are the same as on a stock F103GT. The rear body posts on my GT are taken from a Tamiya TA-05 to be able to fit a body that is higher in it’s rear as the Courage LC70.

On the last picture you can clearly see the difference in tread width between the F103GT (top) and the F103LM (bottom). The difference in tire diameter is also quite visible.

When this car is finished it’s going to be a blast to drive. When the hop ups are done I’m still going to need to replace the motor and the pinion and spur gears. I want this thing to drive smooth and silent.

…End of line.

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My employer didn’t renew my contract, so I was looking for a new job and a few days ago I got the good news that I am being hired anew as a system administrator! So to celebrate this I thought that I deserved some new hobby stuff. So I went to the store and got myself een HPI Blitz 2WD short course truck and a new transmitter, a Spektrum DX3S, as well.

I think that the Traxxas Slash is the most popular 2WD short course truck available, but it has one very big problem. And that is it’s center of gravity. The chassis plate of the Slash is extremely high, causing the truck to flip over very quickly in tight corners. Other brands have made their own versions of the short course trucks and HPI came up with the Blitz. The chassis is based on the E-Firestorm 10T and is much lower than that of the Slash. At first I wanted to get a kit that I could assemble myself, but that would either bring me to a Team Associated SC10 or to the HPI Blitz Pro kit. The SC10 is a very nice truck as well, but it has a structural weakness at it’s front. One bing smack on the ground after a jump nose down and the front suspension arms come right off. The Blitz doesn’t have this weakness. The Blitz pro kit of significantly more expensive, so because of that I decided to get the Blitz RTR pack instead.

I have to add that the truck looks much better in real life than on a picture ^.^

To control this beast (as well as all my other RC cars) I decided that I wanted a new transmitter. The Acoms Technisport 2.4Ghz is nice, but I want something that has more configuration options and the built in telemetry of the Spektrum DX3S is simply cool.

Besides all the extra options that this transmitter has when compared to my old one it is notable how much lighter this one is. Even with the batteries installed it’s still lighter than the Acoms without any batteries. It also needs only 4 batteries instead of 8, so now I have a set of spares in case the batteries run out

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The plane that is still featured in my previous post has left us. The last crash was fatal. The motor was blown, the tail ripped to shreds and both wings kind of broken. So I decided to go to the local RC hobby store, get a cheap hand thrown free flight airplane, get a lot of tape, a new motor, an ESC I still had lying around and modify it for RC flight. This is the result.

As you may have noticed, these pictures are quite a bit bigger than my other pictures. There are two reasons for that: 1. I didn’t feel like resizing them to my usual size and 2. at this size there is more detail ^.^

I haven’t tested it yet, so I have no idea if this Frankenstein abomination is going to fly or just fall to the ground. What concerns me the most is the size of the elevator. I might have to remove it and create a larger one for it to be effective. I also think the rudder is rather small, but I don’t use that anyway.

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Pictures say more than a thousand words…

This monster is second hand and came with a battery, transmitter and a simple charger.

No testdrive yet, but I don’t expect this thing to be very maneuverable.

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After a lot of thinking I finally decided that I wanted to take part in next season’s RC competition over at the club (www.erceracing.nl). But none of my cars are very suitable for any of the classes. The CCT doesn’t fit into any current class, the FF01 is too old and slow and TA05 isn’t fitted for any of the classes that I would want to compete in. The TA05 would be allowed in the modified class, but I’m pretty sure that I’ll be blown away by even the weakest competition in that class with their way to powerful motors.

So then I decided that I wanted to ride with the mini class and that mend  that I had to buy a new chassis as any of my other cars are too big to be allowed into that class. The mini chassis class is 1:10 scale just like the others, but they are based on considerably smaller cars like a mini cooper or fiat 500. I, however, got my chassis without a body, so it’s just small and not based on anything. Here are some pictures of my new Tamiya M05 Pro.

Unlike most RC cars, this one isn’t 4 wheel driven of rear wheel driven. Instead it’s a front wheel driven chassis that is very front heavy. The rear weighs next to nothing while the front is pretty heavy with the motor, drivetrain and steering mechanics in the front. The electronics are in the back though for good measure and the battery goes just a little to the front from the center of the chassis. The biggest difference that this chassis has compared to it’s predecessor (the M03) is that the  steering servo is mounted in the back of the chassis instead of the front. This all for the better distribution of the weight. This better weight distribution means that this chassis is more suitable for use with lipo batteries than the M03 was.

I chose this chassis, because it’s the latest front wheel driven M chassis by Tamiya. It comes in several different versions and this is the M05 Pro Blue Plated Version. I actually picked the Blue Plated Version, because it had the exact same price tag as the normal black one, but this one just looks cooler. The electronics are just mounted on the chassis for good measure right now. The speed controller isn’t connected to the motor and has no connectors on it for a battery. And also important, it’s just the standard motor that comes with any Tamiya RC car (except for Pro versions, they don’t come with a motor) conveniently called “Silver Can” by the community. It’s a low cost and low performance motor that probably won’t be used in this car at all. Like I said, it’s in there for good measure.

I’m not yet sure whether the rear body posts will remain on there like this. The body I want to buy probably won’t fit with these body posts, so I’m probably going to have to replace them sometime.

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