Did you get a Losi Highroller for Christmas?  Then you might want to check out a couple of my articles about it.  I have written about mine a few times, highlighting some of the ways to make it faster and stronger.  Check out my first article about upgrading the speed control to make your Losi Highroller ready to use LiPo batteries.  I have also written about upgrading the motor to make your Highroller faster.  And finally I’ve shown you three hop-ups to make your Highroller ready for a brushless motor.

If you got yourself a Tamiya Baja King then I’ve got you covered there, too.  I’ve suggested some ways to make the Baja King handle better and more durable.  I’ve written about how to make your Baja King faster by installing a better motor.  And I’ve demonstrated some cheap or free upgrades to the Baja King that you can do with some common house-hold materials and tools.

I’ve also offered Highroller troubleshooting tips and suggestions in the comments to my Highroller review.

Now get out there and have fun.

• Three must have upgrades for your new Baja King…
• Hacking my Baja King
• Finally!

The Baja King is a decent performer out of the box.  It could use some help though, and boy is there a lot of help out there for it.  Tamiya is well known for supporting all of their vehicles with tons of hop-ups and the Baja King is no different.  Being based on the TL01 sedan chassis, pretty much every accessory made for that chassis is compatible with the TL01B chassis that the Baja King is built on.  Not all of them mind you, but most.  Everything from carbon fiber drive train components to titanium screw sets is out in the wild.  You aren’t going to need all those upgrades, but there are a few out there that are, in my opinion, must haves for the Baja King.  So without further ado, here’s my top three must have hop-ups for your new Tamiya Baja King.

• 1.  Oil filled shocks
  The stock bouncers do not provide any type of real suspension dampening at all.  They are pretty much useless on anything but the most smooth surfaces out there.  If you want to run on a gravel driveway or unprepped dirt surface you are going to need a set of oil filled shocks to help smooth out those bumps and ruts.  The performance difference will shock you (haha, I made a pun!).  On my Baja King I went with Tamiya’s top of the line Super Low Friction Dampeners, you can find those online for around $60 for a set of four.  They are machined out of metal and coated with Teflon to make them super smooth.  The set doesn’t come with shock fluid, so you’ll need to buy a bottle or three of that which will set you back another $12 or so.  I recommend starting with the medium weight set and going up or down from there depending on your surface conditions.  But if you don’t have the money to spend on those fancy pants super duper shocks you can go for the slightly cheaper CVA Mini Shock set.  They’re priced at about $20 for a set of two, so $40 for all four corners, they also include shock fluid in the pack. I would actually buy this hop-up before anything else.  The difference they make is just astounding.
• 2.  Ball bearings
  Ball bearings will make your Baja King run faster and longer.  They are also a key ingredient to cutting down on maintenance and parts replacement in the long run.  The Baja King comes stock with plastic and bronze bushings all over the place.  Plastic bushings in particular aren’t very durable and wear out quickly, creating slop in your drive train that reduces efficiency.  When it comes to driving with electricity, efficiency is the key.  The easier it is for your electric motor to turn all the gears and drive shafts and axles the faster your car will go and the longer it will run.  Bushings create a lot of friction between parts, even when they are greased and oiled.  But bearings, they just roll with the flow, like a fat dog on ice.  Ball bearings help all your pieces and parts break lose of that friction more easily making the job of running it all easier on your motor.  You can pick up a full set on the internet for about $30 if you buy the kit by DuraTrax, that’s what I’ve been using and they’ve been great so far.  The official Tamiya kit is more expensive and a little hard to come by.  I HIGHLY suggest buying these before you assemble your kit for the first time, and put them in where ever the instructions call for bushings, it’s just easier that way.
• 3.  Hardened diff cups
  This is another one of those “in the long run” maintenance items.  The stock diff cups are very soft and the dog bone axles will start to make divots in them very quickly, reducing drive train efficiency.  Unless you’re wrecking a lot or still using bushings these will probably be the parts you replace the most. The hardened cups will resist the wear and tear and last a lot longer than the stock pieces.  They’ll run you about $10 a set so $20 total for both ends of the car.  Just make sure you don’t lose the o-rings in the front cups when you go to swap these in for the stock pieces, you need them to keep the front axles in their proper place.

There you have it.  Three must have upgrades that you should be shopping for right now.  But be warned, Baja King ownership becomes a sort of illness after a while.  Once you’re bitten by the bug there’s no turning back and you’ll be spending every last cent you have buying new toys for your baby.  If you haven’t already, go back and read my posts on my Baja King here, here, and here.

All the links I’ve provided are for illustrative purposes.  I have no affiliation with Tower Hobbies.  Buy your hop-ups from where ever you’d like, you might want to consider shopping at your local hobby shop first.

• Tamiya Baja King review
• The Baja King recrowned.
• Did you get a new R/C car or truck for Christmas?

The Baja King is based on Tamiya’s old TL01 sedan chassis.  Basically all they did was swap out the short suspension arms and drive shafts for long ones.  They also took out some extraneous parts that weren’t conducive to off-road driving.  They left all the mounting holes and whatnot though.  The first thing I did was take my dremel (I use a craftsman rotary tool, but it’s the same thing) to all those mounting positions for sedan body posts and electronics trays that I don’t need.  I didn’t take any measurements but I shaved at least a few grams from the chassis.  I also got some acrylic glue and used it to seal up empty screw holes from the missing parts. 

The suspension arms are two pieces each, held together with screws.  I took the suspension arms apart and used CA glue to stick them together and ditched the screws.  Dropping eight screws from the unsprung weight of the car can’t hurt.  I’m only doing this as a trial right now, to see how well it holds together.  If it fails miserably then it’s back to the screws.

Next the dremel went into the battery compartment.  I had to sand it out a little bit with the drum sander so that my LiPo batteries would fit easily.  Once that was done, the open nature of the battery compartment had me a bit concerned that my expensive LiPos would be damaged by a stray rock or something else striking them at high speed.  They’re hard cased racing LiPos, any damage would most likely be purely cosmetic, but sometimes you never know and it’s better to be safe than sorry.  So I improvised a solution and made a underbody out of the plastic of some clamshell packaging I had in the trash.  I cut, creased, and glued (again with CA glue, in hind sight I probably should have just used servo tape) the new underbody to the chassis.  I may put some adhesive backed foam on the tray to further increase protection, but right now it’s sturdy enough and big enough to protect the batteries from most hard knocks, but at the same time it’s also flexible enough so that a good whack won’t break it or rip it off the chassis.  It also tucks neatly under the body.  I also used some of the extra plastic to make a cover for the drive shaft.  More than once I’ve found pebbles and other debris stuck in the recess for the shaft, it’s marred my graphite shaft and I’m really suprised the shaft hasn’t broken.  So I cut a narrow strip of the plastic long enough to run the length of the recess and again I CA glued it to the narrow lip above the recess.  One last use for the trash bound plastic was to create a cover for the large hole on the right side of the chassis.  Hopefully this will cut down on the amount of crud that builds up in the chassis during runs.

That’s the summary of my latest round of modifications for my Baja King.  But in other r/c news my new Losi HighRoller (it’s a RTR, but it looks so cool) should be arriving in the next couple days, along with the parts to finish off my JRX-S and give my resurrected PureTen GP a test run.  And my ThunderTech Pro-2 should be here in the next few weeks.  I’m really looking forward to running all of them and will be writing full reviews of all the new ones after I’ve had time to break them in sufficiently.

• Tamiya Baja King review
• Three must have upgrades for your new Baja King…
• The Baja King recrowned.

The first stock item to go was the friction dampened coil-over shocks.  They’ve been replaced with Tamiya’s low friction, oil filled coil-over units filled with Tamiya’s medium weight (#600) shock oil. The performance difference is astounding, the car is much more drivable over my gravel driveway, and handles tight cornering at speed much better.

My second investment was to replace the Tamiya electronic speed control with an Associated/LRP A.I. Automatic Super Reverse speed control.  This speed control is a huge upgrade over the Tamiya unit.  Tamiya’s speed control is fine for being included in the kit, especially a kit that goes for less than $80, but it has issues and limitations that some people will more than likely outgrow.  The biggest issue for me is in the way it handled dying batteries.  It didn’t like low voltage and routinely flaked out near the end of the battery pack in an annoying way.  There would still be juice in the battery and the car would still go, until you put too much throttle down, then it just stalled.  If it handled low batteries a little more gracefully I probably wouldn’t have replaced it.  A high point of this new ESC is that it allows me to use modified motors, which the Tamiya ESC didn’t.  Which leads nicely to another upgrade worth mentioning.

Team Orion’s Formula SV2 Pro, in the 23 turn, double wind variety.  It’s a mild modified motor, but it is a huge leap over the kit’s included generic Mabuchi 540 stock motor.  I haven’t done an extensive break-in on this motor, so I haven’t yet pushed it to it’s limits.  In stock form I estimated that this car did between 17 and 20 mph (RC Car Action clocked it at 20.2 mph in their review, page 3).  With this new motor and speed control I’m hoping for 25+ mph.

Finally as an attempt to increase my battery run time I swapped out all of the Tamiya/Kyosho style battery connectors for Deans two pronged Ultra Plugs.  These little connectors are a big improvement over the stock connectors in terms of electrical resistance, which allows more juice to flow through without being lost to heat and whatnot.  I’m not an electrical engineer, so I can’t explain how it all works, it’s just better and that’s all I care about.

Overall I’m happy with this new round of upgrades, but I’m far from done.  I still have plenty of options left to choose from, including some suspension component that will allow me to tune my setup even further.  It’s not a full blown racer, but it’s definitely better than just a backyard basher now.

• Tamiya Baja King review
• Three must have upgrades for your new Baja King…
• Team Losi JRX-S upcoming and other miscellaneous rc stuff…

Features

The Baja King is based on Tamiya’s old TL-01 sedan chassis, with a minor modification.  Tamiya replaced the TL-01 sedan suspension with a longer armed version more suitable for offroad and gave it the TL-01B designation.  This chassis features shaft driven 4WD, sealed front and rear gearboxes, gear differentials, friction spring dampers, and large diameter, off-road wheels and spiked tires.  Also included, much to my surprise, is a electronic speed control, instead of the mechanical unit that is usually included in low cost and entry level kits.  The speed control is Tamiya’s entry level TEU-101bk control which only supports 27 turn stock motors and six cell battery packs.  Some nice features of this control include reverse (with a lockout for racing), a rudimentary form of BEC, simple one button setup, and a built-in failsafe that cuts the throttle and beeps when no signal is available.  It’s prewired with bullet connectors for the motor and a standard Tamiya style battery connector.

Not everything you’re going to need is included with this kit.  To finish it off you’re going to have to purchase or otherwise have available the following:

• Radio system with one servo
• Batteries and battery charger
• Polycarbonate paint for the body

It’s not a very long list, but it’ll cost about $85.00 (according to Tower Hobbies prices) to make the Baja King drivable.

Assembly

There’s nothing quite like peeling the shrink wrap off of a brand new R/C car kit.  To make things even better the Baja King comes in a sizable box with some very cool cover art.  Once inside, the box is split down the middle with the polycarbonate body shell on one side, and all the parts bags and trees on the other.  The bags are lettered A to C according to when you will need the parts in the assembly process.  The parts on the trees are clearly numbered making them easy to find and snip off.

The Baja King’s manual is easy to read and understand, I didn’t have any trouble trying to figure out what I needed to do.  One tip that everybody should know and use is to fully read the instructions from front to back, top to bottom, beginning to end, etc., etc., etc., before starting assembly of a kit.  It will really help you out and may go a long way to dispelling some confusion you may find yourself experiencing.  The book for the Baja King is printed in four languages, Japanese, English, French, and German.  When manuals and such are printed in multiple languages they usually go light on the words, and that is certainly the case with this manual.  The illustrations are more than enough to fully understand what you need to do.  Each step lays out what pieces and parts you will need to complete it.  All of the illustrated parts in the manual are easy to identify and match to their real world counter-parts.  Some screws do look similar, only being differentiated by being polished or black in color, and the manual does reflect that, so pay attention to the thread patterns and colors as they appear in the manual.  There’s only 26 steps in the entire process, so even a novice should have no trouble assembling this kit rather quickly.  I didn’t time myself with a stopwatch, but I would estimate that my total assembly time, not counting body painting and trimming, was only about two and a half to three hours.

Tamiya is pretty well known for it’s high quality parts.  The Baja King kit is no exception.  All of the plastic parts trees were well formed with minimal connecting points between the tree and the parts.  There was no flashing (extra plastic that may have seeped through the molds) to trim off, and all of the parts fit together perfectly.  The self-tapping screws did their job just fine, but obviously you should take care when tightening them.  Do not crank on them hard, just screw them in until the they stop, don’t tighten them any more than that.  Trying to crank the screws in further will only result in you stripping out the threads that the screw just cut.  I have only one other recommendation for assembly of this or any kit.  If you can afford it, buy as many hop-up parts as you can before you assemble your kit, especially if they are internal parts such as ball bearings, drive shafts, or differential upgrades.  If you buy them before assembly you can then insert them in place of the stock parts.  Doing this will save you time and decrease wear and tear on your kit since you won’t have to disassemble it to install these parts later, not to mention the increased performance you will experience.

Performance

The Baja King is pretty quick off the blocks and reaches top speed in a very short distance.  I haven’t done any timings yet but I would estimate the top speed at somewhere between 17 and 20 miles per hour.  During the course of building I replaced a few stock parts with upgrades.  I tossed all of the plastic and metal bushings for a full set of ball bearings.  I swapped out the steel drive shaft for a light weight carbon shaft and I replaced the heavy stock gear shafts with some further light weight pieces.  I’m not sure what the overall effect is that these parts have had since I never ran it in fully stock form, but I can only assume that they increased drive train efficiency and thus increased acceleration, top speed, and battery run time.

The suspension, being only friction spring dampers and non-adjustable links, doesn’t really do much to help the ride.  It’s much too springy to provide anything near good performance.  After ball bearings I would say the next most needed upgrade would be oil filled shocks with a good selection of springs.  Having this suspension also doesn’t help with cornering or high speed stability.  Small bumps are able to send the Baja King out of control without any warning.  If you are looking to use this car as a somewhat serious racer at your local track, then you will definitely need to upgrade the shocks.  It would also be advisable to upgrade to adjustable turnbuckles for the suspension, which are also available for this kit.  Having those would give you a much more tunable ride.

This car is perfect for backyard bashing, but it will need work to get it in proper shape for any type of racing.  The 4WD makes it easy to get over some rough terrain, including tall, dead weeds and large rocks, which a lot of people will find in their backyards or other favorite bashing spot.  There’s a couple of shock mounting positions on the suspension arms, so you can set the ride height from a low slung racing height to something a little higher and more suitable for doing real 4WD offroading.

Parts availability & customer service

Tamiya cars always have a plethora of hop-ups available.  Most of the after-market parts are made by Tamiya itself, but some companies, like Duratrax, also offer additional parts.  Even though the Baja King is based on a old chassis, there are still plenty of hop-ups to be had.  I was able to purchase a full ball bearing set, many light weight carbon fiber (graphite) drive-train parts, and light weight suspension components.  Some parts that are made for newer cars are also compatible with the Baja King.  Most hop-ups are in the $15 to $20 range.  You can order your upgrades directly from Tamiya, but stores such as Tower Hobbies also carry them, and usually at a much lower price.

There’s also the obvious upgrades such as a better motor, higher performance ESC, and tires.  The only problem is that you are limited in what pinion gears you can put on the motor.  The Baja King has a motor mount that only allows for a 19t, 21t, or 23t pinion.  It appears that you can only use Tamiya made pinion gears.  It looks like they are not the relatively standard 48 pitch gears that most of the industry uses in offroad cars and trucks.  They could be 32 pitch but I don’t have any 32 pitch gears to compare them to.

Replacement parts are readily available from Tamiya’s web site.  It has a really handy parts lookup and ordering system.  All you need is the part number from the assembly manual (you are going to keep it, aren’t you?) and the system will take you directly to the shop page where you can order it.  I actually got to make use of this system in the course of painting the body.  Here’s a tip, once the paint cures, you can’t get it off, so plan accordingly.  Tamiya’s service was very snappy, I ordered a new body on Saturday.  They’re closed on weekends so it was packed and shipped Monday afternoon and I received it mid-day Thursday.  No other internet mail order company I’ve dealt with has been that fast, not even Newegg.com. Usually there’s at least a two day processing time on my orders.  I also contacted customer service by email once with a general, non-critical question and had it answered in a few hours.  Overall, I am very satisfied with Tamiya’s customer service.  The customer service matches the reputation they’ve earned for quality in my opinion.

Final thoughts

If you’re trying to get into the r/c hobby, but don’t want to spend a lot of money, this car is for you.  I am very pleased with it and I was suprised by it’s quality, performance, and hopup potential, especially at it’s price.  For the cost of other cars without all the necessary components, even other entry level setups, you can get this kit and everything you need to run it.  Building it was very easy thanks to the great packaging and excellent instructions.  I highly recommend the Baja King kit for anyone looking to get into, or expand their involvement in, this hobby.  Unless you have higher ambitions, such as winning a national championship, you really can’t go wrong with this car.

Info

Manufacturer

Tamiya, Inc.

Tamiya USA

Product website

http://www.tamiyausa.com/product/item.php?product-id=58301

Where to buy

Tower Hobbies ($89.99)

• The Baja King recrowned.
• Three must have upgrades for your new Baja King…
• Hacking my Baja King