With the F-350 High Lift build about to wrap up, I decided to quickly bust out a simpler build to test at the local track tomorrow. This Celica kit was produced 10 years ago. I bought it new off the shelf quite a long time ago, and just broke the shrink wrap today! The FF-02 chassis is essentially a longer, wider M03. With friction shocks, a simple & direct drivetrain, and a one-color body, this one will be a snap.

sweet!

Build that thing. NOW! 8D

Anyway, I really want to know how the FF02 handles. I consider myself quite an FF01 freak (even though I've only got one of those :P), but I know absolutely nothing about '02's.

Alright, here goes nothing!

By the pictures...

1. One diff with bevel internals and a pair of bi-level gears. That's the transmission. There's no separate spur; as you can see, the pinion on the motor will mate up directly on the right.
2. This is new to me. Two-piece A-arms. Huh...
3. Gotta love the funky wavy pearly gray main chassis material. It's kind of like art. Everything that color in this picture, incidentally, is just two huge pieces! Transmission, battery sleeve, servo mount brackets, shock tower, all just two big halves. It was delightfully quick & easy to get to this level of assembly.
4. In the background, more pearly gray, this time a whopping four pieces to make this assembly that looks like the tail of either an airplane or a biomechanical shark. Up front, more 2-piece arms!

Continuing...

1. Attaching just a few more screws, you end up with this full-length assembly.
2. Shocks are the old rubber sleeve friction style from the M02 (possibly earlier?). The head of the screw gets squeezed inside the greased inner surface of a 12mm length of rubber tube, providing friction. Unfortunately age seems to have caused the rubber to expand very slightly, as the amount of damping power is rather modest.
3. The servo mounts up high, with a long arm reaching down to a reasonable halfway point, while tall standoff ball studs on the knuckles make up the remaining distance.

Fin! Three hours to build the chassis, including forum reading breaks. Nearly four hours to detail the body Unfortunately rain came through today so I wasn't able to test anything, so I'll have to try to run it off-schedule next week. I'm expecting a lot less understeer from this layout than the FF01 had, since the weight is better centralized, but still pushed as far forward as possible. The rear end is really light. The high servo should also raise the CoG a bit, leading to more digging bite mid-turn. We shall see, though.

The wheels are interesting because they're not exact replicas of the stockers -- they're actually dead ringers for 5zigen FN01R-C's.

Good work! When does the Ultimate Slash come?

I love these basic chassis designs!
Allows a lot of custom modification potential. Will this one be modded?

Wow... that's one hell of a cool looking RC... Gotta get myself one of those...

Well, logic personally tells me that yes, as the motor as located behind the front axle it will provide more weight distribution. But you've also gotta remember that traction will be lost from the front wheels. The reason why the front tires go bust in an FF01 is because there is lots of traction to the front wheels because of the overhang the motor is creating on the car. Let's face it, you may have the best weight distributed car in the world, but without proper traction to the driving wheels (in this case, the front), there will be understeering.

Notice I didn't make any mention of weight distribution I actually do not know if the weight balance is any different on this car from the FF01. The battery is farther forward, as is the servo and the overall mass of chassis plastic. It's actually possible that this one has more weight on the front wheels than the FF01. Do you have an accurate digital postal scale by chance so that we could check?