So, we have all been there. Your sitting on the sofa, drinking a beer and then you have a brain wave! "I have a spare brushless system laying around, maybe I should put that in my Tamiya"
Well this happened to me very recently and it didn't take me long to start messing around with my Tamiya wild one. So the first thing I set about doing was removing the slightly upgraded brushed electronics that had previously fitted.
Once the brushed electronics had been removed I did a quick maintenece check on the gearbox to make sure I didnt have any damaged gears and ensure that there was still some grease present. After this it was a simple case of fit the brushless system back into the model, now it is important to take into account that no supporting mods have been done along side this so the model is bone stock including the gearing that is setup for brushed use so I was not really sure what I was expecting in terms of performance.
"So, what system have I put in to this poor little tamiya" I can hear you all say!
Well, as many of us do I had some spare electronics laying around that I had yet to make use of so the system is a Trackstar 120A ESC ( a cheap ebay special I think ) and a speed passion 10.5T sensored motor. Not exactly High end stuff I know but lets see what they can do in my Wild one!
Due to how short the ESC to motor wires were I had to mount the ESC on top of the body panel rather than inboard, not to much of an issue I just didn't want to start doing loads of soldering however if you are going to try this I would recommend mounting the ESC inboard to protect it from water and impact!
So now its all fitted, what should I do with it?
Speed runs, of course! I wanted to see what the top speed would be considering that the stock brushed kit would do roughly 20MPH ( probably downhill with the wind behind it )
For these runs I am running a 7.4v core RC shorty and a Sky RC speed meter and as you can see form the pictuire above its pretty wet! After a few sketchy runs I managed to get 2 solid straight runs that I think I managed to get a couple of seconds at full throttle.
This was the final result! A blistering 39mph ! I know, I know. Its not going to beat any records but lets just take a second to consider that this little tamiya was never designed for brsuhless electronics but yet it has had some fitted and almost doubled the top speed of the standard brushed electronics!
Would I reccomend ding this conversion?
The short answer is, No. As much fun as it is, it just isnt useable. On dry tarmac it just spends all of its time popping wheelies and falling over. On wet tarmac, its difficult to keep it going straight and without a gyro will spend most of its time spinning. When it comes to offroad use then, again any surface with a good amount of grip and the front wheels will pop up into the air quicker than a seagull knicking one of your chips at the beach meaning that you can really do anything more than go forward.
Overall If you want to have a bit of a blast and spend some time trying to chase figures of top speed then it can be done however there are better models on the market for speed runs. Personally, You can have more fun running the Wild one with the brushed setup doing small jumps and off roading.
