Next up in the hopper is this 2001 sport touring car using Tamiya's then-new & innovative dual belt configuration made most popular by the TRF414. Curiously, the "finished" body is screen-printed, but only has a handful of the decals applied. There's a sheet of 45 uncut stickers included. False advertisement!

This will be my first competition-capable Tamiya vehicle, so I look forward to trying it out on a track when it's done.

Alright, here we go. Right from the start, it's obvious that this is no low-end kit with the most possible re-used old parts. Follow along by the pics:

1. The belt-driven diffs use familiar gears but an entirely new set of case halves that are compact for low rotating mass.
2. Beautiful design here, just beautiful. The hingepins are captured by the bar-like mounts, which are in turn keyed into slots in the combined diff housing/bulkhead assembly, and attached with just one screw apiece. That's right, the two rear a-arms attach with a total of two screws, with no e-clips!
3. Here's the rear assembly from another angle, showing the rear belt, aluminum motor mount, and shock tower. Five inner camber link mounting points and three upper shock mounts!
4. The other side.

Now more...

1. Here's the rear assembly, a little more complete. Unfortunately the outer hinge pins are secured with e-clips. The dogbones are allowed absolutely zero backlash thanks to the shock-absorbing red foam disk you can see inside the outdrives. They also have you use their "anti-wear grease" which has extremely high viscosity and helps reduce rotational shock and play.
2. Here's the front, which uses very similar construction. Quite a bit of caster angle in those blocks.
3. The two ends lock securely into slots in the chassis tub. The top shaft, like everything in the kit, rides on ball bearings.
4. Not too many more steps bring you here. The top deck provides both tortional and lengthwise stability. The shocks, I'm tremendously happy to report, are all identically built and tuned and have a moderate damping rate with 1-hole pistons and what feels like ~50wt oil. Steering is dual bellcrank style and rides smoothly on four ball bearings.
5. Bonus angle

All done, after 1 1/2 solid, feverish hours of cutting & placing decals as quickly as I possibly could. As I mentioned before, the notion that this comes with a "finished body" is basically a sham. Thanks to duplicate & quadruplicate stickers on the sheet, there are about 60 decals to carefully cut & apply. Some of the ones that come pre-applied aren't perfectly applied, either, and the screen-printed pattern on the body isn't completely centered. Not such a big deal, though, since this is not a collector's shelf queen car, it's a runner!

Tip:

• Be sure to remove the overspray film from the wing before adding decals. Since it's machine-cut it can be easy to miss.

Looks like it could be quite competitive, there's plenty of setup options.
I wanna see it running!

nice looking chassis.

Page is up! Photos, video footage, and quick impressions, all there:

• Tamiya Corvette C5-R (TA04-S)