The Bear Hawk chassis (continues)
One question bothered me during this build: what dampers should I fit? Of course, I have the original red dampers, but they are friction units. As I was building it, the Bear Hawk reminded me so much of my Manta Ray that I decided I would make it a 2WD equivalent: that is, I want to use my Bear Hawk as a "regular vintage runner", thus the Sport Tuned motor and the modern electronics.
Even though the red dampers are part of the model visual identity, their level of performance doesn't suit the chassis. Red hydraulic dampers do not exist (yet?) in Tamiya catalog... but the famous CVAs now exist in yellow: references 84365 CW-01 CVA Short Shock Unit Set II Yellow Style and 84366 WR-02 CVA Mini Shock Unit Set II Yellow Style. The dilemma: red friction dampers for the genuine look, or yellow hydraulic dampers for the performance and as a reminder of the Falcon's?
For the fun at driving, I chose to fit the yellow hydraulic dampers: the reminder of the Falcon's CVAs is a small consolation since the overall look is altered in my opinion. This is why I will preciously keep the stock red units: I may use these ones for static photos... and probably a few laps at the track, just to see.
So here's a photo of the fully assembled chassis in ready to run condition:
The bodyshell being clean and in perfect condition, I had nothing to do. So here's my model with the two variants: with stock dampers and with the yellow hydraulic units.
The variant with oil dampers is not ugly, but the original red units does look better overall. Anyway, I am only left with the painting of Andy Antsinpants, this Bear Hawk driver.
First runs with the Bear Hawk
Once the weather got better, I brought the Bear Hawk at the track, along with my friend David from RC 4 Old Nuts. A pair of photos before it hits the dust:
Right from the very first laps, the Bear Hawk reveals to be very nice to drive, even if the rear drivetrain is quite difficult to control on our track (pretty dusty thus slippery when dry). Of course, the Sport Tuned motor doesn't help, especially since the rear tires are not the Bear Hawk's: once I fitted the original tires (borrowed to my Manta Ray), things got much better (unfortunately, you won't see that since the test was made after the video shooting).
However, despite the smallest motor pinion (15T), the Sport Tuned got exaggeratedly hot. Unfortunately, this is both due to our very technical track requiring short ratios, but mostly to the Bear Hawk offering only 2 motor pinion choices (15 and 17T). In fact, you can find this same limit on every Tamiya leisure oriented buggy, from the Falcon (18 or 19T), to the Bear Hawk (15 or 17T), the DT-01 (17 or 19T) and the DT-02 / DT-03 (17 or 19T). This is a choice made by Tamiya to make the motor pinion adjustment much easier on models mostly oriented for beginners, but this may also be a limitation in other situations. As far as I am concerned, this is not a problem: I will simply swap the Sport Tuned motor with a classic Mabuchi 540 for the next runs (which will probably benefit a lot to the grip problem too).
Anyway, the Bear Hawk is great to drive: it is a very nice model to see on the track and the hydraulic suspension works like a charm. But most of all, the driver just feels great with it:
As the first photo proves, the Bear Hawk can fly pretty well. However, it is not recommended to repeat this too often since you should alway remind the only 4 little 3x12 screws that hold the front drivetrain to the chassis bathtub. This was one of the known problems on the Falcon: even though it seems to be less critical on the Bear Hawk, I am not that much confident it is bulletproof.
The third photo is not the landing of the first photo: instead, the Bear Hawk is cornering at full speed. Thanks to the carpet high grip, the chassis lowers itself instead of suffering from chassis roll as you would expect: do not forget though, this model has no anti-roll bar wherever. Obviously, it doesn't need any.
As a conclusion, here's a video from the first run and two great photos shot by my friend David from RC 4 Old Nuts that perfectly depict the Bear Hawk aggressive look:
Related article
