Here is the way I received the kit. It was clear at first glance
that it had been modified from the box standard as evidenced by the blue
chassis tray and the aluminum shocks. It was also clear that the
model had been built but never run. Everything was absolutely
pristine and new, and the body had never been painted nor the stickers
applied. The first thing I did was to tear down the whole thing
and inventory all the parts to understand what I had. It turned
out that this TT-02B had been significantly upgraded beyond the already
fancy MS version. There are hardly any stock TT-02 parts
remaining.
I was lucky enough to get the original box and instructions even though
this model was already built. I like these TRF style boxes with
the carrying handle and re-closable lid. The right hand picture
shows the kit after I tore it down. It doesn't look like much when
you just pile the parts like this, but there is a lot of hardware in
those clear bins. On the lower left you can see the handful of
additional upgrades I bought that haven't been opened yet. You can
also see that the chassis tub is now black. Even though the blue
tub is an upgraded glass fiber filled part, I didn't think the blue
looked good with the rest of the chassis so I traded it to a friend for
the standard black tub.
From the very first step we are using upgraded parts that came with my
purchase. The TT-02B MS kit uses a 70T spur gear standard, but the
High Speed Gear Set includes a 68T gear along with an aluminum spur
gear mount. The pictured aluminum prop joint and prop shaft are
part of the MS kit.
Now the center driveline can be dropped into the chassis. You can
see the bevel gears on the front and rear ends of the shaft which will
connect to their respective gearboxes. The only thing holding this
assembly to the tray at the moment is the little pillow block near the
front.
The differential gears are glass filled plastic and are the same as a
standard TT-02. This is a bevel gear differential with 4 spider
gears. Front and rear are identical. The right hand image
shows the diffs dropped into the chassis tub. Note the presence of
ball bearings which come with the MS kit.
The gearbox covers you see here are carbon reinforced replacements that
came with my purchase. The extra strength is not important to the
gears, but these also support the shock towers which should make them
less likely to snap after big jumps.
The box standard motor mount is a plastic plate with fixed holes for
16-20T pinions on one side, or 21-25T pinions if flipped over.
However, if you change spur gear size then these holes are no longer
labelled correctly. The previous owner bought a Yeah Racing
adjustable aluminum motor mount shown on the left. I prefer to go
with a Tamiya upgrade part, so I bought the one on the right. With
the smaller 68T spur gear, the motor plate will now support from 18-27T
pinion gears. I happened to have from 17-22T versions of 0.6mod
pinions sitting in my parts box as shown, so I decided to use the
largest 22T gear. The previous owner installed a Sport Tuned
motor. This isn't necessarily what I would have chosen, but it
seemed like a good match for reasons that will become clear.
This aluminum heat sink came with my purchase, and it is largely what drove
the use of the Sport Tuned motor. Because of the shape of the
heat sink, only closed end bell motors can be used. An open end
bell could short out the brush wires. The Sport Tuned is the
hottest motor Tamiya offers with a closed end bell. It is a pretty
good match for the chassis aesthetically as well.
The front and rear lower suspension arms are also carbon reinforced
parts which came with my purchase. They don't look any different
at first glance but they are much stiffer than stock and you can see the
texture if you zoom in close.
The MS kit already came with upgraded FRP shock towers, but the previous
owner went a step further and got carbon fiber towers. The
"Carbon Damper Stay" set also includes turnbuckles for the upper
suspension links. The FRP towers were in the box as well so now I
have those as extra.
In a standard TT-02B the drive cups and dog bones are plastic, but the
MS version replaces these with steel as shown. The C-hubs and
steering knuckles are standard plastic. The completed front
suspension is shown on the right.
The rear drive system gets the same kind of upgraded steel parts as the
front in addition to aluminum uprights. I found it a bit odd that
the rear uprights are aluminum but the front knuckles, which see more
stress, are plastic. In fact, Tamiya doesn't even appear to offer
aluminum front suspension parts. Even these aluminum rear uprights
are technically for the DF-02 but happen to fit here.
Without a doubt, the single biggest upgrade the previous owner made to
this kit was replacing the stock white plastic CVA shocks with these
aluminum shocks for the DF-03. The shock kit alone is almost
$100. These are beautiful and durable shocks which really bring up
the overall appeal of the chassis. All the parts are shown on the
left, while the completed assembly is shown on the right.
All of the steering parts in the MS kit are plastic, but the previous
owner had bought an aluminum steering bridge. I don't know why he
didn't get the aluminum bell cranks as well, so I added those
myself. All of the rotating parts use ball bearings. Note
the turnbuckle steering links which come with the MS kit as opposed to
the fixed length plastic links of a standard TT-02B.
I added the TT-02 high torque servo saver with metal springs and an
aluminum servo horn. It helps complete the cohesive look of the
steering system. My kit also included a blue aluminum turnbuckle
to connect the servo horn to the bridge. This is the only mystery
part with no obvious known origin. It may be 54248.
With the steering installed, the rolling chassis is done. I'm
using a 2S Li-Po battery so I will probably change that TBLE-02s for a
Hobbywing 1060 in the future. Among the most useless of the
upgrades included in the kit is the FRP battery hold down strap, but I
guess it looks cool. The TT-02B MS kit did not come with tires,
but the previous owner included a brand new set of Dual Block tires,
front and rear. Oddly, the front tires were C compound
(competition) but the rear were K compound (kit, e.g. hard). I
changed them to C all around. Say what you will about the TT-02
being a low end chassis, but this version is pretty cool.
The TT-02B MS uses the body set from the Dual Ridge which has a cab very
far forward and an elaborate wing as shown. I was worried about
my ability to achieve the complex MS paint scheme, but luckily most of
it uses stickers so I only needed one mask line as shown. The
exact position isn't super important because the stickers will cover the
transition.
After the application of metallic blue (backed with silver) and white,
the body is as shown on the left. Still pretty dull looking.
Several hours later after all the stickers were trimmed and applied,
the final result is shown on the right. Getting each of the
stripes to line up with the next sticker was quite a challenge, but I
think it looks amazing.
Here's the final paint scheme. The closeup highlights the lovely
metallic blue. I'm very glad to have those aluminum shocks which look
great with the rest of the paint scheme.
Here are a couple of photos of my whole MS family: the TT-02B MS, the DT-02 MS, and the DF-03 MS.
