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My wife bought me this Tamiya F103 Tyrrell P34 six wheeler re-release years ago before we were married. I only ran it a few times, not wanting to mess up the ABS body. It didn't handle too well and wasn't too fast either. It sat on my shelf, then in pieces for the last year. I recently abandoned another F103 project so I'll now use those parts to hop this six wheeler up.





This is it, bone stock. Aside from the 850 bearings in the front wheels. A nice looking car but short on performance. Starting on the front end, see the white steering knuckles and weak 4mm ball cups and tierods? Those are the first to go.
I cut the ears on the front knuckles. They're not needed and they take away from the scale look. So do their white color and the white ball cups. I replaced the ball cups with Tamiya low friction ones. I then dyed the knuckles black for a more realistic look. I might go with the carbon reinforced knuckles in the future...





I found some Tamiya 5mm ballstuds with a 2mm hole that are perfect for the Tamiya knuckles that use 2mm threads. I simply used a 2mm socket head screw to bolt them on. More Low friction ball cups, some Tamiya turnbuckles and a Futaba S3151 digital servo complete the front end. Gone are the weak 4mm ballcups and wire steering rods.

That's a cool steering setup...like a triple-Ackerman linkage.

I added the Tamiya formula ball mount set and height adjustable gearbox. I'm going to have to stick with the stock damper mount since the driver figure sits low and would be in the way of the blue annodized mount that comes with the ball mount set.



Moving to the rear, I did a 64p conversion using a Tamiya gear adapter. This allows me to use any standard spur gear. I went with a Robinson Racing 96t super machined spur and 26t superlite purple pinion. New diff balls and bearings were added to the diff hubs. I can already tell things are a lot smoother than the 0.6 gears that I just replaced.



For power, I've got this Tamiya Acto-power or Acto-tuned or Acto-something motor I've had for years. It's all pink and has no label so I can't remember exactly what it is I just know it's new and has a cool chip capacitor.

Very nicely done.

Love It.

Have you test it out yet??

Looks cool. What an alignment nightmare on this and the 1:1.

No kidding. As cool as the car was (I too loved it as a kid), you had to wonder, "WTF were they thinking?" taking a race car and giving it not one front end but two, with all the added unnecessary points of failure it brought...evidently it wasn't a race-worthy design or we'd still be seeing 6-wheeled race cars like this nowadays. But the coolness quotient was out the roof--or roofless cockpit, as it were.

No chance to test out the new, improved version yet. Still working on it. Should have it up and running soon. Got a few more mods planned and I just ordered a lexan body for it so I don't tear up the ABS one. Good thing is that I already have some decals for it.

Trying to align this thing is a nightmare. I spent a half hour trying to last night. I remember feeling like it needed more weight in the front but I'll tackle that after I run it first. The car did go on a little diet too. I replaced 90% of the screws with titanium ones.

The Six wheeler was a very good design in it's day.

The car used four specially manufactured 10-inch-diameter (250 mm) wheels and tyres at the front, with two ordinary-sized wheels at the back. Contrary to popular belief, the idea of the smaller front tyres was not to have a smaller "frontal area" to reduce drag, as the frontal area was still determined by the width of the standard-sized rear slicks. In fact, the six-wheel design reduced the lift caused by two larger front wheels, improving frontal downforce, increased the total contact patch of the front tyres and created a greater swept area for the brake discs. As there was now 4 small disc up the front.


The project was Doomed due to lack of devoplment from Goodyear of the unique front tires for that one team.

Very nice Mod.

One of the coolest F1's ever. The design worked enough to win and it was driven by some pretty good race car drivers...



I think tamiya did a good job with the body. Looks faithful to the 1:1. It has the exact same ABS body that was on the original release back in the late 70's. It was Tamiya's 3rd RC car.

Coelacanth wrote:No kidding. As cool as the car was (I too loved it as a kid), you had to wonder, "WTF were they thinking?" taking a race car and giving it not one front end but two, with all the added unnecessary points of failure it brought...evidently it wasn't a race-worthy design or we'd still be seeing 6-wheeled race cars like this nowadays. But the coolness quotient was out the roof--or roofless cockpit, as it were.

The 6 wheeled design was actually banned which is why its not seen anymore, this was straight after the car finished 1,2 at a grand prix i believe.

mad racer is right, the problem was the front tyres were so small, they spun so fast as high speed they'd fall apart, my understanding was though that the main reason they had to stick with the small diameter wheels was to fit within the regulations of the time which hax maximum dimensions for front wheels/tyres, but didnt stipulate that you could only have 2 front wheels so as long as the total dimensions of the 4 front wheels fell within the regulations, the car was legal

I found a Tamiya TRF fluorine coated damper that's supposed to be a Japan special event only part and some blue ballcups. The tires were starting to get a little hard so I cleaned them with simple green and slapped on some Paragon FX-II and put them in a Ziploc for a couple days. They came out nice and fresh. I gave the letters a new coat of paint too.

Finished for now...



Still haven't ran it yet but I think I'm going to retire the ABS body and run this lexan one I picked up. I have some extra decals from the first time when I messed em up so I'm good to go.

im restoring my orig 77' tyrrell, my fav f1 car too good to see some tyrrell love on the board

http://www.flickr.com/photos/64872320@N03/with/6146531722/

ive been making a 3d model of the real thing, thinking I might get it 3d printed at 1/8th scale or so.

We've got a pretty strong F1 series here. Maybe I should show up with one of these! It would be horribly uncompetitive but it would be the most unique car there.

I'm betting if someone hopped one up a little more than what I'm doing it could be competetive with other 4 wheeled F103's. When I get this lexan body on I'm gonna see what it can do. Too bad there aren't any on-road tracks around to run it on.

I'm going to make a 1977 Patrick Depailler version.