Absolutely great video, good looking rallycars and a lot of sideway action….
May this video be a hint for Tamiya to do some more rally cars. We need them 😉
Best Regards
GreatDane c”,)
Papi
2GreatDane:
well, tamiya “rally car” DF-03RA is not popular here… In fact, with TT-01 it’s one of the worst cars for “scale rally” 🙂 We’re driving modified onroad cars, Tamiya TA-01/02, TL-01 TB-01, 02, 03 TA-05, FWD M-chassis or TRF, Xrays, Yokomos etc 🙂
adminPost author
Ok, TT01 isn’t great, but why don’t you like the DF-03Ra? Since I got mine I sold all my TB-01s and better not to talk about the TA-01/02 and TL-01.. 😉
Regards,
Admin
Papi
2monkey: you should say that scale RC rally was born here in early 90’s 🙂
Papi
2admin: thre’s several problems, it’s narrow, you need to modify chassis to fit lipos, bad steering, short rear dogbones, small ride height and steer angle, short dampers and many people have problems with rear diff… You need lot of money to solve this, so people sell DF-03 and buy used Xray (very popular car here), because it’s cheaper.
adminPost author
LOL, in almost all those “disadvantages” you just mentioned (steering, ride height, damper length) its still better then most of the other Tamiya chassis you mentioned before 😉
Regards,
Admin
Papi
I know, i quoted what my friend told to me about DF-03RA after he sell it. I never had it, I have TB-03 and home-made RWD car 🙂
About other Tamiya cars.. old TL-01 (used by beginers, I had one), TA-02 or TB-01 has better ride height without modifications and maintenance-free gear diffs. I don’t know about other cars, but TB-03, TRF and Xray have much bigger steering angle and after few cuts about 25-30mm ride height.
adminPost author
About the first I insist to disagree as I had both and don’t just claim what I heard from friends of friends 😉 Also my gear diffs never had problems, some people have problems with TA01/TA02 balls diffs too 😉 Also in your previous reply its unfair to compare a new price with a used one, for the money of a new DF-03Ra I bought Marc Rheinhard’s TRF training car 😎
The Subaru and the Citröen C4 are available, and I think the Ford Fiesta WRC is on its way.
And the bodies looks scale enough…..
As of now thay are only available as nitro cars, but Kyosho is about to release the DRX chassis for brushless power also.
The cars are bigger, carry more weight and closer to 1/8 buggy, which I like.
I do have the Tamiya TGX, which I converted to electric in the mid 90 using Predator motormount.
The car was fairly nimble taking the size into consideration and using a 540 motor 🙂
I was thinking of trying the car again now that Castle Creations has released a suitable and a more powerfull motor (1415 series among orthers).
But unfortunately, the only body that seems to be available are the Opel Calibra for the DTM series. And the NSX.
Not a true rally bodies, but I might have a go anyway 😉
Best Regards
GreatDane c”,)
Papi
2admin: i only wrote reasons, why he sell that car… you wanted them 🙂 I personaly saw only falling-out rear dogbones (on 2 different DFs), same shocks like “non-rally” tamiyas and stripped composite part of rear diff (9t Ezrun)
Personaly I don’t like this car, because it’s not rally car, when you need same modifications as on non-rally car… and I don’t like motor and battery positions.
maybe it’s great for circuit-style rally, but there are much better cars for scale rally. Most common are xrays, there are lot of cheap used cars in great condition, because it’s popular car for TC drivers, who sell car after year 🙂
About TA-02s, there are 4 TA-01/2 in top ten of Czech rally championship, no DF-03 (best one is on 20th place). Ok, some of them are modifed with totaly different custom chassis – battery is placed right behind front axle, steering servo on shock tower, for better cornering 🙂
Is there some possibility for PM? if you want, send message to “benedikt(dot)papez(at)seznam.cz”
adminPost author
DF03Ra shocks are the same or even longer and suspension travel is larger then a stock TA01/02, TB03, TA05, M-chassis etc.
If you personally don’t like it as you said now its ok, but claiming as a fact that its worse (as you did in your first comment) then the really outdated and poor handling TA01,TB01, TL01 etc. isn’t objective.
Also in a previous post you wrote as disadvantage that it’s narrow, well it the same 190mm as the other Tamiya chassis and this makes them looking so scale imho compared to some other 200mm wide lexan “blobs”.
Also the “limited” steering angle you criticised is larger then on most older Tamiya chassis you mentioned, plus steering doesn’t jam so easily with stones like at TB01.
Also personally for scale racing I would prefer a robust and relatively high chassis to a low touring chassis which even worse comes with a belt drive like TA03,04,05.
My experience with servicing “broken” cars is that its often causes by improper assembly or maintenance. A normal diff shouldn’t strip especially off road (=low traction and torques) and at scale rally where the driver runs behind the car. Also if a BL motors strips the DF03 diff, what do you think will happen to the much more fragile standard TA01/02 ball diff? (by the way you wrote before gear diff, but that’s not correct for a standard kit version)
Also you can’t compare a totally modified chassis performance to a stock one. Also if TA01/02 would be performing so well then it would be still used at racing, but it wasn’t competitive even when it came out in early 90s. In Germany many people still like it too, but I think that has more “childhood nostalgia” reasons, the same as people like the SRBs, but performance wise both of them stand no chance since years. For most of us humans its like the music group Genesis used to sing “I know what I like and I like what I know” 🙂
Regards,
Admin
Papi
Ok, how big is ride height of DF-03? I think it was about 18mm?. My old TL-01 had about 20-25mm with Tamiya CVA dampers. Stock TB-03 about 18mm with rallyblocks, after modifications 25mm. If I wasn’t lazy, I could reach 30mm.
You sayd, that I can’t compare stock car with modified. But there is one problem – you can’t race in scale rally with stock car. Every car here is modified.
And you can’t say about “poor handling”, if you never drive car on scale rally track. It’s very different from faster circuits, car which is great on circuit can be poor on rally track and vice versa. For example, my homemade RWD is undriveable on dirt circuit. But on rally track is better, than my 4WD TB-03 🙂
And it’s about driver. There was guy, who won race with almost stock TL-01 🙂
adminPost author
Will measure them tomorrow.
You again repeat the mistake of comparing modified chassis with a stock one and saying the stock one is worse, you should modify that too, or compare it to the other stock versions.
Of course the driver itself the most important and it really seems your kind of “racing” and tracks are very different if a RWD is better then a 4WD on dirt and an almost stock TL-01 won, in all other kind of races it would stand no chance 🙂
Watch this one rc rally video (HD) too 😉
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sN9F2cjNDQ
(Scale RC Rally is very popular here in Czech Rep., we have several championships, classes, etc.)
Very nice, I added it to above entry.
Regards,
Admin
Absolutely great video, good looking rallycars and a lot of sideway action….
May this video be a hint for Tamiya to do some more rally cars. We need them 😉
Best Regards
GreatDane c”,)
2GreatDane:
well, tamiya “rally car” DF-03RA is not popular here… In fact, with TT-01 it’s one of the worst cars for “scale rally” 🙂 We’re driving modified onroad cars, Tamiya TA-01/02, TL-01 TB-01, 02, 03 TA-05, FWD M-chassis or TRF, Xrays, Yokomos etc 🙂
Ok, TT01 isn’t great, but why don’t you like the DF-03Ra? Since I got mine I sold all my TB-01s and better not to talk about the TA-01/02 and TL-01.. 😉
Regards,
Admin
2monkey: you should say that scale RC rally was born here in early 90’s 🙂
2admin: thre’s several problems, it’s narrow, you need to modify chassis to fit lipos, bad steering, short rear dogbones, small ride height and steer angle, short dampers and many people have problems with rear diff… You need lot of money to solve this, so people sell DF-03 and buy used Xray (very popular car here), because it’s cheaper.
LOL, in almost all those “disadvantages” you just mentioned (steering, ride height, damper length) its still better then most of the other Tamiya chassis you mentioned before 😉
Regards,
Admin
I know, i quoted what my friend told to me about DF-03RA after he sell it. I never had it, I have TB-03 and home-made RWD car 🙂
About other Tamiya cars.. old TL-01 (used by beginers, I had one), TA-02 or TB-01 has better ride height without modifications and maintenance-free gear diffs. I don’t know about other cars, but TB-03, TRF and Xray have much bigger steering angle and after few cuts about 25-30mm ride height.
About the first I insist to disagree as I had both and don’t just claim what I heard from friends of friends 😉 Also my gear diffs never had problems, some people have problems with TA01/TA02 balls diffs too 😉 Also in your previous reply its unfair to compare a new price with a used one, for the money of a new DF-03Ra I bought Marc Rheinhard’s TRF training car 😎
Regards,
Admin
As for rallycars, I am looking into Kyosho DRX.
The Subaru and the Citröen C4 are available, and I think the Ford Fiesta WRC is on its way.
And the bodies looks scale enough…..
As of now thay are only available as nitro cars, but Kyosho is about to release the DRX chassis for brushless power also.
The cars are bigger, carry more weight and closer to 1/8 buggy, which I like.
I do have the Tamiya TGX, which I converted to electric in the mid 90 using Predator motormount.
The car was fairly nimble taking the size into consideration and using a 540 motor 🙂
I was thinking of trying the car again now that Castle Creations has released a suitable and a more powerfull motor (1415 series among orthers).
But unfortunately, the only body that seems to be available are the Opel Calibra for the DTM series. And the NSX.
Not a true rally bodies, but I might have a go anyway 😉
Best Regards
GreatDane c”,)
2admin: i only wrote reasons, why he sell that car… you wanted them 🙂 I personaly saw only falling-out rear dogbones (on 2 different DFs), same shocks like “non-rally” tamiyas and stripped composite part of rear diff (9t Ezrun)
Personaly I don’t like this car, because it’s not rally car, when you need same modifications as on non-rally car… and I don’t like motor and battery positions.
maybe it’s great for circuit-style rally, but there are much better cars for scale rally. Most common are xrays, there are lot of cheap used cars in great condition, because it’s popular car for TC drivers, who sell car after year 🙂
About TA-02s, there are 4 TA-01/2 in top ten of Czech rally championship, no DF-03 (best one is on 20th place). Ok, some of them are modifed with totaly different custom chassis – battery is placed right behind front axle, steering servo on shock tower, for better cornering 🙂
Is there some possibility for PM? if you want, send message to “benedikt(dot)papez(at)seznam.cz”
DF03Ra shocks are the same or even longer and suspension travel is larger then a stock TA01/02, TB03, TA05, M-chassis etc.
If you personally don’t like it as you said now its ok, but claiming as a fact that its worse (as you did in your first comment) then the really outdated and poor handling TA01,TB01, TL01 etc. isn’t objective.
Also in a previous post you wrote as disadvantage that it’s narrow, well it the same 190mm as the other Tamiya chassis and this makes them looking so scale imho compared to some other 200mm wide lexan “blobs”.
Also the “limited” steering angle you criticised is larger then on most older Tamiya chassis you mentioned, plus steering doesn’t jam so easily with stones like at TB01.
Also personally for scale racing I would prefer a robust and relatively high chassis to a low touring chassis which even worse comes with a belt drive like TA03,04,05.
My experience with servicing “broken” cars is that its often causes by improper assembly or maintenance. A normal diff shouldn’t strip especially off road (=low traction and torques) and at scale rally where the driver runs behind the car. Also if a BL motors strips the DF03 diff, what do you think will happen to the much more fragile standard TA01/02 ball diff? (by the way you wrote before gear diff, but that’s not correct for a standard kit version)
Also you can’t compare a totally modified chassis performance to a stock one. Also if TA01/02 would be performing so well then it would be still used at racing, but it wasn’t competitive even when it came out in early 90s. In Germany many people still like it too, but I think that has more “childhood nostalgia” reasons, the same as people like the SRBs, but performance wise both of them stand no chance since years. For most of us humans its like the music group Genesis used to sing “I know what I like and I like what I know” 🙂
Regards,
Admin
Ok, how big is ride height of DF-03? I think it was about 18mm?. My old TL-01 had about 20-25mm with Tamiya CVA dampers. Stock TB-03 about 18mm with rallyblocks, after modifications 25mm. If I wasn’t lazy, I could reach 30mm.
You sayd, that I can’t compare stock car with modified. But there is one problem – you can’t race in scale rally with stock car. Every car here is modified.
And you can’t say about “poor handling”, if you never drive car on scale rally track. It’s very different from faster circuits, car which is great on circuit can be poor on rally track and vice versa. For example, my homemade RWD is undriveable on dirt circuit. But on rally track is better, than my 4WD TB-03 🙂
And it’s about driver. There was guy, who won race with almost stock TL-01 🙂
Will measure them tomorrow.
You again repeat the mistake of comparing modified chassis with a stock one and saying the stock one is worse, you should modify that too, or compare it to the other stock versions.
Of course the driver itself the most important and it really seems your kind of “racing” and tracks are very different if a RWD is better then a 4WD on dirt and an almost stock TL-01 won, in all other kind of races it would stand no chance 🙂
Regards,
Admin
I have tamiya xv01