Tamiya TA-05R Build-up
I took my hopped-up TA-05 apart and sold everything off bit by bit to fund a top-end car, but missed it sorely,
so when the TA-05R came out, I just had to have one.
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All the goodies from the neat orange box.
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The rod ends in this kit are the newer low-friction grey-coloured type.
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The same goes for the damper parts from the "V" parts tree.
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The old TA-04 suspension parts have been replaced by the lightweight reversible suspension set
and it comes with 2 caster blocks to choose from (2 degree and 4 degree).
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Tamiya's blue aluminium turnbuckles add to the look, but from experience these bend easily.
I would put on some titanium units here if I could.
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All sorts of spacers and shims are included to keep the slop out of the car's steering and suspension parts.
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The suspension mount blocks (aka toe blocks) that come with the kit. Seems to be only 1.5 degrees of toe-in on the rear.
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The 105-tooth spur of the 0.4 module type comes with the kit and is mounted to a nice blue spur holder.
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Here you can see how close the belt comes to rubbing the A bridge suspension mounts.
In my old TA-05, it made a nice slot on the metal, but I never figured out if that was caused by the belts or by foreign objects.
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The kit comes with a nice blue aluminium centre plate, which should help to dissipate motor heat.
There is also the option of running the carbon-reinforced plastic centre plate since that is included
in the chassis stiffener and steering bellcranks (K) parts tree.
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The car comes with solid centre pulleys and front and rear ball diffs only just like the regular TA-05
but with the nicer precision diff joints and wide-pitch (first seen on the TRF415MSX Marc Rheinard Edition) pulleys.
What's nice about these pulleys is they use 9 balls to spread the pressure and the balls "click" into the holes, which makes
diff rebuilds much easier. Centre and front one-way options have to be purchased separately.
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The motor mount is the same cheap one as the regular TA-05. It does its job fine though.
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Longer swing shafts (48mm type) work with the lightweight reversible suspension to
bring the TA-05R close to the maximum 190mm legal width. The blue aluminium ones go in the rear and the
stronger steel ones go in the front.
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A quick comparison between a regular universal swing shaft axle (bottom) and one from the lightweight reversible suspension (top).
Mainly, the regular one works with 1150-sized bearings and the kit one works with 950-sized bearings (and different steering knuckles too, of course).
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The drive-train of this car. The rear universals joints shouldn't have to work as hard as the ones on the standard TA-05 since rear hubs
have no toe-in. (All the toe-in comes from the suspension mounting blocks). This should all translate to a slightly smoother car.
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Apart from the tub chassis, almost every plastic part of the car is made from carbon-reinforced plastic,
including many parts that the aluminium ball studs thread into. It is a good idea to first make the screw threads
in every plastic part that a ball stud threads into (including all shock mounting positions) either with an M3 tap or
at least an M3 steel bolt (I used a caphead allen bolt with a 2.5mm hex).
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The steering bellcranks aren't aluminium but they are made of Tamiya's carbon-reinforced plastic and are very stiff.
Four bronze bushings keep them in place but these are easily swapped out for 850-sized bearings.
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Before I forget, I better mention the parts in the pictures that did not come with the kit.
Obviously, the Sanwa ERG-RZ servo did not. Neither did the Speed Racing servo saver part shown here.
The kit comes with Tamiya's high-torque servo saver (51000) which I never really liked.
Also, the titanium hex-head screws in all the pictures were from a separately purchased Tamiya TA-05 titanium screw set (49360).
The screws from the TA-05R kit were the same Phillips head ones from the regular TA-05 kit except for the four M2.6
screws holding the centre plate. Also, the black shock bodies and titanium-coated shock shafts visible in
some of the pictures come from a set of Tamiya Hard Black TRF Damper set (42102). The kit comes with the
same shock shafts and shock bodies as the older TRF Special Blue damper set (49355).
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A few pics of my completed chassis kit:
