Tamiya DF-03 MS

[860Crawler]

Hey guys,

I guess I'll throw this up here too since I've put it on every other forum I'm on. Picked up this DF-03 MS from Tamiyausa. Its basically a Dark Impact with all the nice hop-ups you'd buy to make it more "race ready". It also does not come with a motor or tires to go along with the racer theme of providing your own for your conditions.





Powered by Novak Havoc 3S/Ballistic 8.5T


Steering duties


Diff balls were an immediate upgrade


Build pics:
rear diff


and rear gear case built. The blue items are heatsink bars since there is no room for a standard heatsink or fan where the motor resides. There are two bars up top and one inside where the motor goes


front diff built. The blue part is a one piece aluminum propshaft oudrive. The rear did one have one. I think because Tamiya has provided a one way diff in its place.


Front & rear done


Some more goodies for immediate upgrade. 3Racing graphite shock towers and front hingepin brace, also 3Racing aluminum rear hingepin brace


Rear tower on


getting there...




This is the one place where no ball races are provided, the steering posts. I guess they figure its just doing partial rotation here so its not needed. Well I put some there anyways. It takes 4, two on the bottom shown here and two more on top.


I bought Tamiya Dual Block C tires for the build. Comp ready in case I ever make it to a race.




Electronics time. There is not much room on the chassis since the battery tunnel runs down the middle like a 2WD machine. Had to turn the Havoc on its side in order to fit which doesn't leave room for the fan to physically attach to it.


I put the Rx on this side with the servo since there was a good little bit on room over there


Completed chassis shots:


The Tamiya hop-up dampers are incredible, wouldn't expect any less




No screws in the rear hingepin brace at this point.






I've already got a replacement for this cover coming. Tamiya makes a smoked cover so you can see the pinion and spur at a glance. I like how you can just remove the little nub to access the slipper nut. This is my first car ever with a slipper and with ball differentials.


Here's what I'm talking about with the motor, its a bitch to even get the motor in there and lined up. By a stroke of luck or some pretty nifty engineering, the pinion meshes perfectly, the motor holes line up perfectly and the solder tabs have a little notch where they can fit in the chassis. I had to desolder the wires and shorten them by about 6 inches then resolder them so they face away from the motor. They come soldered in a way that they lay down on the motor which would never work in this application




Nice hop ups, the front hingepin brace is just visible behind the bumper. Turnbuckles provided everywhere which is nice. Even the ridiculously long steering servo pushrod is a turnbuckle.




unpainted




I did this up boxart style. Satoshi Maezumi's color theme. The body had to be painted metallic blue and white, as well as the wing. This kit comes with a racing wing and a standard Dark Impact wing. I painted the DI wing just all white. The decal set was challenging, lots of windex to slide them around and line up patterns, then getting them stuck down on all the curves was another challenge.








Had to do a bit of X-Acto magic since some patterns didn't quite line up no matter what I tried so I carved some patterns so they did match up at the edges.




Had to go with the Novak decal here instead of Transpeed.

[860Crawler]

I pulled the front left ballstud/kingpin out on my first run. It didn't feel all that tight in the plastic when I built it. I put a tiny dab of glue on it then put it back in. I've since ordered some 3racing aluminum steering knuckles, the metal to metal should hold more firmly.

I love this thing, I've never had a buggy with all this adjustability. I noticed it would pull hard to the right on full throttle. A couple turns on the steering turnbuckle to adjust the toe and now its straight as an arrow.

It goes like stink. First I used it with a regular Nimh stick pack and it was impressive. Then I put a Lipo in there and it was even more explosive, just on 2S. Its really stable, especially after using my Grasshopper LOL. It just hooks up and goes. Full speed over rough dirt is no problem and it jumps beautifully. I used it for 10 minutes at the skatepark and I was able to nose up or down in the air with the throttle. I quickly stopped when I jumped a tabletop way too fast and landed from about 6 feet up flat on pavement. The smack it made when it hit the ground made me cringe. Yeah, don't want to do that anymore.

Braking with the front one way took some getting used to since only the rear is involved I kept spinning out when I first used it. Now I can brake nice and straight and it turns on a dime when braking.

[twisted]

what lipo are using ? you have pics of how it fits ?

[860Crawler]

Turnigy 2650mAh 30-40C 2S
You can kind of see it here. Even though the wires exit from the corner of the pack. They are pretty much right where there is a hole in the chassis for them to exit. The battery has to sit slightly on an angle for this work work.



Here is from the bottom.



Bottom of the chassis is roughed up already LOL.

[860Crawler]

Its developed a strange glitch. I set it down to use and it didn't move, just got a click noise from inside the motor. Hitting reverse would produce the same click and millisecond of movement. I touched the wires and wiggled them and got it to run sometimes smooth, sometimes cogging like a bastard, sounded like it was pulsing as it was going. Then sometimes it would "disconnect" again and the motor would lock up sending the buggy into a spin. That I really don't understand. I can see if it lost all contact completely the car would just freewheel to a stop, but something happens where it locks the motor and everything seizes.

Ive never had a brushless before so I don't know what is going on. I removed the motor and checked all my connections and everything was soldered solidly. And it worked fine when out of the chassis when I built it. All the lights lit and showed what was going on. The only thing I can think of is the sensor harness is like 6" long but the motor wires are only about 3" long so I ordered the shorter 4" harness. Even still, I thought something like that would have shown itself immediately. I got a good 3-4 packs through this thing before this started happening. For shits and giggles I'm going to resolder the motor wires.

[860Crawler]

Too late, didn't even have time to try and resolder. I took everything apart and for the hell of it I plugged a battery in to see if I could check connections first. It still clicked and did nothing, but then about 3 seconds later I got smoke like crazy and the motor just fires up and starts going by itself. I didn't even have the controller in my hand at the moment and it scared the shit out of me. Good thing it wasn't IN the buggy or it would have taken off right off the table! So I sent an email over to Novak CS to see what I should do from here.

[Grumpster1980]

Originally Posted by 860Crawler

Too late, didn't even have time to try and resolder. I took everything apart and for the hell of it I plugged a battery in to see if I could check connections first. It still clicked and did nothing, but then about 3 seconds later I got smoke like crazy and the motor just fires up and starts going by itself. I didn't even have the controller in my hand at the moment and it scared the shit out of me. Good thing it wasn't IN the buggy or it would have taken off right off the table! So I sent an email over to Novak CS to see what I should do from here.

Dude amazing build! you have some great paint and decal skills! To get it to look just like the box takes some amazing paitents and skill so hats off!

That sucks about the electronics. Novak has great customer service so do not worry they will hook you up. I recently built a Kyosho NSR 500 Motorcycle and had an issue with the ESC so I know how you feel. Nothing worse than getting a build done and then having the electronics not work.

[Huey]

Very nice, I recently built a DF03-ra. It's a ton a fun so far, but I'm a bit worried about the main gear in the rear box. The metal seems soft and I read of others where the gear has failed.

[860Crawler]

Thanks for the compliments!

I hear that Novak CS is awesome, so I'm not too concerned. I'm pretty certain I haven't done anything wrong or installed it wrong because it worked for that short time and when it did work it was freakin incredible. We even checked the temps on one of the first runs and the motor was around 110F and the ESC was a tad higher (running on dirt and short grass) well within thermal overload.

I'd have to say, its best to immediately change out the stock balls in the diffs for Tungsten or Ceramic Nitride because the stockers will burn up quickly. At least this is what I have read in every thread regarding the DF-03. Thats why I bought the two packs of diff balls when I bought this so my front and rear could be taken care off right off the bat.

[860Crawler]

Novak tech has already responded to my email with a probable cause (MOSFET failure leading to a short circuit) and told me to send it in with a copy of the receipt. So my motor/ESC will be off tomorrow back to the place of its birth.

[twisted]

novak havoc esc suck.....i had one and it would never hit full throtle and it fried up the motor on the 2nd run. i called novak and they replaced it and i sold it when i got it back. ive heard of others having problems with them....

think there is more room in the battery tray for say a larger hard case lipo ?

[860Crawler]

Originally Posted by twisted

novak havoc esc suck.....i had one and it would never hit full throtle and it fried up the motor on the 2nd run. i called novak and they replaced it and i sold it when i got it back. ive heard of others having problems with them....

think there is more room in the battery tray for say a larger hard case lipo ?

This one definitely hit full throttle, it ripped.

As long as the Lipo is the type with rounded corners like a regular stick pack I think it will fit. Actually now that I remember, on oople.com when they reviewed the Keen Hawk (same car) they put a square hardpack in there. They had to remove a bit of material on the top of the chassis so the battery leads could come through.

[STANG KILLA SS]

kick ass! ive always wanted/loved the dark impacts

[860Crawler]

Here's the wheel inner diameter for you. I'd say 2-1/8"

[STANG KILLA SS]

thanks!

[860Crawler]

Some more parts came in the mail today.

Tamiya49434 DF-03 Gear cover (smoke) which turned out to be a whole parts tree of clear smoked items. Its funny that the package said "Limited Edition Items Tamiya Premium Bonus Goods." I was thinking, maybe I should not open this and get like $50 for it in 5-10 years. It also said Tamiya Europe GMBH instead of Tamiya Japan, cool.

no pinion in there since my ESC/motor is still away at Novak


smoked front and rear bumpers are also on the tree. Can't use the rear though since that 3Racing brace is there.


smoked wing mounts


and smoked body mounts


Also there was a smoked servo mount which I didnt take a pic of and some random clear spacers.

The other items that came in was the 3Racing rear gear box brace. The spacer like a hair away from the propeller shaft.


3Racing steering knuckles so i don't lose a kingpin again. Now its threadlocked in

[860Crawler]

Got my stuff back from Novak. Got sent a new ESC, he invoice said multiple Mosfet failures. The motor checked out fine. It was nice of them to cut off my Deans and send it back to me so I didn't have to use another one. I managed to get a short 4" sensor harness as well so now all he wires are a lot more tidy this time around and the body fits over the chassis better.

Only got to try it in the house last night because of the storms but at least I know it'd working properly. It reverses normally too where before it always jumped into reverse hard.

[Grumpster1980]

Originally Posted by 860Crawler

Got my stuff back from Novak. Got sent a new ESC, he invoice said multiple Mosfet failures. The motor checked out fine. It was nice of them to cut off my Deans and send it back to me so I didn't have to use another one. I managed to get a short 4" sensor harness as well so now all he wires are a lot more tidy this time around and the body fits over the chassis better.

Only got to try it in the house last night because of the storms but at least I know it'd working properly. It reverses normally too where before it always jumped into reverse hard.

Thats why I always buy from Novak they have amazing customer service.
Once again great job on the build and paint.

I just bought the Tamiya WRC 2008 DF03ra Kit it's the same chassis with rally body and tires in the box! I'll start a thread once I get mine from the UPS guy tonight. It does not have all the nice aluminum upgrades your does but I am sure it will perform well as a rally car.



Just a random picture off the net

[860Crawler]

Those are sick. I love the old Datsun bodied model they have. There are a ton of aluminum and graphite hop-ups for those because I would always come across the parts for DF-03RA when looking for DF-03. eTamiya.com has a bunch.

[860Crawler]

New replacement ESC.

Shortened wiring

Repositioned fan

Ran 1 Nimh and 2 Lipos through it. It freakin rips better than ever