The Tamiya TT-01D DriftSpec Chassis

My interest in RC drifting resulted from reading an article in RC Driver magazine, where they talked about setting up a drift course and racing during lunch with their 1/18 HPI micro RS4 drifters. I really liked the idea of having a small 7" car that I could drift almost anywhere, but there was one small problem -- everywhere in the US indicated that they were waiting on delivery with ETAs ranging from early February to late March. Things weren't looking good. I did locate them at Dinball/RC Mart, a Hong Kong hobby shop that I used when I was working in China, but after shipping it became cost prohibitive.

I Googled around on "RC drifting", and pretty much every site I hit said that one of the best chassis for new drifters was Tamiya's TT-01. It is a well designed, very stable, and upgradable chassis featuring shaft-driven four-wheel drive. Plus, it is very affordable, with RTR kits running about $180. While this is a 1/10 scale chassis, it also means that it is easier to find aftermarket parts for it, which is important, because drifting is all about style. Hopefully, I'll be able to bring enough style to the table so that people will overlook my as-yet-untested drifting skillz. So I decided to shelf the 1/18 scale for now and revisit it later should I find that drifting and I agree with each other.

Upon further studies, I found that Tamiya had the TT-01D DriftSpec kit, which featured many of the upgrades that people commonly buy for drifting included in the package. Now the downside is that it is a kit, meaning there is no radio, and you have to build it yourself. On the plus side, it's a lot less expensive and I have radios from other kits. I then went to find one online, but again, it wasn't available anywhere in the US like the 1/18 cars. I checked, but I did find it at Dinball, and even with the international shipping, it came out the same price that was showing on local providers' websites before shipping. I thought that was a good deal, so I pulled the trigger.

All I needed now was to figure out how to address the servo and radio issue. I decided that I would use the transmitter from a Team Losi Mini-LST that I bought from Dinball, because it's a 27MHz FM transmitter and it uses synthesized frequencies, so I have access to all six bands at 27MHz. I ordered a Futaba S3010 high-torque servo from TowerHobbies to handle steering duties, because it not only has higher-torque than the standard S3001, but it's faster, too. Finally, I bought another Team Losi FM synthesized receiver (LOSB0801) from HopMeUp on eBay.

I was actually quite impressed, because the TT-01D kit only took a week to arrive from the time I ordered it, and everything else arrived within a couple of days. So now comes the fun part -- putting it all together.