TamTech Gear Hop-Ups

Taking advantage of my friend Teamneogordini's experience, I knew from the start that two or three options were highly recommended for this chassis:

40529 TamTech Gear CVA Dampers

The stock friction dampers work surprisingly quite well, even if they lack progressiveness. So I decided to fit an hydraulic set to improve progressiveness and remove the bouncing effect.

These TamTech version dampers are much thinner than those we generally use on Tamiya kits, but their design is exactly the same.

At the front, dampers are horizontally mounted in order to fit low nose bodyshells. They work by using a rocker part fixed on the chassis side that transforms vertical efforts from the wheel arm into horizontal efforts sent to the damper shock. This is a less "natural" movement compared to the classic vertical mount, but it works very well provided the rocker is solid and free on its rotation axle. It moves smoothly since the rocker has two white plastic bearings (probably teflon-treated) used as "bearings" by the screw that is both the rotation axle and the rocker fix onto the chassis. Anyway, I preferred to replace these plastic bearings (arrow 1 on the first photo) with 2 real 850 type ball bearings.

A note about assembling the rear dampers: do not follow the 40529 CVA instructions. The manual is OK for the GB-01 chassis, that is for the buggy version on which the ground clearance needs to be set high. But on the GT-01, the rear wheels will get over one centimeter away from below the bodyshell wheel arches. To reduce the ground clearance at the rear of the chassis, insert V8 and V7 spacers on the damper axle inside the oil tank. The front dampers assembly is straight away following the instruction sheet.

40503 40504 40505 TamTech Gear Motor Pinions

Tamiya provides plastic pinions! In fact, they are probably made out nylon, but still. After soft aluminum pinions on the 58xxx series kits, here are the nylon ones: motor pinions must be used as "fuse" in Tamiya's gearboxes. Hopefully, the nylon pinions will be replaced by... aluminum ones . Anyway, these motor pinions were required since the Sport Tuned axle is shorter than the stock motor's. Pinions reference are 40503 (14T), 40504 (16T) and 40505 (18T).

40537 TamTech Gear Sport Tuned Motor

You can find it under two 2 references, 40414 and 40537. Visually, the first one's endbell is all back while the second's has red parts, but Mabuchi's references also differ: RK-370-SD-3265 for the first one, RK-370-SD-4045 for the second one. So what? Well, they are very different motors since the 4 last digits have a crucial importance:

OK, that's a whole bunch of complicated figures.

The interesting part is located in the last column under the "At maximum efficiency" title (which means motor specifications in best conditions). Figures are not that important in fact: let's focus on motor differences instead.

• number of revolution/minute (Speed): +40%
• current drain (Current): +57%
• torque: +13%
• overall power (Output): +59%

Conclusion? Version 40537 (RK-370-SD-4045) is about twice as powerful as the other one! Quite easy to figure out since the full reference is 40537  TamTech Gear Sport Tuned Motor SPT. SPT standing for Sport or for Special Power Tuned? Anyway, make the right choice when you order. But guess which one I bought before I understood the difference? With all these details, I hope you won't make the same mistake .

40533 + 40534 GT-01 Hi-Grip Slicks

These are the same as those mounted on my Celica LB Turbo Gr.5: they are softer than the stock ones and provide better grip. This is why foam inserts are supplied: the tires being softer, inserts are required to avoid tire deformation when the car runs in corners.

My chassis finished and ready to run: