I was excited enough when my BBX arrived from AMain Hobbies, and even more excited once I got a look at the parts bags and manual. I already knew what I was getting into, but having the kit and manual in my hands amped up my hype level, like, a lot. And, it was just nice to be building a Tamiya kit, which I haven’t done in a while. It’s like reuniting with an old friend.

… or friends, as it’s always nice to see these two guys. Yes, I will read before assembly, thank you!

My boys. Never change these guys, Tamiya.

I am weirdly pumped to put together this ball differential, I can’t even remember how long it’s been since I had a car that wasn’t equipped with a gear differential (or a pair of them). Such a fascinating mechanism, invented by Cecil Schumacher way back in 1978 and used on Schumacher’s first-ever car, the polycarbonate-chassis 1/12 scale X1.

I wouldn’t say I’m excited for a servo-saver, but I do appreciate how Tamiya does theirs with the multiple spring leafs. Good resistance without the bulk of a coil spring.

Here’s a thing Tamiya didn’t have to do, but it’s nice they did: angle the bellcranks to match the arms’ kick-up angle, which minimizes bump-steer.

I screen-grabbed this just because I like the split shock tower design. I suppose there’s some shock-angle fine tuning opportunity there, by spacing the tower closer to or farther away from the chassis, but I don’t think that’s meant to be a feature.

What is meant to be a feature is the extra space between the upper arms and their mounts, so you can space the arms forward or back to adjust caster angle. Will I ever use this feature? Probably not, but still: neat. (Yes, I say “neat,” I never said I was cool).

Man, I haven’t put together a rear suspension setup like this since my Tamiya Vanquish back in the early 90s. I like the way the control links tuck into the big end of the trailing arm, and I really like how it’s something unusual, not the default H-arm-and-camber-link design.

Look out, I’m gonna be painting a driver figure. Probably badly. Maybe I’ll do step-by-step How To on bad figure painting, in case any of you are frustrated by your driver figures not looking messed up enough.

I love that there’s a setup sheet in the manual. If there was track with a BBX class within a couple of hours of me, I’d be all over it.

More BBX to come!

The post I’m Ready To Jump Into A Tamiya BBX Build, Here’s What I’m Stoked On appeared first on RC Driver.

Tamiya is once again celebrating the anniversary of its first-ever RC model, the 1/12 scale Porsche 934 released in 1976. Motorized models were nothing new for Tamiya at the time, but this was the first to get a dedicated chassis designed for radio control. Fittingly, Tamiya has revisited the 934 with each anniversary of the original’s debut, though in larger 1/10 scale (and with a quantum leap in durability and performance).

When Tamiya celebrated 30 years, the R34 came back Vaillant colors, just like the new 50th Anniversary car. Beneath the body, the car was as modern as it got for 2006 Tamiya tech:

Full carbon fiber and aluminum? Now that’s a celebration. The mid-motor, dual-belt TA05 chassis still looks hot.

For the 40th Anniversary car, Tamiya went with Jagermeister livery and parked a truly iconic touring car chassis under the Lexan with a TA02 – specifically, the TA02SW, with SW standing for Short Wheelbase.

… But instead of the expected Manta-Ray-style plastic tub, Tamiya supplied the gorgeous FRP plate set with matching shock towers. The 90s flashback vibes went hard with this one, and still do.

That brings us to the 50th Anniversary car, which gets an all-new chassis that leans hard into the spirit of the 934 with a rear-mounted (like, very rear-mounted) longitudinal motor and trailing arm suspension.

Here’s a look at that rear end via Tamiya’s Instagram:

A few things to note here: the gold-anodized aluminum motor mount and gear support; the magnetic body mounts; and the wild drivetrain configuration, which we’ll get to in a sec. If it looks like the suspension is missing something, you’re right: there are no camber links. Tamiya doesn’t make an effort to shape the suspension arms like the “real thing” (below), but they function the same way.

Now, you may be thinking, “Isn’t camber going to be all over the place?” I hear you, but no. Unlike Tamiya’s SRB cars and their rear A-arms (or H-arms if you prefer) that swing the wheels from highly positive camber to deeply negative camber with suspension action, the new car’s trailing configuration means there’s much less camber change.

Now let’s talk about that drivetrain, because wow:

Like the full-size 934, the motor is mounted longitudinally. This places the motor’s output shaft close to the differential, leaving little room for the gears required to provide an appropriate final drive ratio. Tamiya’s solution sends motor power over the top of the diff via a single gear mesh and dogbone driveshaft, then drops it back down with another gear mesh to spin the bevel pinion that engages the diff’s ring gear. (Also worth noting: the diff looks pretty stout with that four-bolt housing).

Long story short, there’s a ton to nerd out on here. Looking forward to seeing Greg build this one!

The post Let’s Take A Closer Look At That Tamiya 50th Anniversary Porsche, Because It Is Wild appeared first on RC Driver.

Which paint scheme do you prefer? I’m having trouble choosing myself, both look fantastic.

The Sport 3 chassis is a rugged and proven parking-lot performer with its enclosed shaft-drive system, all-metal motor mount, fully adjustable suspension, and steel dogbone driveshafts – CVD shafts are available as an option, along with lots of other hop-ups, including carbon fiber shock towers and aluminum shocks. That’s the brushed version shown below, but the features are the same.

HPI’s TF-51 radio looks comfortable with its drop-down wheel, which can be set up for lefty use – nice touch. The four-channel pistol also gets rubber grips and bumpers, and ample adjustable setting including end points, dual rate, and steering expo. It’s pretty loaded, especially for an RTR radio.

The fan-cooled Flux power system is waterproof, sensorless, and 3S-ready with a 4000kV motor.

The chassis has plenty of room for a variety of pack sizes, and HPI keeps it simple with a hook-and-loop strap to keep the battery where it belongs. This angle also gives a good view of the cast allow motor mount. Note how the mount extends to stiffen the chassis and is finned to help dissipate heat.

Sharp Fuchs-style wheels and realistically treaded tires complement the Porsche bodywork nicely, it looks tight.

Learn more about the HPI Sport 3 Flux 1973 Porsche Carrera RSR here

The post HPI Sport 3 Flux 1973 Porsche Carrera RSR appeared first on RC Driver.

• CNC-machined aluminum chassis
• Laser-etched chassis logo
• Carbon fiber top plate
• Hard anodized shock bodies
• Black anodized shock caps
• Ball bearings
• ’91 Stealth car front bulkhead
• ’91 Stealth car rear arm mounts
• Stealth car wide front suspension arms
• CNC chassis standoffs
• Stealth transmission
• Titanium turnbuckles
• ’91 Stealth car World Championship replica tires
• ’91 Stealth car rear suspension arms
• Replica Masami battery strap and speed control mount
• ’91 Stealth car long-stroke shock springs
• Rear dogbones included
• ’91 Stealth car pink wheel dot decals (rear wheels are black)
• ’91 Stealth car clear Lexan under tray
• ’91 Stealth car front bumper
• ’91 Stealth car copper shock springs
• ’91 Stealth car silver motor bracket
• ’91 Stealth car legendary front shock tower geometry

Lots more pics below, and if you’d like a peek at the assembly manual, it’s right here. Ready to order yours? You’re a click away.

You can see the full Team Associated lineup here.

The post YES, Give It To Me: 1991 RC10 Stealth Car Masami Edition appeared first on RC Driver.

As usual for CW, the car is loaded with premium features and all the adjustability you need to tune for maximum left-turn performance. That includes:

• New carbon chassis plate with greater offset and toe options
• New carbon shock towers with shock positions optimized for high-bite racing
• Laydown transmission with aluminum motor plate
• New V2 top shaft with Tri-Mount spur hub
• Front-mount servo location with angled ball cups (for wheel clearance, I assume – Pete)
• Carbon steering extenders to accommodate wider tires
• Trailing front spindles
• New front bumper with mounting options for brass weight.

The Bullet also has all the standard good stuff from the Outlaw 5, of course:

• Patented Custom Works adjustable-toe rear arms
• Titanium turnbuckles throughout
• Full ball bearings
• 2.6 ball differential
• CW MDX Big Bore shocks
• Lightweight cage
• Eldora Sprint body
• 7×7 flat wing
• Large front wing

I sure would enjoy watching Greg put one of these together and crush it counter-clockwise, how about you? Until then, check out the entire Custom Works lineup at customworksrc.com.

The post Custom Works Bullet High-Bite Sprint Car Kit appeared first on RC Driver.

But man, which kit do I choose? Even with the limiting factor of a $200-ish budget, there are a ton of options to choose from. And what you see here isn’t even half of what Tamiya offers for wrenching fans. Let’s take a look at what I’ve got on my list, and maybe you can help me make the call.

I’m liking the BBX because, as one of the few Tamiya platforms I’ve never assembled before, it’ll be an entirely new building experience for me. Making it even more novel, the design is unlike virtually every other buggy out there. Rear trailing arms? A ball differential? Scale styling with a driver figure and window nets? Count me in.

I do wish the driver figure were a new molding more in scale with the car, and I prefer the roll cage were a clipped-on decorative element rather than screwed to the chassis, if only for ease of cleaning and maintenance. But neither of these are deal breakers, and the BBX is definitely a front-runner.

Get the Tamiya BBX Here

No brand does scale quite like Tamiya, and these spins on Toyota’s classic 4X4 and Ford’s 21st-century update of its own off-road legend are very well-rendered here (above the axles, at least – I don’t fault Tamiya or any brand for not going full-replica for the mechanicals). The CC-02 platform’s wheelbase allows Tamiya to deliver authentic 2-door proportions, and there’s no skimping on the details.

Compared to the 1/10 scale trail truck offerings from Traxxas, Axial, and Element (among others), the slightly smaller, less performance-focused CC-02s will be at a real disadvantage for rugged trail work … which I am not concerned with in the least. I’m just in it for the build, and low-effort walking-path cruising is about as much of a challenge as I’d be giving these guys.

Get the CC-02 Bronco and Toyota Landcruiser here and here

I’ve never owned a FAV, which is kind of nuts since I’ve wanted one ever since it first joined the Tamiya lineup way back in 1984. It just looks like a ton of fun to build and detail the driver/gunner and his spring-mounted M50 machine gun, and I dig the old-school trailing arm suspension setup – for looks, anyway. Don’t expect much from those nail-inside-a-spring “shocks.”

I don’t love that this one would be more shelf queen than runner (at least for off-road action), but then again, I could bolt on the oil shocks from the Wild One. And now I can’t stop thinking about it. Hmmm.

Get the Fast Attack Vehicle here

I’m all about the hard body here, painting and detailing the HCT just looks like a real treat. And those turbine wheels, so good. Plus, I’ve always been a Honda City fan, ever since the real thing caught kid-me’s attention with the stowaway Motocompo minibike that tucks into the trunk – see it here in static-model form, another Tamiya kit I’d love to build.

The HCT is another model that would see a lot more shelf time than play time, if only because I wouldn’t want to scar up the beautiful injection-molded body. But having it on the shelf in my office would look pretty rad.

Get the Honda City Turbo here

The Super Astute would be a nostalgia score for me, I just thought it looked the business back in the day. And while it would hardly be an A-Main contender in 2025, it would be plenty of fun to wheel on an off-road track (especially with modern rubber). It’s vintage through and through, but from the era when trackable RC buggies were no longer fun-first cars that drivers had to adapt for racing, but were instead engineered from the start with track-bred features.
Make no mistake, I love me some Super Astute, but it probably scratches my “that’s neat!” itch the least of all the cars that made the list. Also, the aggressively early-nineties graphics aren’t really doing it for me in 2025. Still want one, but maybe it’s not the one for this particular treating-myself mission.

Get the Super Astute here

Aaaand straight after the Super Astute we arrive at another early-90s buggy blast. I have a huge soft spot for the Top-Force because it’s basically the ultimate Manta Ray, the buggy that birthed the TA-01 and TA-02. I’ve always loved these platforms with their neat front and rear escape-hatch gearboxes and wire propshaft 4WD system. Just plain fun to build, you get the trick FRP chassis, and the styling is peak Japanese anime spaceship. I dig it.

The only real downside for the Top-Force is all on me, not the car: I don’t have a good spot to really enjoy it the way it’s meant to be driven. But the building experience and fun of just having it in my collection would still go a long way.

Get the Top-Force EVO here

The Tyrrell P34 stunned the racing world with its bizarro six-wheel setup, and to me represents the peak of F1 innovation before the era of wind tunnels, computer-aided design, and all that. Just imagination, drafting pencils, and slide rules here, baby. Tamiya’s model of the classic racer looks amazing on its steamroller foam tires, and this one’s another hard-body offering that I could really get into detailing.

I do wish the P34 had more going on underneath that beautiful body. It’s basically a pan car with an extra pair of front wheels, so the chassis build would brief. Fun, but brief.

Get the Tyrrell P34 here

The VQS (Vanquish, originally) hits a few big, red, flashing buttons for me. First and foremost, I had the original and loved it. Second, it was a lot of fun to build and drive with its, hmmm, let’s say enthusiastically engineered 4WD drivetrain and suspension. And if you’re thinking “looks kinda like an economy Avanti,” well, you’re pretty much right. And the third button? I’m just a sucker for an enclosed cockpit.

I’m having trouble remembering what I don’t like about the VQS, TBH. Oh, now I remember: the $350-plus pricetag. So much for my $200-ish cap. The VQS packs in plenty of parts and features (including a full set of ball bearings) to make the price perfectly reasonable, but more money is more money. Maybe I could mow a few lawns …

Get the VQS here

I owned a Wild Willy 2000. I loved my WW2K. I would like to love another WW2K. It’s a fun little wheelie machine, but this time I really want to go hard on the painting and detailing. The cartoonified Jeep body is fantastic (never mind the horizontal grille slots), and Willy himself is a full-body figure that I can see myself pouring time into.

Tamiya does a lot of the building for you with this one, going so far as to put the gearbox together before heat-shrinking the box. That’s less kit-building for me, I wanted to do that myself! But I’d probably pull the gearbox apart to replace the bushings with bearings, so I guess I’d get my wrenching time back.

Get the Wild Willy 2000 here

Which Would YOU Choose?

Honestly, I could have added ten more models to this list, easy – just take a look at all of Tamiya’s offerings on the TT-02 chassis, for starters. Choosing one from this list is not easy, so I’ll be keeping my eyes out for your suggestions in the comments of the social posts for this article. No matter what the final call is, you’ll see it go together from start to finish here at RCDriver.com. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to tighten the chin-strap on my thinking cap and get to work.

The post Help Me Out, I Can’t Decide Which Tamiya Kit To Build appeared first on RC Driver.

“What LCD screen?” Look closer, to the left of the wheel. It’s not much bigger than a 4X2 Lego brick – so yeah, not a big screen. The dot-matrix display is just large enough to display abbreviated function names and their values, like so:

The excerpt from the manual below shows how some other functions appeared on the screen. M. SELCT is model select (6-model memory was standard), and you can see the abbreviations for steering (ST) trim, travel, balance (which was the endpoints, as I recall), and curve (exponential).

A row of membrane-style buttons allowed you to navigate the adjustable settings and raise or lower the values. It wasn’t exactly intuitive, but after a pass through the instructions, it was pretty easy to navigate and setup the 756.

Though it recorded and displayed settings digitally, the 756 did not have digital trim switches. As you can see below, the radio had analog trim levers above and beside the wheel, and offered a pair of user-assignable dials positioned for easy thumb-rolling. The silver button above the dials controlled the lap timer functions, as I recall.

The analog dials and trim inputs created a problem: what would happen if their positions were changed while the radio was switched off? JR’s solution was the “trim alarm.” If any settings were changed while the radio was off, the 756 would beep at you when you powered it up to let you know the settings had been changed. But which settings? And how much were they changed? The display told you by showing the name of the altered setting with an arrow indicating which direction to move the dial or lever to restore the setting. When you reached the correct position, the arrow would disappear, and you’d get a confirmation beep. Repeat until all the settings are restored.

Adjustable-features-wise, the R-756 wasn’t exactly jam-packed by the standards of modern top-tier systems, but in its day, it represented a new high for tuning versatility and precision. And, if you had the PCM/PPM module for it, the ability to have a runaway-preventing fail-safe system was a real plus. That’s something we take for granted in the 2.4GHz era.

I think the R-756 is still a good-looking unit some 30+ years after it arrived on the scene, and if it could somehow be converted to 2.4GHz, I’d happily use one today. I especially like wrist-bar thing with the big R-756 on it, a bold touch that made sure everyone on the drivers’ stand knew you had serious gear – which didn’t necessarily mean you could drive, but hey, it’s fun to have the good stuff if you can afford it.

Images: Ruten.com seller; JR Propo

The post Remember The First ‘Computer’ Radio? Looking Back At The JR Propo R-756 appeared first on RC Driver.