Tamiya Vajra Project
Page 1: Assembly
I already wrote about the build of the Avante
chassis in excruciating detail elsewhere and this is nearly the same so I
will concentrate only on the differences here. Those interested
in all the other details of this chassis can read about them on my Avante page.
The Vajra comes in a large box with a "bonus parts included" sticker on
the front. These bonus parts come in the form of a 53840 drift car
sticker sheet which makes no sense whatsoever. It is not a "part"
and can't be reasonably used with the Vajra. Oh well. The
contents of the box are otherwise pretty normal except that the tires
are much larger than what would come with a normal buggy.
As you can see, there really aren't that many plastic parts because much
of the model is carbon or aluminum and therefore packaged in the
hardware bags.
At first I assumed that the carbon chassis plates would be common to the
Avante, but because the wheelbase is longer they are not. A
second guess might be commonality with the Egress, but these plates are
actually unique to the Vajra. The gearboxes are identical to the
Avante Black and Egress using front and rear ball differentials.
The 25T GT Tuned motor is the same as that in the Avante 2011 kit but
without the special sticker. This kit uses a smaller pinion (18T
versus 22T) for more torque and to better match the bigger tires.
Rather than using a center differential the Vajra uses a locked center
for full time 4WD and four wheel braking. This was an option on
the Avante Black and Egress.
One big difference from the Avante are these tall aluminum standoffs
(left picture upside down) which space the rear suspension arms away
from the chassis plate for increased ground clearance and suspension
travel. The lower arms are plastic and were first used on the
Vanquish and later on the Egress and Avante 2001. The right
picture shows the aluminum brackets for the incredibly thick carbon
shock tower and the aluminum body posts. All of these parts are
unique to the Vajra.
The carbon steering system is common to the Avante Black and Egress and
was optional on the Avante. The front carbon shock tower is unique
to the Vajra. The shocks are plastic CVA units with very long
travel in the rear. The gold aluminum front uprights are common to
all the 2011+ Avante chassis. At the rolling chassis point on the
left, you could be forgiven for thinking this was an Avante. Not
true once you put the wheels on. The wheels and tires are common
to the Levant and are vastly bigger than those you'd see on a
buggy. I used a high torque waterproof servo to handle those
big, heavy tires.
These final photos of the chassis focus on the huge wheels and tires and
the massive ground clearance. Because there is so much room under
the body, wire management is not critical unlike the Avante.
There is no driver figure. Note the significant slope of the
chassis plate on the right. The front is much lower than the rear.
The polycarbonate body comes from the Levant but is decorated
differently for the Vajra. The picture on the left shows the body
as it came out of the box. On the right I've trimmed it out,
drilled it, and test fit it to the body. You can see how much
space there is beneath it.
The kit did not come with window masks so I made my own as shown.
On the right you can see the result after a single color application of
black. I also smoked the windows to partially hide the wiring
beneath.
Now I've cut out all the stickers. There is also a separate sheet
of chrome stickers as shown. The final result is shown on the
right. Note the separate wing which is just a flat sheet with a
chrome sticker on it.
©2021 Eric Albrecht
