Weight Balance

First, it is important to have good weight balance. The front left and right tires should ideally be equally loaded. The same goes for the rear.

With motor and steering servo mounted (no esc, battery, receiver, body), the balance:

front right – 230gms
front left – 250gms
rear right – 170gms
rear left – 170gms

As we can see, the front right tire is not as loaded as the left front. One way to compensate is to install the Tamiya M05 Aluminum motor heatsink. This will help even out the weight distribution.

Next important item is weight reduction. In essence a lighter car is usually more agile and faster. Heavier cars are more stable, but will usually be slower in most scenarios.

Tamiya minis (m-chassis) do well with weight between 1,200 – 1,300 grams. The M05 is a very heavy car, usually at 1,300 grams. Ways to reduce weight are:

1. Use a lightweight body.
2. Use a lighweight esc and receiver.
3. Use lipo batteries.
4. Do not install unnecessary plastic parts if your rules allow it.

Here we can reduce 50 grams by not installing uneeded parts. The esc and receiver is 80 grams. The lipo battery is only 230 grams compared to 300 grams for a typical 1600 Nicad stick pack. The lightweight body is around 90 grams only.

Here is the weight balance of my M05:

Weight of Tamiya M05 mini r/c car.

Next, installing the esc and receiver. I spent a lot of time thinking about this. Eventually I decided based on weight balance rather than short esc wires.

Mounting of receiver and esc on Tamiya M05 mini.

Wheelbase and Body

An important tuning aid is deciding on the wheelbase and body. The mini can be setup as short (210mm), medium (225mm) and long (239mm) wheelbase. I decided to try medium wheelbase and use a Tamiya Mazda Miata body.

Suspension Tuning

And finally, suspension setup. I use Tamiya S-grips front and rear. Red springs front and white springs rear.

Tamiya M05 Performance Review

Mini Radio Control Car Race

I am used to driving an M03 and M04, with my M04 being the fastest of my minis. So my first track performance test of the M05 was on the first club race of the year. We had a full grid of minis.

Happy to report that my Tamiya M05 had the fastest lap of the day (16.27 seconds), which was around 0.5 seconds quicker than my M04. Mine was the only mini to consistently run 29 laps, the rest were 28 laps or less.

So I am very happy with the win on my first outing with the M05. All this weight balance and tuning does make a difference. I will be trying out more things (e.g. long wheelbase, Tamiya M05 differential) and will let you know the results.

Related Topics

Here are more info about the Tamiya M05 and m-chassis r/c cars.

Nitro RC Car Tips

Here video is about preparing his Serpent 966 nitro rc car. About drive shafts, gearbox and other tips.

 

Nitro RC Car Engine Tips

Here is a video about how to set up the perfect clutch for nitro engines.

More videos to come from RedRCLive. Check them out in Youtube.

Video 1 – Building shock absorbers

Video 2 – Rebuilding the rc car differential.

Video 3 – Chassis assembly.

Video 4 – Suspension assembly.

Video 5 – Car setup.

• The titaninum outdrives are half the weight of the steel outdrives. They are very durable , do develop slop in the pin hole faster than the steel outdrives.
• If you want to save weight. Don’t use the aluminum steering system. It does nothing for performance. Instead spend your money on titanium outdrives.
• Spools not good in GT2 and GT3. Keep the double one-ways.
• The shorter the arms generally will allow the car to react quicker or transition faster.
• The narrower the wheel base the more grip the car will have.
• But, it does’nt always help in lap times, to have a car that react’s faster. It really depends on what kind of track your racing on.
• B3’s with the tamiya black insert(stock) works really well.
• The 05 is a better balanced car over the 415.
• A really free drive train with the least amount of drag is very important to me.
• If you use tamiya bearings, blow the thick grease out. And oil them with something light afterwards.  It will kill the life of the bearings though.  They don’t last long doing this.  I recommend cheap bearings if you do this.
• I won my nationals with a original 415ms and a spool.  If you can get a set-up with a spool to hit the same laptimes as a one-way, even better.  If you get into a tight race, you will have an advantage.