{"id":33333,"date":"2017-08-09T18:56:15","date_gmt":"2017-08-09T22:56:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shapeways.com\/blog\/?p=33333"},"modified":"2017-11-08T16:09:27","modified_gmt":"2017-11-08T21:09:27","slug":"ultimate-tamiya-ford-f350-rc-car-upgrade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shapeways.com\/blog\/ultimate-tamiya-ford-f350-rc-car-upgrade","title":{"rendered":"The Ultimate Tamiya Ford F350 RC Car Upgrade"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Tamiya

Our Tamiya F350 upgrades with AmPro Engineering printed parts<\/p><\/div>\n

When <\/span>Ruud and I took part in Walk The Trial XV<\/span><\/a>\u00a0in Belgium, we couldn’t just show up with any old RC car. This would be my fifth time at WTT, an event that’s doubled in size every couple of years. Since it’s become a pretty serious event, I asked a friend if I could borrow one of his higher-performance RC cars. Of course, I could not leave it untouched. Luckily, my friend is pretty used to my adventures in upgrading RC cars with Shapeways parts, so he’s going to love what we did with it (I hope \u2014 he hasn’t actually seen it yet).<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Tamiya

The Ford F350 at WTT X back in 2014. Picture by Davy de Weirdt<\/p><\/div>\n

Introducing the car<\/span><\/h3>\n

We began with a <\/span>1:10 Tamiya truck with a Ford F350 hardbody and a High Lift chassis<\/span><\/a>. The cool thing about this truck is that it has a working 3-speed gearbox and proper metal leaf springs. Those elements of realism make it far from the best handling RC scaler\/crawler truck, but the challenge makes it a lot of fun to drive. <\/span><\/p>\n

It does has one major flaw, however: the low-hanging transfer case in the middle of the chassis. The transfer case easily gets stuck on ridges, rocks, and tree stumps so often that driving becomes frustrating. So we needed to address this before Walk the Trial.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Tamiya

Before and after the transmission lift; Ground clearance!<\/p><\/div>\n

Once again I turned to my friend Alberto at the <\/span>AMPro Engineering Shapeways shop<\/span><\/a>. Alberto has released <\/span>a conversion kit for the Tamiya High-Lift<\/span><\/a> that relocates the motor, shift servo, and battery, so it can lift the transmission and transfer case. <\/span><\/p>\n

Alberto designed the kit for a High-Lift with a Toyota Hilux body, but I told him I would gamble and try to make it fit on a Ford.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Tamiya

The relocated motor sits under the hood<\/p><\/div>\n

The AMPro Engineering High-Lift kit comes with a new gear cover, a motor mount, lift brackets for the transmission, a shift servo mount, a couple of spacers, and a new battery door with mounts. <\/span><\/p>\n

If you want to see more about the AMPro Engineering High-Lift conversion kit, you can watch the <\/span>four-part build series on Alberto\u2019s YouTube channel<\/span><\/a>. The actual build starts in Episode 2:<\/span><\/p>\n