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The Live Build of the Tamiya CR-01!

This is a compilation article of RC Driver's Jason Carter's live build of the Tamiya CR-01. You can read about it on our Forum by clicking here.

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Back to building. Tranny is installed into the chassis.

Suspension links and shocks are built and installed.
I had put off building the shocks (one of my least favorite things to do, along with building turnbuckles). Seems this was a bad idea. Doing so made installing the shocks at the ladder frame difficult.
Oh well, done now.

Check this out...Losi's Grappler body fits nice.

Cutting out the FJ body now. Put the calipers on the lexan at the corners. Seems to measure out to .035" lexan at the corners

Finished trimming the body.

As you'd expect from Tamiya, there's great detail in the body. The door and windshield hinges have raised bolts, the diamond plate on the steps looks good, and there are no flaws in the body (unlike other FJ/FJ-ish) bodies that we've seen.



Tomorrow will be spent masking, painting, and applying dozens of decals.

Reamed holes in the body.



The body is 181mm wide at the front fenders, has an overall length of 15", and has a wheelbase of about 10 3/8".
This body will be nice for 1.9 builds. It fits the XC/CC-01 chassis at 10.5" well. (last two shots)
If you center the rear tires in the wheel arch of the body, the front tires are pushed forward a bit, but hey - that's a better approach angle.

  

OK, obligatory flex shot.

I built the suspension as indicated in the manual in step 20 (red arrows), placing the dampers as indicated at the ladder frame. That allows plenty of travel in the front, the cantilevers strike the frame rail at about the same time the dampers reach full extension. (dampers extend as suspension compresses) The rear link geometry is different, though.

  

In the rear it's a different story - I have very little travel. The dampers reach full extension early in the suspension cycle. I double-checked damper placement in step 20 and found that I hadn't gone brain dead during the middle of the night while assembling the suspension. Step 26 shows the dampers installed in the same spot as in step 20, but in step 27 the rear dampers are in a different location (red arrow). This seems seems like a good solution, but due to tight clearance between the ball end for the lower suspension links and the ladder frame...there's no room.

The solution is to place the rear damper at the green arrow when mounting to the ladder frame. This will allow for more articulation but still doesn't allow for full travel.

The next thing to do is to change the damper's upper mounting point. The outer hole on the cantilever swings a wider arc than the inner hole so to reduce the amount of travel at the damper for the same amount of suspension movement I moved the damper's mounting point closer to the cantilever pivot. With the damper mounting points changed I now have full travel in the rear.

Now to tackle that body.

Originally Posted by "OldSchoolRC"

Wonder if the rear doesn't flex as much by design. hot set up on my crawler was always to tighten up the rear much more than the front.....just musing though. That toyota is awesome!!! The ironman's ride... As far as paint, i have never seen a shiny FJ, like to see something close to what was done with the red rust 'yota hi-lift - the weathered beater look was great! (with a well placed call to Tamiya America of course)

A: Not sure about the flex thing. Decided on body color...something bright. Window masks are pre-cut but the decals need to be cut by hand. I spent a ton of time last night to mask the roof line so it was nice and straight and wouldn't bleed. When I got ready to start applying decals I found out that there are while decals to go around the roof line. I haven't started with the windows yet, but there are a few window trim decals...four for each window. One thing I noticed was that there are no decals for the hood hinges, hood latches, or door hinges. I'll need to detail those with a detail pen. So, the body will be wrapped up later this afternoon. Here it is as of now.

Detail pen used on a windshield latch. Will do all the panel lines with the pen as well as the hood latches and hood/door hinges.

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