Optima85

installed the tamiya gear diff, diff housing, and CVDs. The car is what it should have been years ago. No more ball diff loosening up. No more dog bones chattering and popping out. Totally worth it.

wtcc

iTrader: (2)

I am six years late, but somehow fever struck me and I jumped on the FF train.
Really liked the FF03 evo design. Tamiya FFs are hard to come by in Germany and sorrounding countries). No chance to get any car but a regular FF03. So (after reading through the whole thread ) I ordered all parts to make it an Pro plus the gear diff and diff housing (not a fan of ball diffs).
The assembly wasn't as easy as thought. Even though I am not new to this hobby I made some newbie mistakes like installing the arms wrong...
One thing still bothers me: the diff housing for the gear diff is larger than the ball diff housing. This brought a collision with the large damper bridge as I wanted to marriage chassis with motor-/gear-unit. Did I order the wrong housing (54398)? Whatever... I took some material away and now it's fine.
Also the car is partly overcomplicated in its construction. The rear part seems to be someones little jewel with all its parts and screws

Another thing what really surprised me is the weight of this chassis. Even with my lightweight 1/12 sized battery the RTR car is over 1200grams.

Tomorrow this beauty will have its first outing with 17.5t on high grip carpet.
Enough blabla, here some pictures:

OSherman

iTrader: (3)

Very nice clean build.. I too shared the bewilderment on the overly complex rear assembly when I had the FF03. Car handled like a dream and had much room for improvement from a 'lightweighting' standpoint. This car still runs toward the front of the pack locally in the rite hands.

Something about that IFS just makes it turn great. (comparing my FF03EVO to my FF04EVO)

I like how you mounted the servo and speedo more 'inboard'... awesome

wtcc

iTrader: (2)

I am so glad that you were right!
The car handles beautifully! I had a smile on my face all day.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2FTvL_Av67s
Sorry for the quality. It went through Whatsapp before I uploaded it...Mine is the mostly white car xD It shows my first laps with the 10.5t motor. Setup wasn't as good, so the car rolled even with the slightest touch of the curbs.

The day started slow with 17.5t and a lame gearing of 6.0. My friends had spurs and pinion for a change to 4.0. This was much better. The laptimes lowered from 12.1s to 11.7s. After some runs and small setup changes, mostly spring rates, I had the feeling that this car could really need more power. I changed to a X12 10.5t. Now this was perfect. Now you need to drive with more throttle feeling and the car became even better to drive. I also reduced the rear toe and used 25lb/in springs to free up the rear. Since then the car is a carpet ripper Times fell to 11.3s and became much more consistent. The best Stock 13.5t 4wd pro TCs today run 10.3s today. So I am one second of their pace.
How close are you guys with your FFs to the best pro TCs?

OSherman

iTrader: (3)

it may be a bit difficult (not impossible) to get that FWD car on par with a sedan. like any other car make it as light as possible.. (hardware, carbon reinforced plastic parts... etc)

the advantage of the FWD is the drivetrain... very efficient if done rite

OSherman

iTrader: (3)

car looks like it is off to a good start. smooth cornerspeed is key with FWD..

wtcc

iTrader: (2)

Here now a very cool video in top quality made by my good friend Gregor. It documents what the car is capable of:

https://youtu.be/-yPAMpqyKRo

OSherman

iTrader: (3)

awesome.. never raced mine on carpet, but that looks like a very good start.

mrod

iTrader: (4)

I will be running an ff03 for the first time on the tamiya track, I currently run a ball diff, and it seems to work well on carpet, how is it on ashphalt and will it be capable against gear diff off at the tamiya track.

OSherman

iTrader: (3)

Ball diff works, gear diff works.. you just have to fiddle with both and adjust to your liking.

Gear diff in my opinion is just more consistent. takes a little bit of work to get them as 'smooth' as a ball diff. easier to adjust the resistance on the gear diff seeing as you can choose different weight oils/lubes to put inside rather than fiddling with the tension screw on a ball diff.

I don't necessarily choose one over the other for carpet vs asphalt racing.. some people do, not me.

$0.02

mrod

iTrader: (4)

Thanks O that is good to know, I want to run the car at tcs this month, but I didn't really want to spend any money to do it.

Butler205

My preference was a gear diff because I don't think that can fail.
My ball diff worked well, but some have had reliability issues with it.

Quinny45

iTrader: (6)

if you want to be more faster in corners you need this

EVO6 / 419 4° ALLOY C-HUBS - 7075, for Tamiya sedans - Exotek Racing

OSherman

iTrader: (3)

if anyone has the Tamiya FF03 w/ Carbon Chassis Conversion (Tamiya) for sale, please PM me..

wtcc

iTrader: (2)

I made a new chassis for my FF03.
After several days of driving the car and a comparison drive with my T4, I came to the conclusion that the front motor concept is working nice, but on ETS-carpet there is too much load on the front tires. And this costs a lot of agility. In comparison my T4'15 without rear belt has by far not enough pull out of the corner, but handles much better in the entry and middle corner part. In the end with the same tires my T4 13.5t in FWD mode was as fast as the FF03 with 10.5t.
So I constructed a chassis that not only makes the complicated plastic parts obsolete, but also allows a motor position in front and behind the front axle. Additionally I replaced the suspension parts with Xray hard parts and "active" rear (mostly to get rid of rear toe blocks).
I reduced the cog by taking away material from the gearbox mounts. This lowered this gearbox-motor unit around 3mm. I couldn't live with the motor hovering several millimeter above the chassis. I am also a big fan of lay down shocks. In the shown configuration only the rear shocks can "sleep". With the motor in front all shocks are horizontal

Tomorrow this thing will have its first shakedown





RtR weight with body: 1071g