Tamiya LaFerrari Project
Page 1: Stock Assembly
I didn't take any photos during assembly for some stupid reason, so I
only have pictures of the completed chassis. This is a one piece
bathtub style chassis with four wheel double wishbone suspension and
shaft drive. This is the first Tamiya model I have seen to use
sealed differentials which means you can tune the performance by
changing the fluid weight. I was a bit surprised to see that it
uses dogbones rather than CVDs, but of course it can be upgraded.
This model also features the inboard front suspension which uses
pushrods and crank arms to move the shocks inboard and make room for a
low nose body. The kit comes stock with plastic CVA shocks.
Here is a close-up of the electronics installation. I used a
Tamiya 10.5 turn sensored brushless motor, the stock TBLE-02s speed
control, and a Futaba analog servo. I used my usual Spektrum 2
channel receiver. With this setup it has plenty of speed for the
rough road in front of my house. There is also an extra set of
wires coming from the battery to power the LED control unit in the
body. Since I do not use the stock Molex connectors, I had to
solder the wires directly to the battery leads. You can see that
the motor is mounted sideways and protrudes from the side of the
chassis. I am a bit worried about it getting damaged by debris,
but no problem so far.
The masking and painting process was a bit arduous because I wanted it
to be perfect. It may also look like there are not very many stickers
on this model, but they are actually numerous. All the windows are
outlined, the front and rear bumpers are completely covered with carbon
fiber appearance, and the side intakes are actually separate
parts. The head light and tail light buckets sit behind the clear
body so those sections need to be masked.
The lights really help give the finished model a realistic appearance.
©2017 Eric Albrecht
