Tom’s Tamiya TT-01ED Drifter – Introduction

By admin On June 29, 2010 · Add Comment

Tom’s Tamiya TT-01ED Drifter – Introduction

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I’ve always had a big thing for RC drifting. What I like about it is you don’t need a huge amount of space to practice your skills or have fun. I’ve got a tarmac drive at my house, and if I park the 1:1 cars in the road and get a couple of track markers out, I’ve got a pretty good drift track that is literally on my doorstep. If I fancy a bigger play area, then the car park of my local supermarket offers a great place to drift after hours too.

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Anyway, I’d starting drifting with a Yokomo SD, and recently picked up an early TT-01D Tamiya that was languishing around at Racer Towers to replace my tired Yoke. As much as I like the TT-01D, a few things let it down, firstly the tyres are nowhere near as â€˜drifity’ as Yokomo ones, and also the steering has quite a bit of slop making precision drift control a pain. Thankfully, Racer’s editorial team had heard my moans and sent me down a shiny new TT-01ED kit with Lexus bodyshell. The â€˜E’ is important as it stands for enhanced, and although it doesn’t look it, Tamiya have improved a huge amount compared to my old TT-01D.

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The improvements are as follows:

Separate shock towers and gearbox cases (previously 1 piece)
Softer shock springs
Super Drifttech tyres (much more like my favoured Yokes)
Chassis stiffener/Top Deck
Much improved plastics
TA-05 style steering (with no slop!)

Already out of the box, this TT-01ED is a better drifter, and the Lexus bodyshell is so JDM I want a sticker just to prove it! The big changes are the tyres and steering, and now it is much more like a proper drift chassis. I stuck uber thick grease in the diffs too to slow the diff action making drifting more controllable.

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The action doesn’t stop there though as The Hobby Company kindly supplied me with some Hop-Ups to try out. So for next month’s article I’ll be adding the following: