Ford F-150

This model is the junction between an on-road chassis and a big wheels. It belongs to the "Stadium Truck" category, also called "Truggy" (Buggy and Truck mix). It is a direct inspiration of the American Protruck category and some pilots drive these trucks in the Rallye Raid World Championship (the Paris-Dakar is one of these races).

The basis of this model is an on-road TA-02 chassis on which you can also find parts from the TA-01 (the previous chassis generation). Fit off road wheels and cover it with an american truck lexan body, and you get it. TA chassis are no longer produced for a few years.

The Ford F-150 family

This chassis was declined on 3 models which are identical except the bodyshell.

58136 Toyota Prerunner

58146 Chevy S-10

58161 Ford F-150

Most of the chassis is a TA-02 that was used on many models. The TA-02 has a few variants: the TA-02SW (short wide) that can only be found on the Taisan Porsche 911 GT2 (58172), the TA-02W (wide) that features TA-01 parts to widen the wheelbase (on the Nissan 300ZX IMSA GTS [58144], the Nismo Clairion GT-R LM [58165] and the Toyota Toms Supra [58170]) and the TA-02RS (an almost full option version).

58128 Alfa Romeo 155	58129 Castrol Celica 93' Monte-Carlo	58135 Calsonic Skyline GT-R	58137 Blitz Toyota Supra Group N
58139 AMG Mercedes Benz DTM D2	58140 HKS Skyline GT-R Group A	58144 Nissan 300ZX IMSA GTS	58145 AMG Mercedes DTM Promarkt
58150 Opel Calibra V6 DTM	58155 Loctite Nissan Skyline GT	58164 Toyota Celica GT-Four	58165 Nismo Clarion GT-R LM
58169 Mustang Cobra R	58170 Toyota Toms Supra	58171 BMW 318i STW	58172 Taisan Porsche 911 GT2

Several parts also come from the previous generation TA-01 chassis that was also declined on many models as usual with Tamiya.

58096 Toyota GT-Four Rally	58099 Nissan Skyline GT-R Nismo	58108 Mercedes Benz 190 E	58112 Ford Escort RS
58113 Schnitzer BMW M3 Sport	58117 Lancia Delta HF Integrale	58119 Toyota Celica GT-Four RC	58120 Axia Skyline GT-R
58125 Michelin Pilot Cosworth	58154 M1025 Hummer	58326 JGSDF Light Armored Vehicle

Not less than 30 models based on the TA-01 chassis, its evolution TA-02 or a mix of both. There is no "big wheels" version as on the TL-01 chassis for example, but "Stadium Truck" versions like this Ford F-150. Now let's go for the assembly.

The assembly

The process is always the same: the chassis assembly on one side, and the body shell painting on the other. The body is in lexan and needs three different colors as I decided to make it "box art".

To begin, here's the inventory of all pieces to be assembled. Apart from the TEU-101BK electronic speed controller that is included in the box, electronics are not shown on the photo (radio and steering servo).

1. The lexan body shell. 2. The stickers. 3. The box (very small and now empty). 4. Screw bags. The 3rd contains part of the dampers (the oil bottle is a clue ). 5. Damper bodies bags. 6. Differential gears. 7. A pair of front uprights. 8. The Mabuchi 540 stock motor i will use as I will not hop up this model. A least for the moment. 9. Different parts. The mix between red and black plastic parts proves that there is a mix between two different chassis. 10. The front bumper with body mounts, and the bathtub chassis. 11. Rims and tires (to glue). The tire lettering is already done. 12. The TEU-101BK electronic speed controler. 13. Paint cans. From the top, the white (PS-1), the black (PS-5) and the metallic blue (PS-16). 14. Additional hop ups, 16 bearings (1150 type) plus 6 others (850 type) to replace all plastic metal bearings. 15. Last, the required assembly manual.

After this inventory, let's start the assembly.

The first steps are the front and rear gearboxes assembly. The rear one contains a ball differential: it's the first one I built and there's no problem as long as you exactly follow the manual instructions, especially the placement of the disk springs. Next is fixing the motor with an 17 tooth pinion, then inserting the assembled spur gear and other gears. You finish the gearbox assembly by fitting the uprights, suspension arms and shafts.

The front gearbox has a classical satellite-based differential. No problems either. You also finish the gearbox assemby by fitting the uprights, suspensio arms and shafts. Last, you assemble the four hydraulic dampers and you mount them on the gearboxes.

The rear gearbox

The front gearbox

Both gearboxes with dampers

So far, all seems to be quiet solid, but the color mix of red and black plastic parts is somewhat strange. And not very nice looking.

Next step is electronic placement and setup. For radio, I need to use the Sanwa/Acoms variant for my steering servo. As I already noticed in previous assembly processes, the recommended screw by the manual instructions (a 3x10 mm) is a little bit too short to fix it well. So I had to replace it with a 3x12 screw coming from my spare parts junk. Apart from this easy to solve problem, everything goes absolutly fine. Instead of sticking the receiver into the chassis, I placed it my way for the moment. I used a servo arm screwed into the chassis to maintain it. I will just have to unscrew it if I need to change the quartz. The next step is to assemble front and rear gearboxes to the bath tub chassis and to insert the propeller shaft. No problem either, everything fit easily. Then you have to mount the tires onto the rims, glue them with cyano glue and to fit them to the wheel axles. Last step, cable tie wires far from the central propeller shaft. A good idea is to spearate power wires (stick pack and motor) from radio wires (servo and antenna).

Chassis fully assembled and cable tied

Two assembly tips

Two little tips on the last photo: as per the manual, place an o-ring on top of the body clips. The body will lay on them and as they are soft, they will preserve the body paint. The second one is a bit of antenna pipe that make the antenna wire pass well above the propeller shaft.

The chassis assembly is now finished. A little drive into the appartment shows everything works great. But I noticed that the propeller shaft is noisy because of vibrations. I'll try to solve this later.

The body shell

A chassis is nothing without a nicebodyshell. This model's is in lexan and will receive three colors: black for the rear, metallic blue for the cockpit, and then white for the front and doors. Little reinder: colors needs to be painted in that precise order (from the darkest to the lightest).

This decoration requires a big masking job between the different colors, so I decided to cut the body before to apply paint. That was a mistake: see below. Windows masks are the only one provided with the kit: so I'll have to mark the limits between colors.

Unlike what should be done normally, the first set is to remove the outside protection film: that's a shame for possible paint projections. Because even if you alwaays paint a lexan body from the inside, projections can always occur on the outside (it's even a fact since you spray 25 to 30 cm away from the body.

That is when I realised afterwards that I had made a mistake when cutting the body shell first. As the outside protection film needs to be removed to apply the red stickers that make the limit between the metallic blue and the white color (to be marked with masking tape), spraying the white color becomes very difficult. The risk to have paint projections ont he outside of the body is very important as the white goes on the edge of the body. If you don't cut the body, there is a lot of lexan left plus the lexan borders that will protect the outside from the paint. Of course, masking the outside will be much easier with the uncut body (because you don't want paint projections on the outside of the body, especially on the red stickers).

So, the first step becomes: do not cut the body shell but do remove the outside protection film.

Second step is to apply stickers # 1, 2 and 3. Those are the front red band and the two red bands on the sides. You should start by the front one and carefully notice its position related to the windshield and by centering it with the help of the little white mark on the sticker. Yeah, I almost forgot: leave the little white marks on the red stickers when you cut them because they will help you to center them on the body. Next, you apply the side bands begining from the front side of the body: the best is to let them naturally go (they are curved) and to adjust them precisely on their way to the rear of the body. Be carefully when arriving close the the rear wheel arches: the sticker has to go in straight line towards the rear and get exactly where it should above the rear lights. That's much easier to describe it than to to it, especially because the stickers are very thin and fragile: they can easily get cut when you unstick them. So good luck!

The last sticker to place is the front grill (# 12). It will then help you mask this area to apply the grill black color background. This one is pretty easy to place, and the white mark will also be helpful to center it.

That's the moment to talk about stickers that can get torn. Sometimes, they are long and thin and to place them is quite difficult. So you may have to unstick them to place them better. That's the moment these things choose to get torm. When it happens, try to make the cut as straight as possible, and keep on placing the sticker by putting the two pieces as close as possible. When you cut stickers from the decal sheet, you always have transparent pieces left. Just keep them. You can cut them to place them onto the cut stickers, exactly where these things always tend to curb because they don't stick well anymore. Depending on the sharpness of the cut and how careful you are to place the transparent "patch", the result can be so good that you can't even notice it.

Now, it is time to clean the inside of the body with detergent (the same you handwash your dishes with). You'd better do it to remove any remaining oil used to unmould the body when they make it. If you don't, yoy will have problems with the paint that won't stick well to the body. Be careful no to put water onto the stickers you already placed otherwise they will go. After cleaning, you dry the body and appply the windows masking tapes.

In short, the body should look like this before you start masking it to spray the black color. Well, it should almost look like this: remember, you did not cut the body yet...


So now, you need to protect all the body but the places where to spray the black paint: the rear side and the front grill.

If paint goes where it should not, wait for a dozen of hours before removing the masks. Otherwise, the paint will peel off. By the way, to remove a masking tape, the best is to peel it with an 45° angle when possible, otherwise an 90° angle. When done, it's time to repair the mistakes. There's no perfect method, but you can choose among 3 options:

a Q-tip (or cotton bud) with wood alcohol to apply onto the paint to be removed (for friends across the Channel, a Q-tip is a cotton bud, and wood alcohol is methylated spirits). This only works as long as the paint is not totally dry. You can also use a sharp cutter knife blade to streak the paint to be removed: but be careful not to touch the lexan (just pass the blade smoothly onto the paint). This cuts the dry coat and lets the alcohol reach the underlying fresh paint to dissolve it.
break liquid (DOT3) on a Q-tip. This works even if the paint is dry. It seems that the liquid used in Citroën hydraulic suspension works even better. I never tried it (and Citroën cars may not be available in your country).
sanding with a very thin sandpaper (over 1200) when the paint is dry (over 24 hours after spraying). Then use polish. I never tried this method either.

Anyhow, you'll have to repeat the body cleaning step to remove any product you applied to remove extra paint. Otherwise the next coat will not stick to the body.

After spraying the black color, spray the metallic blue. A new masking step is required to protect the area to be painted in white. Do not mask the already black painted areas because the blue will not alter the darker black color. Do not forget to mask the body mounts and antenna holes.

After drying, let's spray the white paint. Juste remove all the masks, but leave the windows masks and the body mounts and antenna holes masks. Those have to be masked from the outside of the body, being careful with the red stickers (otherwise, you will tear the red sticker when removing the hole masks).

Do not mask the metallic blue areas to spray the white. The blue paint needs to be covered by the white coats: it will get a lighter shade that will reinforce the "metallic" effect. After spraying the white, let it dry and then remove all the masks.

The paint process is now done (at last!). Normaly, if you follow the steps, it's time to cut the body. For me, I had already cut it and it was a big mistake. Cutting an painted body requires more care: avoid to twist the lexan. It is quite simple to do it, except for wheel arches. A good way to do it is to use a cutter knife blade to draw the line where to cut (from the outside of the body). Then twist gently the lexan part to be removed. It should break right where you drew the line.

Finishing the body means applying the stickers. The decal sheet only provides what's needed: if you thought you would hide paint mistakes with stickers, it is a good idea to pray that they are right where a sticker goes. Especially because the decoration are mainly sponsors and that you can't really add more sponsors unless you want to make your truck look like a moving ad sign (which is partly what it is already).

Now the body is finished, you can fit it onto the chassis. Great moment! Overall, the truck is pretty and realistic. That's my result after hours of pain:

The chassis is ready to go

And now with the body

As a conclusion, this body decoration takes much longer than the chassis assembly. It is also quite difficult and far from beginner's skills, either for applying stickers or for applying masks to spray the different colors. In other words, making that body is a hell of a job! During the time I spent working on this body, I could not stop wondering why Tamiya did not made this step easier. A very handful way would have been to provide a "peel off" system. This technic is basically made of several coats of protecting film. For this F-150 body, you would have a first coat for the windows masks, a second coat for the white color, and the last for the blue. So you could directly spray the black color, remove a coat to spray the blue, remove another coat and spray the white, and then remove the windows masks. With a four layer system, you could even directly spray the spare rim moulded at the rear of the truck (I will paint mine later from the outside of the body using a paint brush).

But this is a dream: I don't even know of any RC maker who features this kind of system. Anyway, and especially for this body, a better system would be warmly welcomed.

Well, after hours spent on it, I'm happy with the final result. With some distance, the decoration is fine despite the few stickers do not hide all paint mistakes.

Custom changes

I haven't installed any option on this model except a complete set of ball bearings to replace the stock plastic and metal bearings. Hydraulic dampers are provided in the box. In addition to the tips about the o-rings to protect the body and the antenna pipe piece over the propeller shaft, I made another one based upon my experience. Sometimes, dust and peebles tend to get into the motor using its aeration holes. The way the motor is fitted onto the chassis makes one of these holes oriented towards the lower side of the chassis, the other one being at the opposite (towards the top of the chassis). I cut a remaining lexan part to place it between the rear gearbox and the bathtub chassis. There is no need to fix it as it directly fits on its own into the chassis and protects the lower side of the motor by envelopping it thanks to the gearbox shape.

I also noticed that the central propeller shaft has a lot of vibration at high motor rpm. I still haven't thought about it, but I will probably try to do something about it soon.

After the first run, I noticed a problem at the front of the chassis: the tires touch the body when the suspension works. It sounds terrible when it occurs, but it is also a problem since it may scratch the paint and ruin the hours spent on decorating the body.

After a closer look, the third of the suspension travel needs to be blocked in order to keep the wheels form touching the body. This can not be a solution. The provided body mounts are too short and they are specific due to their inclinaison: I could not find any longer compatible mounts to raise the body up.

I tried to mount the A sprue parts form the Manta Ray (58087/58360): not a solution either because the dampers need to be replaced by longer ones. Furthermore, the body mounts can not be fitted the right way since they no longer the body holes. So I left this idea apart. Digging in my spare part stock, I found compatible body mounts, long enough but straight. A bad solution would have been to drill new holes in the body. A much better solution was to make them get the correct orientation towards the body holes by leaving them room to move a little bit so they could reach their target. So, I just drilled into the body mounts screw holes to make them bigger and used 3x20mm screw with a Nilstop nut on the other side to block them, but leaving a mere 1 mm space for body mount movement. Last operation was to fit the body on and set how high I wanted to fix it onto the body mounts, no forgetting to insert the o-ring to protect the inner side of the body from scratches.

The body is now fitted a little bit higher than before, but the wheels can not touch it anymore, even when the suspension is fully compressed. Though, it is hard to notice the difference since the F-150 still looks very realistic.

They next custom change will probably be some kind of protection for the chassis to avoid front wheels projections onto electronics. At first sight, it should not be very difficult to do, but I mainly need some time to get into it .

First runs

I could not resist very long: stick pack and radio ready, go! The first impression is that it is fast. It's not a rocket, but it's fast. The second occured at full speed at the first sharp cornering on tarmac: it ended on its roof. I spent so many hours painting this body, it starts pretty bad. So the rest of the run will be on a dry dust track: a large way with some dry puddles. Here we are, that's pur fun: the F150 suspensions are very soft et it just sticks to the ground. Its behavior is very much like Protrucks videos that can be found on the net. Of course, the suspension travel is not as important, but he general feeling is the same.

The steering is precise, trajectories are quite esay to find and to keep. The rear drive train is the first to slide in a curb taken to fast, but it is easy to correct it. In dry puddles, the suspension does its job and the F150 only flies if the jump is big enough. But when it flies, it tends to nose down.

That leads us to the first con (solved above): the tires touch the body when dampers are are fully compressed. At the rear, it is not very important as the suspension needs to be fully compressed. And when it occurs, there is barely a 1 millimeter problem. On the contrary, the problem is worse at the front: when wheels are straight, they already push hard on the body. When they steer right or left, the problem is even worse et the sound of tires onto the body do not leave the slightest doubt about what happens. I did follow precisely the manual instructions on that matter: so I'll have to study that close not to ruin the body in just a few runs.

The second problem occured near the end of the first stick pack and forced me to stop. The photo below explains it all and is pretty realistic:

Hopefully, nothing is broken, and I only lost a screw and a spacer. the top arm screw just decided to move away and live its own life, which leaded to an unscheduled pit stop. I think the only solution is to replace it by a longer screw and to secure it with a flange lock nut.

Apart from this, I also noticed that that bath tub chassis progressively fills itself with dust and peebles projected by the front wheels. I will try to fix this also.

Anyway, driving this F150 is great. I think the best track for it is dust or hard sand. For mud, apart from a protection system for electronics, I am not sure that the tires will grip enough to avoid the "Holiday on Ice" effect.

So, I have to fix back the rear wheel, to find how to solve the problem of tires hitting the body (maybe by limiting the suspension travel) and to protect the chassis from dust and peebles. I'm already looking forward for the next run!

Update 03/03/09: the bodyshell of this model is way too beautiful to ruin it with my poor driver skills. I still have to learn how to correctly turn a corner without getting on the roof. That's why I found a replacement bodyshell and a set of wheels that no longer risk anything: so I currently drive my F-150 transformed into a Toyota Prerunner (presented at the begining of this page).

This model is very interesting to drive because it is truly all terrains, even if sand is its best. The suspension work is really remarkable and makes this model look real: it is such a pleasure to drive it and to see it being driven.

   

Bonus: the promotional video of the Ford F-150, Toyota Prerunner and Chevy S-10 when they were released back in 1994 and 1995 (© Tamiya)

More photos on the gallery.

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First publication: july 13, 2008 Last modified: august 05, 2009

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