2015 - Tamiya XV-01T
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This truck is difficult to categorize -- I think it's reasonably scale-looking, but I don't see a scaler forum, so I'm going to put it here.
For those who are unfamiliar, the Tamiya XV-01 chassis is a full-front-motor 4WD platform, which Tamiya bills as a "crossover" platform, and they back-up that claim by selling it in rally, touring, and truck configurations. The XV-01T is the truck configuration. The main difference is that the truck configuration comes with long-travel dampers (though the taller shock towers are an optional upgrade) and 3.5"-tall tires. Except mine doesn't look like the stock photo shown above; mine looks like this:
It is unusual for Tamiya to phone-in a body shell like they did with the XV-01T, but there's no disputing that the stock body shell is just bad; the tires stick out, requiring the body to be lifted so the tires won't rub on the fenders, and there's a huge gap in the front where you can see straight through to the motor. As I understand it, this body was originally designed for the TA-02T, and Tamiya just sort of slapped it on the XV-01T.
It's a shame they did that, because as soon as I got my hands on some alternate bodies to experiment with, I figured out that a 200mm-width touring-car truck body fits perfectly over the chassis, which has a 195mm track-width (197mm with the slightly wider hexes I'm using). What you see above is the end result of that experimentation; it's actually an HPI body intended for the RS4, I guess to make it look like a NASCAR racing truck, but when I gave it a respectable paint-job and left the rear spoiler off, it turned into a very nice normal-looking pickup truck. I did use the stock blue-flame logo sticker for the hood though, to add a little flair to the otherwise plain silver paint job.
Fitting this body also allowed me to use a proper touring-car foam bumper on the chassis, instead of the ill-fitting tube-style bumper that came with the kit. I actually considered using the tube-style bumper, but I discovered that it fit behind the front edge of this body, so I went with the touring-car bumper since it will provide better support for the front edge of the body if (when) it hits something. I considered beveling the exposed lower edge of the bumper, but I figure running it on rough ground will do that for me, and it will save a few scrapes on the bottom lip of the body in the process.
Since this was originally a touring-car body, there was no provision for anything resembling a recessed truck bed. However, to make it look a teensy bit more realistic, I masked the truck bed area and painted it black before putting the main silver coat on the rest of the body. Then, after I was finished painting the inside, I carefully trimmed the overspray film off the truck bed area, and sprayed it with matte over-coating to make it look a little more like spray-on bedliner. (I do actually have a can of spray-on bedliner, but it didn't seem suitable for this particular body.)
The independent rear suspension isn't exactly scale for a pickup truck, but I don't consider that to be a very big deal. This is based on a flat-bottom touring-car chassis anyway, so it's not really like this is the most glaring non-scale feature. Besides, it handles better with four-wheel independent suspension, and that makes it less-unnerving to drive at higher speeds.
Okay, that's enough analysis of the outward appearance. This photo shows where the magic happens, in a front-mounted gearbox with a full-front motor mount. There's a shrouded belt-drive that runs to a secondary gearbox to drive the rear axle, as is the case with all versions of the XV-01. This truck is running a disposable brushed motor so I can thrash on it without feeling bad if the motor fails, and really it makes plenty of power for a vehicle like this when combined with a 2S LiPo pack. The full-front motor mount might seem like a strange choice, but it gives this pickup truck a very realistic weight balance, and the truck can be easily oversteered, just like a real pickup truck. It also gives the truck a good weight balance for trail driving, since trail trucks tend to benefit from a forward weight bias. The suspension arms are an interesting departure from the other XV-01 configurations -- they're made of a grey rubbery plastic that flexes much more than the normal black plastic, to say nothing of the carbon-reinforced plastic in the upgraded suspension arms on my XV-01 rally car. Since the A-arms are so flexible, I decided to skip upgrading the hubs, caster blocks, and steering knuckles, so they can flex to help absorb some of the shock of hard impacts as well.
Unlike my rally and touring-car builds, I took a "no-bling" approach to building the XV-01T. I upgraded several of the stock plastic parts to carbon-reinforced plastic, but I didn't get any shiny blue aluminum bits for this chassis -- in fact, when I replaced the terrible stock turnbuckles, I bought some Hot Bodies turnbuckles to use instead of the Tamiya upgrades specifically because the Hot Bodies turnbuckles are black instead of shiny blue. The long-damper shock towers are made of carbon-fiber, but that's because that's just what the long-damper upgrade offers. The front shock tower (shown in the previous picture) came with shiny blue aluminum spacers, which I promptly bolted onto my Dremel, lathed off the blue anodizing, and then dunked in Aluminum Black by Birchwood Casey. I coated them with clear nail polish to seal the blackened finish, and I bet if I hadn't told you about that you'd never have noticed. ;)
In keeping with the no-bling aesthetic, the electronics are also low-cost. The motor, as previously mentioned, is a disposable Dynamite 15-turn brushed motor, the ESC is a Dynamite DYNS2210 45-amp ESC, and the servo is a $12 Tactic TSX45. The TSX45 is a great deal for a metal-gear servo, because it comes stock on Axial RTR vehicles and (almost) everyone upgrades them right out of the box, so there's tons of them available brand-new for cheap on eBay. It's my go-to servo for loaner vehicles and for budget builds like this. The servo-saver is one of the last remaining parts from my cannibalized Tamiya FF-04 Evo, the optional high-torque servo-saver upgrade that came stock with that kit.
The Tamiya XV-01T doesn't get much respect because it resides in sort of a void between on-road and off-road vehicles, slightly more off-road-ish than 1/10-scale rally cars but without the ground clearance of a "proper" trail truck. And yet, despite being hard to categorize, it actually works quite well. It won't clear rock gardens, but it can drive on grass, which my XV-01 rally car struggles to do, and it can jump speedbumps without bottoming-out, which my XV-01 rally car definitely can't do. I expect my XV-01T will be the guilt-free basher of my XV-01 collection.
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