Story and pics by Chris Clemson
Editing by Darth Vader
In 1979 Tamiya released the Rough Rider. It was the first production Off-road car available on the market. It brought a new dimension to the hobby. Fast forward over 30 years, Tamiya announced it would produce a competition level 2wd electric buggy. It would be released under their racing moniker known as TRF (Tamiya Racing Factory). Just like other TRF cars, the TRF201 is a “no compromise” competition kit.
When originally announced, Tamiya said it would not come with tires, a body, or wing. Tamiya USA decided that kits sold in the USA would have a body and wing included. This caused a slight problem when the TRF201’s showed up at Tamiya USA. Apparently they were unable to fit the body and wing into the very small TRF201 box. So they had to get bigger boxes, have labels made, and then send them out. That’s what showed up on my doorstep, an unassuming brown box. Here’s what I saw when opened.
The TRF201 box is small, but don’t let that fool you. It is packed very full.
In typical Tamiya/TRF fashion, the instruction manual was clear and concise, All of the text was printed in four languages.
The first thing you assemble is the transmission. The differential is pretty standard. In fact, it uses twelve 3/32” diff balls. This is a standard feature of other 2wd buggies in the TRF201 class. Additionally, it uses 1/16” balls for the thrust bearing assembly. The transmission features a three gear setup like any other rear motor 2wd buggy. One thing worth noting, the top gear is held in place by a pin and o-ring assembly. This is pretty unique. The internal ration of the transmission is 2.60 to 1
The diff nut is in TRF blue!
The transmission is equipped with a dual disk slipper. Again….which is pretty standard for a 2wd buggies. The spur gear is 48 pitch. All normal 48 pitch pinion gears will work as well. The included spur gear is a 79 tooth. A 77 tooth also available as a option. Hopefully they will come out with a larger range of spur gears. This would help for those that want to run a 17.5 turn motors.
As you can see, the chassis is the standard 2wd buggy layout with the battery running down the center. The steering servo will afix to the front portion…the receiver occupies the right pod…and so on.
The rear end uses the standard upper bulkhead and lower T plate configuration as shown below.
Tamiya decided to use the rear A-arms and hubs off of their TRF511X (4wd buggy) for the TRF201. This is a pretty common practice among manufactures, as it helps cut down on development costs. It also rewards customer s that use both vehicles, as it shares spare parts. The inner rear hinge pin mount has 3 degrees of toe in. The rear hubs are labeled L and R. This leads me to believe that they also have a half degree of toe in built into them. The rear hubs have a spacer that can be moved to alter handling. This is a great tuning aid. The kit setup has the hubs forward, which should yield plenty of rear traction. In the below picture you will notice there is a spacer sitting with the pivot ball. This spacer is something that I added. There was word from some of the Canadian drivers that there was a noticeable amount of play in this assembly. I don’t know if Tamiya meant to add a shim here or not, but a 0.5mm shim takes out the play perfectly. There are some extra shims on the N parts tree (N4) that are 1mm thick. Just sand them down if you don’t have any other shims that are 0.5mm.
Next are the CVD’s. I thought for sure the car would come with the newer style CVA’s, but the CVD design is tried and true. I don’t think they will have any problems. I believe these are similar to the the TRF511X drive shafts.
One tip I have for the assembly of any CVD is to grind a small flat spot on the cross pin. This gives the set screw a flat surface to “bite” into.
Being that the rear CVD’s are off of the TRF511X, they use the same rear wheel pin setup. I still prefer the 12mm hex option that other cars come with. However, many other manufactures have used the wheel pin setup. This allows for backwards compatibility with JConcepts, Losi and AE wheels.
Some manufactures use a roll pin which can be pressed into place. Tamiya uses a solid pin, and the hole is just the right size. As a result the pins slide right in (and subsequently right out). To help hold the pins in place, I use a small dab of ShooGoo.
All of the turnbuckles on the car are Titanium. They are anodized in beautiful TRF blue. All are the same length(3×45mm)! The front and rear camber links are even adjusted to the same length for the kit setup. The turnbuckles also have a small groove to identify which side is the right-handed thread so you can put all of the turnbuckles on the same direction. The ball cups fit snugly on the turnbuckles, and have a nice little Tamiya logo on them. They snap onto the ball studs nicely with no slop or binding.
The rear shock tower is a single piece of molded composite. The wing mounts are keyed to the shock tower and are secured by a single screw. There’s also a brace that attaches the shock tower to the transmission assembly. Lastly, you can see that the car accepts sway bars. This is a welcome tuning aid for high bite conditions. The tower has four choices for upper shock mount locations, the second from inside is the recommended starting point.
The rear bumper/motor guard is the last thing to install before moving to the front end portion of the car. The transmission cases are molded of a sturdy material. It’s recommended that you cut threads for the rear bumper with a 3mm tap.
You can’t tell from this angle, but the rear bumper actually attaches on the bottom of the chassis. As opposed to in between the rear toe block and the chassis. I think this is a good idea because it will wear out the bumper instead of the T plate. The rear bumper has a small grill molded to help air circulate around the motor. From this angle you can see that this car was designed for brushless motors from the jump. The right half of the transmission has a large molded spacer. This moves the motor to the right, thus helping center the extra weight of a brushless motor.
On to the front end, the piece that holds the lower set of bearings for the steering is not molded into the chassis (as on other 2wd cars). Instead, it bolts to the main chassis using two screws and lock nuts.
The steering assembly features a standard dual bell crank and rack system. The rack has two ball bearings. It also features two different holes to adjust ackerman. It also has a built in servo saver unit that uses a standard 4mm lock nut for adjustments. Tamiya gives instructions regarding how tight to run the servo saver (3.7mm from the top of the lock nut, to the end of the shaft).
The steering assembly is capped off by a small molded piece that houses the other two bearings. It is keyed to the chassis. This steering rack is by far the smoothest, most slop free setup I have experienced on a kit in a long time.
Tamiya recommends filing a some of the front bulkhead for the smoother suspension action. I like to make sure the suspension arms fall under their own weight.
The front bulkhead is molded plastic. This helps it take the stresses of racing. Tamiya includes a blue anodized front hinge pin brace.
All of the hinge pins are captured by small 2.6mm Philips head screws. These are the only Philips head screws on the whole car. You can see that the front bulkhead is keyed to the top plate.
The front of the car goes together with just a handful of screws.
At the end of the front A-arms you will find a fairly standard C hub / steering knuckles assembly. One nice thing about the TRF201 is the centered C hubs. Movement of the spacers offer quick adjustments that yield noticeable changes. The axles that come with the car work with the 5×10x4mm bearings that fit Tamiya wheels. Tamiya has announced that they will have axles (part#54220) that enable you to use wheels with 3/16”x3/8” bearings (AE or JConcepts). These axles should be available by the time you read this. The 201 uses screws to hold the front wheels on the axle. Although this is a common practice on 2wd buggies, I still prefer a lock nut. Tamiya recommends putting a small dab of loctite on the screw to help ensure no problems.
The shocks included with TRF kits are regarded as some of the best in the hobby. This being the first TRF kit that I have assembled, I was very excited to see how good they actually are. Here they are in all of their un-assembled glory. Included with the shocks was a bottle of Tamiya shock fluid. The chart in the manual says the yellow oil is 400CST. According to the research I have done this is somewhere in between AE 30wt and 35wt. This sounds about right for a 2wd buggy. The pistons included in the kit are 1.3mm two holes for the front, and 1.4mm two holes for the rear. This should give the desired effect of slightly heavier dampening in the front. One feature that I really like about the TRF shocks is that all of the springs are white. For identification purposes they have a small dab of colored paint on the bottom of the spring. The front springs have been developed just for the 201. The rear springs included in the kit are the red ones, the softest of the three available in the rear shock spring set (part#53975). The shock shafts are Titanium-Nitride coated. This coating helps the o-rings not to stick. Thus allowing the smoothest, most consistent shock action possible. Like the front springs, the front shock shafts were developed especially for the 201. They are four millimeters shorter than the 511X front shock shafts.
The shock caps have bleed holes molded into them. However, the holes don’t connect to inside of the shock. If you plan on using the bleed holes, you should drill a small hole. Luckily a small dimple is molded into the cap right where you need to drill.
At the other end of the shock bodies is the shock cartridge. This houses the shock seals and an assortment of shims. The manual suggest the use of a couple drops of shock oil to lubricate the seals. I prefer Team Associated Green Slime.
Sometimes threading rod ends onto shock shafts can be a little difficult. To make it easier I pre-thread the rod ends with a 3mm screw.
If you don’t have the really nice pliers designed for holding shock shafts it can be somewhat of a pain to get the rod ends on all the way without destroying the shock shafts. You can use a pair of diagonal cutters to hold the shock shaft down by the threads. It will make a mark on the shock shaft, but it will be so far down that it doesn’t tear up the shock seals.
The shocks on the TRF201 shocks went together with little effort, and turned out really smooth.
That pretty much wraps up the basic chassis build. Here are a few shots of the car completely assembled. Enjoy!
From here I will need to install my electronics and track test. Stay tuned for part two of this review!
