Quick Build: Tamiya TT

Aug 17, 2023

Tamiya's TT-02 platform delivers shaft-driven 4WD on a budget for a bunch of the brand's tourers and drifters, and is also offered as the b-is-for-buggy TT-02B in Dual Ridge and Neo Scorcher body styles. For this build, I’ve got the TT-02B MS, which ramps things up a notch or two with fiberglass shock towers, a full set of bearings and a bunch of aluminum and fiberglass hop-up parts right in the box, plus a special decal set for the Dual Ridge body. The TT-02B is designed to have minimal parts count for fast and easy assembly, so this is buggy is an easy one-sitting build, at least until it's time to paint the body.

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Here's the official Tamiya photo. The blue and white areas are paint, the airbrush-lookin’ graphics are all decals. Wheels are even pinker in person, and tires are not included.

And we’re off. I immediately made a mess of my bench after staging this photo.

The all-plastic diffs build quickly with no shims. Just fire the spider gears in there and button it up.

The lower gearbox halves are molded into the chassis to reduce the parts count. The MS trim includes blue-anodized input shafts and driveshaft, complete with etched Tamiya logo.

Novak 17.5 motor in place. Gear mesh is set automatically by selecting mounting holes that correspond with pinion tooth count.

Fiberglass ("FRP" in Tamiya parlance) shock towers are an included MS upgrade. The stock plastic towers are still on the parts trees, shown on the left. They’re in my spares box now.

The front end builds quickly with yoke-style inboard hingepins and screwpins for the c-hubs. Aluminum turnbuckles and steel dogbones and drive cups replace the all-plastic versions found on the base-spec TT-02B models.

Minimalist aluminum rear uprights are machined with 0.5 degrees of toe-in. Installed per the manual, you get a total of 2 degrees rear toe. Or, you can swap the carriers for 1 degree of toe-in. The stock plastic hubs are also in the box–more spares.

Rear end assembled. It's a neat-looking car.

White shocks! These bad boys are hard to photograph without blowing out the details. Nothing new other than the color, they’re Tamiya's CVA oil-filled plastic shocks as used by countless other Tamiya cars.

Getting there. I had a set of Tamiya knobbies in my parts stash, the kit does not include tires. The servo is a Winking PD-300. It's a $6 servo, we’ll see how it goes…

Novak Crusher speed control wired up, time to head to the hobby store for paint. I like to leave my speed control wires a little long since I’m always swapping electronics from model to model.

More to come…