TOPIC:

I just finished building a DT-01 Mad Fighter. Naturally it drives terrible with the included friction (or lack thereof) dampers. I'd like to replace these with CVAs which seems easy enough, but I'd also like to keep the stock blue color. Did Tamiya ever make CVAs in blue? I've found black, white, clear, and yellow. I do happen to have a set of white CVAs from my white edition Dark Impact which I think are the right size. It is probabely feasible to dye those blue if necessary, but I'd prefer official Tamiya parts if I can find them. There are aluminum dampers available which are substantially blue, but that seems like overkill for a DT-01.

The only tamiya blue plastic shocks I know, are ta01 on road ones. The dyna storm has blue ally shocks but too expensive for this chassis. You can look for blue ally cvas on chinese website like aliexpress or wish.

Rear and blue TA01 up front.
or F&R transparent

Would it be possible to change out the blue Ta shock rods n springs for a longer version rod and spring?

goldfish999 wrote:

Would it be possible to change out the blue Ta shock rods n springs for a longer version rod and spring?

Yes it would, will influence stability a little. But I believe this is even done by Tamiya. Most rods have same diameter. Difference is mostly where the damper disc attaches.

waterbok wrote:

Rear and blue TA01 up front.
or F&R transparent

Thanks, this is just the sort of obscure information I was looking for. The Manta Ray has yellow shocks, but it looks like the Expert Built version had blue shocks for some reason.
Edit: Upon closer inspection those blue Manta Ray shocks are still friction dampers, not CVA.
www.tamiyausa.c...-ray-57708

My Clod Buster shocks are blue but I think they are a bit long.

And they are friction shocks to. And it is a super clod.
Really too long.

blakbird wrote:

Upon closer inspection those blue Manta Ray shocks are still friction dampers, not CVA.

Not entirely true, they are CVA housings so you can make a 'real' damper out of it.
Replace piston.

These are the XB Neo TF damper.

Well, I decided to go the true RC route and make my own. I started with a set of white DF-03 CVA dampers and then dyed them blue. The process worked surprisingly well. I started by cleaning off the white parts and getting some blue RIT dye.


Next I boiled some water and poured in some dye. I had no idea how much to use, so I went with "some". I dumped in the parts and then removed them periodically to check how dark they were. Total immersion time was about a minute.


Here are the parts fresh out of the dye after being rinsed. The nice thing about dye as opposed to paint is that it can't scrape off.


Here is an old friction damper compared with a newly dyed blue CVA damper. I think I got the color match pretty good.


Here is the Mad Fighter with the new blue CVAs. The difference in performance is incredible. It is actually a passably good buggy now.


After this photo was taken, I ended up doing some mixing and matching. The springs from the DF-03 are quite a bit stiffer than those from the DT-01. At first they look the same because the outside diameter and number of coils is the same, but if you look closely the wire diameter is different. Approximately 1mm versus 1.2mm. With the stiffer springs the model was still too bouncy so I swapped on the softer original springs. That worked fine in back, but not in front. The DF-03 uses smaller diameter shocks in front than in the back, but the DT-01 doesn't. This meant the front springs were slightly too big for the spring perch and wanted to slip off. I fixed this by using the rod ends from the friction dampers which have an integral perch. It worked perfectly. This is actually a pretty good buggy now.

What I like about this process is that you can have pretty much any color damper you want while still sticking to real Tamiya parts.

Those dyed dampers look excellent!
The colour is beautiful! (I kind of like blue )