tamiya astute

[rctenracer]

I sold a nib kit and never opened it. Now I have another one nib and opened it up to build and going over the manual what was tamiya thinking will all the bearings?

[transamman908]

Almost 60 bearings I think. Crazy!!

[Coelacanth]

More bearings = more friction points = more points of failure = not an effective design.

[cyberfox]

In the kit there are not so many bearings, many of them are optionals to replace bronze bushings from the kit

[bearrickster]

I have a nice Astute but never really looked at it. I got it last year its still in the box it came in. how do these cars run, are they worth the trouble and money?

[tamiyadan]

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[Delorean]

the way i think about it is the astute was the super astute's predecessor which was the predecessor to the dyna storm. each time they refined the chassis, (long front shock setup in the dyna storm and simpler hubs/arms arrangements in the super astute) and put in a better tranny, TTC then MDC. though of course the dyna storm took is a lot further and the chassis was stiffened etc

To get to the point, the astute is a cool starting point and when mixed with some simpler madcap parts, can be an effective racer. if you run madcap arms, uprights and hubs, you remove a bunch of the bushings/bearings out of the suspension as well as the rear toe in hubs. You can even go further and run madcap rear pivots and front bulkhead which is what ive done with my one

Jamie Booth won some big races with such a hybrid (Euros 92?), he'd also moved the battery to run down the length of the chassis for improved weight balance which proves the car has the ability to run with the rc10s and losis of the day. im building my to be a vintage racer

i think the other problem the astute faced was the soft arms, all well and good to put bushes everywhere, but then the amrs were so soft the bushing holes would flog out, so like dan says, u can glue the bush in effectively. might help a bit. the madcap arms will slop out too but are a lot cheaper than astute items. they got this all fixed with the super astute which has much better arms