Arrma could learn a whole bunch from Tamiya on durability

[Jerry-rigged]

There’s not a lot of differences the BLX version has the same driveshafts , the same centre shaft, the out drives from the diff,

the BLX has a support bearing on the center shaft, to fix the exact problem you had. The slider shafts are the same, but very few people have issues with these.

e diff ring on the Blx is Still plastic as is the case just higher teeth 49t against 37teeth.

the BLX diffs have bigger teeth, to handle more power.
How is this the same? Also the Mega diff input is all plastic, the BLX has a metal shaft. How is this the same?

nside the diff , the gears are exactly the same as BLX version .

same, and they don't fail.

he spur gear is still plastic . As is in the Brushed

mega is 48p, the BLX is 32p, so big difference. Also the BLX has a much upgraded slipper over the Mega.

I intend to swap the diff rings for 37t . And swap out the rear spur but the Assembly of the yoke etc is all the same .

same yoke, but again, not an issues for anyone?

would of much preferred a Brushless from the off start but none are available in UK.
But these problems I had from unboxing so it’s not the BL motor messing it up.
But thanks for your input .

Parts available is an issue. Shame UK has issues, that is where the Arrma HQ lives...

 

[ManhattanRC]

How does it fly? I do not dare to take my TT02 on a ramp - not even thinking about a visit to a skate park.

It's the Dual Ridge, so it flies just fine with 2.2 prolines. The plastic which is about 100% of the car bounces off just about anything. It won't provide nearly the control in the air that arrmas do, but the plastic seems to be more resilient given the lighter weight of the car itself.

 

[Etosch]

It's the Dual Ridge, so it flies just fine with 2.2 prolines.

Let's meet someday and let's both send our cars 10 foot high and then compare them after landing. - A good landing for Tamiya would be all parts lying in the same direction... I am all in for constructive critism about arrma and there are quite some points of concern but taking tamiya for comparision is just...

 

[Arrmajunk]

Tamiya is fairly durable within reason, they do take a knock but realistically they weren’t designed to have high power Brushless motors in them . I had my Neo Scorther upto about 45mph . GPS ‘d
But I can assure you a crash at that speed will do a fair amount of damage, I broke the front end on mine all but the chassis .
But it was cheap to repair the parts were readily available , and above all it was simple to fix .
I’ve crashed my Arrma Senton on 3s and it broke as well !

 

[Saltystevo]

Tamiya is old school. King of the hill back in the day for me. So the things that broke all the time were steering servo/linkage and gears in my Blackfoot. Aside from that we beat it up for the 6 minute runs. I highly doubt they can withhold the torture I put my arrma through so far. And they definitely weren't built to handle monster power upgrades without upgrading the whole transmission. Tamiya is still a great kit to buy with that been said. I might hold the Arrma in a higher respect if they were sold in kits. Feels more hobby like vs I just went to Toys R us and pulled something built in China out of a box

 

[ManhattanRC]

Tamiya is fairly durable within reason, they do take a knock but realistically they weren’t designed to have high power Brushless motors in them . I had my Neo Scorther upto about 45mph . GPS ‘d
But I can assure you a crash at that speed will do a fair amount of damage, I broke the front end on mine all but the chassis .
But it was cheap to repair the parts were readily available , and above all it was simple to fix .
I’ve crashed my Arrma Senton on 3s and it broke as well !

I think people take this way out of context. I was initially comparing the plastic gears of my senton mega vs my Tamiya when they were both under brushless power.

The point was I like my armmas, but for some reason I've never stripped a Tamiya gear even when using a comparable power plant to power the cars. Also the tiny bits like screws excetera tend to take the elements a bit better.

Overtime small cheap parts have broken but to your point I can call Tamiya USA and get something within 4 days every time.

 

[Arrmajunk]

My Senton started life as Mega , I’ve taken all of the Gears / drive shafts out and rebuilt it as a BLX the pitch on the gears is a lot bigger. I’ve got some 17mm hex’s to go on but also have12mm hex’s to fit any tyre on.
The build was a Real pain not all of the parts are built to the exact same standard , I’ve had to buy diff cases twice over and One set of Internal cogs the diff yokes are ? they bind and rub the diff ring there’s life a little lip on one side of the yoke that touches when tightened up , dremmel that flat and fettle around with the tightness of the two halves to allow the diff to spin freely. .
But now it’s all done it has a Castle sidewinder 3 3800kv it’s pretty dang quick on par with my Slash 4x4 LCG vxl I don’t like the prefixed holes for the motor pinions 15t 20t or 20? Something tooth Judgeing by how much acceleration it has I think I could run the 20t on level ground .

 

[Success LiPo]

Before I get into my opening statement, I enjoy driving my Arrmas. They're exciting and fun to drive, but we all know they have their issues. I got back into the hobby a couple of years ago, and started building Tamiyas because as a kid that's exactly what I did. I own a few Tamiyas, senton mega, kraton, and Typhon 6s.

We've had a lot of rain and mud this winter and it's wreaked havoc on my Arrmas. Today was the first day, I started looking at my Tamiyas and I can only wish my arrmas handled the elements as well as my Tamiyas have. Good example of this is below.

After a year-and-a-half I decided to take apart my kong head 6x6 and see what mother nature has done to her insides. I've always done the basic maintenance on this truck like keeping it clean on the outside and making sure that my suspension was oiled and lubed properly, but that was about it.

I have to say after taking it apart inspecting the transmission and the outdrives, that Arrma could learn a lot about quality transmissions & gears from Tamiya. On many of my Tamiyas I've upgraded the ESCs and gone brushless up to 4S power, and had very little stripping of the stock spurs, input drives, or differentials. Try saying that about the brushed version of the senton mega. Also, Tamiya seems to have very little need for a slipper clutch yet those gears take every beating... every hard reverse...and full throttle acceleration that I and my hobbywing xerun can throw at it. I'd also say my stock bearings in my Tamiyas have very little rust after all this time.

I pulled my motor out, and even though there's no waterproofing gasket there is absolutely no rust on my stock pinion gear. I've brought this thing through water up to the hood and somehow the quality metals used stand up to the elements much better then the high-performance rtrs.

I feel like in the era of 6S and 8s power Tamiya are regarded as toys and not high performance RCs. In my opinion though, these have taken just as much of a beating as my Arrmas, but have proven more durable.

The Konghead will also do about 40mph on stock gearing, so not too bad. Any Tamiya owners have the same experience?

I find a lot of what you wrote interesting as I too came back into the hobby with great fondness for the Tamiyas of my youth. I have found Arrma to be extremely durable but I have a story I think you'll relate to (at least in part, because although my story is about gears, it's still apples and oranges)

I bought a brushless RedCat Volcano on a whim and was amazed at the speed. I then studied up on brushless power systems and learned more about Lipo batteries and hatched a crazy idea: A 3s Grasshopper. I was able to fit a 3s Velinon ESC and Motor (traxxas) in a stock grasshopper! The engine went right into that sealed gear box (yes with all of those plastic gears), and I was able to fit a "boat style" 3s lipo in the bathtub chassis battery compartment. Now Luckily I was naive as to the torque of these brushless motors or I would have never spent the time slapping one on to grasshopper rear end filled with plastic gears, however at the same time I knew I should "go gentle into that good night," in easing the throttle on.

I used the throttle limiter on my fly sky to get used to how the car would behave, and I made sure to make my first run on a freshly paved parking lot. As I made several passes, limiting my throttle less and less, I discovered something amazing: The stock grasshopper tires on smooth pavement served as a natural slipper clutch! (mind you this was after I back flipped the car and subsequently ducktaped a 7.2 NiMh battery to the bummper for weight, and installed a custom wheelie bar). Eventually I was able to accelerate to 70, slow down, and turn without flipping and run the car all day. I was amazed and mystified because at the same time I was was braking my Kraton every other day on 6s. It took me 2 years to draw the right lesson from this, and here it is: I was driving my Kraton like it was and indestructible tank and my grasshopper like it was Model T. It wasn't the durability and engineering of Arrma that was failing me, it was my lack of respect for physics (me not you LOL). Because I first held a Kraton and examined it I was like, "oh yeah I can beat the crap out of this and it will never break." I mean growing up, I had a grasshopper, a falcon, a frog, a monster beetle and my dad would NEVER let me touch his aluminum (pre-graphite chassis) RC-10. So when I got back into the hobby 5 years ago I was blown away with Arrma vehicles.

I did everything with my Kraton shy of back flips and insane jumps BUT, I was shredding front tires on gravel, stripping out steering servos, breaking front arms on small trees that I would hit just right (between the non existent bumber and the wheel), and OMG the pinion gears. That was a learning curve and a half! Setting a gear mesh? Really. Locktite the pinion gear screw with blue not red, so you don't strip the set screw trying to replace the pinion you just broke! It was hilarious. Boy was I wet behind the ears bringing only my tamiya 7.2v NiCd 540s with me to Brushless 1/8 scale.

Anyway thats a little bit of my story. Hope you laughed, and maybe you can relate to some of it.

peace

 

[ManhattanRC]

I noticed you wrote NiCd. You must have been a child of the 80s like myself. The best monster truck around was the Clod Buster.

Great writing by the way!

 

[Notorious J]

I find a lot of what you wrote interesting as I too came back into the hobby with great fondness for the Tamiyas of my youth. I have found Arrma to be extremely durable but I have a story I think you'll relate to (at least in part, because although my story is about gears, it's still apples and oranges)

I bought a brushless RedCat Volcano on a whim and was amazed at the speed. I then studied up on brushless power systems and learned more about Lipo batteries and hatched a crazy idea: A 3s Grasshopper. I was able to fit a 3s Velinon ESC and Motor (traxxas) in a stock grasshopper! The engine went right into that sealed gear box (yes with all of those plastic gears), and I was able to fit a "boat style" 3s lipo in the bathtub chassis battery compartment. Now Luckily I was naive as to the torque of these brushless motors or I would have never spent the time slapping one on to grasshopper rear end filled with plastic gears, however at the same time I knew I should "go gentle into that good night," in easing the throttle on.

I used the throttle limiter on my fly sky to get used to how the car would behave, and I made sure to make my first run on a freshly paved parking lot. As I made several passes, limiting my throttle less and less, I discovered something amazing: The stock grasshopper tires on smooth pavement served as a natural slipper clutch! (mind you this was after I back flipped the car and subsequently ducktaped a 7.2 NiMh battery to the bummper for weight, and installed a custom wheelie bar). Eventually I was able to accelerate to 70, slow down, and turn without flipping and run the car all day. I was amazed and mystified because at the same time I was was braking my Kraton every other day on 6s. It took me 2 years to draw the right lesson from this, and here it is: I was driving my Kraton like it was and indestructible tank and my grasshopper like it was Model T. It wasn't the durability and engineering of Arrma that was failing me, it was my lack of respect for physics (me not you LOL). Because I first held a Kraton and examined it I was like, "oh yeah I can beat the crap out of this and it will never break." I mean growing up, I had a grasshopper, a falcon, a frog, a monster beetle and my dad would NEVER let me touch his aluminum (pre-graphite chassis) RC-10. So when I got back into the hobby 5 years ago I was blown away with Arrma vehicles.

I did everything with my Kraton shy of back flips and insane jumps BUT, I was shredding front tires on gravel, stripping out steering servos, breaking front arms on small trees that I would hit just right (between the non existent bumber and the wheel), and OMG the pinion gears. That was a learning curve and a half! Setting a gear mesh? Really. Locktite the pinion gear screw with blue not red, so you don't strip the set screw trying to replace the pinion you just broke! It was hilarious. Boy was I wet behind the ears bringing only my tamiya 7.2v NiCd 540s with me to Brushless 1/8 scale.

Anyway thats a little bit of my story. Hope you laughed, and maybe you can relate to some of it.

peace

Great story and a well made point. Expectations need to be checked at the door, and only common sense be allowed to enter.

 

[GMballistic]

Wait, the Konghead is a Clodbuster with a Freightliner body, right? I had a Clod my first trip thru this hobby, (waaaay back when). Fast? It screamed at 10mph, no way would it see 40mph unless in the back of my dad's pickup. Durable? 2' high jumps where cool, but 3' jumps were the bomb! Like Boom! Parts everywhere!

I had a Frog too (my first hobby grade). Other than the hex half-shafts, not much broke on it. But, it did maybe 15mph stock, and 20mph after I got a 'hot' 12t motor for it. That motor melted many a white tamiya battery plug... lol

Oh, the good old days.

Exactly I think some people have some very rose tinted glasses they're wearing.

I've a 1/10th scale Tamiya Hornet re-release that I've put race bearings in, a Hobbywing ESC and Arrma 12T motor run by a high power battery as well which flat out see's no more than 26mph. Tested repeatedly. No way a Konghead does 40mph odd on stock gears/set up.

I've had my fair share of Tamiya buggies/trucks which I have loved and where I think Tamiya excels over other companies is with their model kit vehicles (R/c and static models).

The box art, instructions, graphics, parts bags and the details for the vehicles is always on point.