RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Hi Guy's

I was trying to figure out today why Tamiya decided to change over to plastic tracks many years ago, The Sherman and Leo A4 both came with metal tracks I'm not to sure if their first Tiger's might have? I'm guessing the reason wasn't the gears, surely the clutch gears would of took less strain than the current gears, and hull flex well they must realise the guys building them can sort this. Any ideas ?

Seems a shame to me Tamiya doesn't supply a set of metal tracks with their kits especially for the price, considering they have far more competition than they use to, a set of impacts for a Tamiya is over £100 personally I think they should supply a set of plastic and metal for the prices their charging.

The King tiger came with plastic tracks from the odd, the Leo and Gepard recycled the Sherman's tracks (so I guess this was a cost saving thing) the Sherman dates from 1974 so we're talking 30 odd years between its release and that of the tiger. I might have been due to manufacturing limitations, plastic tracks weren't viable back then, who knows. Track materials a fairly personal preference, I prefer plastic tracks so my Tamiya tanks runs as well as they were intended to, with metal you start having to throw on upgrades. I think Tamiya tries to be more pragmatic and out metal where it's needed rather than go full metal as a selling point as Taigen etc do.

That's a valid point Tom it never crossed my mind the plastic tracks may not have been viable, personally I've never seen the need for metal wheels turret's etc, when it comes to metal tracks I like the way they sit I feel they look far more realistic and give the tank that little more weight I like.

Tamiya could offer the option for their smaller tanks at least. The new kits are to pricey I feel for what they offer in todays rc tank market where now there's so much choice..and to have to spend an extra £120 on a set of impacts for a super Sherman when I'm sure Tamiya could probably make and sell these for 1/3 of that price or include with their kits would give me a lot more incentive to buy a new kit.

Hi Jake/Tom,
Yep they do seam to be uping the price of there RC kits and dropping the spec!! Can't really understand there thinking on this. I have all but 4 of there tanks. And again they are bringing out the mark IV L70 and it's mega bucks!!! and we will probably add a lot of detail parts to it witch puts the price even higher. I personally like to fit metal tracks to all my tanks the thinking in that is if the tank is heavy it will drive a lot better. And as Tom said it's all about pricing. Brian...

A big issue now is the weakness of the £, when I got my is-2 its was about £430 and that came with radio etc not bad at all. Unfortunately banzai have upped shipping cost and the weak £ makes things very much more expensive. I'm not sure about dropping the spec, more a case of not upping it, but again it depends what your going for, stock tamiyas (King tiger excluded) do run very well and you are paying for that.

I have a 12 year old Tiger I still running original kit tracks. It's a battle hardened IR fighter that trained both my sons and their friends. Never broke a link, never had an issue.

Besides the thin plastic links that come with the HL IIIs and IVs and small units like a Kettenkrad, I'll take plastic over metal every day of the week. Unless you run on concrete, metal offers no advantage and only puts more pressure on the drive train.

Honestly, I don't see the preference of metal for anything. My Tiger has the original plastic barrel and all those years never had an issue with the ABS elevation arm (paint doesn't scrape off either). Then Tamiya started with aluminum barrels and all the arms needed to be changed. The argument for metal barrels was there was no seam like a two piece styrene part. Well, if you're buying a $600 model, you should have the skills to fill a seam.

Metal adds weight, taxes the gears, motors and battery and is harder to paint.

The one thing that you 'do' get with a Tamiya is quality parts that fit precisely, and that are very robust. Yes, they are expensive, but I would guess that all parts go through a stringent quality control process, and that they have a big bin of faulty parts that they would never dream of releasing as part of a kit. This all adds to the cost of course. Expensive is a relative term. They come with full electronics, which HL etc don't. If someone is after a quality tank, that won't 'need' any upgrades, then Tamiya aren't so bad.

Take a £130 HL tank, cover it in metal parts, gearboxes etc and you can add £150-£200, add quality electronics and that's another £150-£200? You are already into £500 territory, and that's without the super luxury end of the market in accessories etc.

A standard Tamiya tank will run for years, there are the occasional gearbox failures, and the odd duff MFU, but they are solid models built for the job. The only supplier I know who sells anything comparable, or better, is RCTank.de, as theirs come as standard with every upgrade imaginable. However, once you add the £150-£200 for electronics into the mix, they aren't cheap by any means.

Wibbs you are right on the money about Tamiya quality BUT quite separate from our hobby the social mores of the late 20th century early 21st century make instant gratification the centre of existence,
And so instead of saving £700 for a Tamiya Tiger 1 and spending a couple of months building a quality product straight out of the box People are not prepared to wait and they go online and order £130 worth of Tiger 1 from Heng Long and over the next 3 to 6 months spend a total of £600 in dribs and drabs on upgrades, in the end spending the same amount on the Heng Long and taking as long in the build,
The moral is, Instead of buying a Heng Long Tank and spending a fortune on building a Tank that at its best will almost never be as good as a Tamiya Tank,
Instead Save up for a Tamiya Tank and while you are saving, spend your time on research so that when you finally have enough for a Tamiya Tank you have a plan in place as to what exactly your Tank will be.
Shaun.

jarndice wrote:Wibbs you are right on the money about Tamiya quality BUT quite separate from our hobby the social mores of the late 20th century early 21st century make instant gratification the centre of existence,
And so instead of saving £700 for a Tamiya Tiger 1 and spending a couple of months building a quality product straight out of the box People are not prepared to wait and they go online and order £130 worth of Tiger 1 from Heng Long and over the next 3 to 6 months spend a total of £600 in dribs and drabs on upgrades, in the end spending the same amount on the Heng Long and taking as long in the build,
The moral is, Instead of buying a Heng Long Tank and spending a fortune on building a Tank that at its best will almost never be as good as a Tamiya Tank,
Instead Save up for a Tamiya Tank and while you are saving, spend your time on research so that when you finally have enough for a Tamiya Tank you have a plan in place as to what exactly your Tank will be.
Shaun.

The alternative is watch Ebay like a hawk and get one for a song!

I must disagree with you, guys. I only have a Tamiya tank, and it is a Sherman. It is the cheapest one and I like it, but I must say it has his flaws.

In most of the pieces they are using 1974 moulds, so you can easily see the lack of detail, they should do something about it. And some parts are bad designed, like the one with tape at the front.
The return rollers get easily jammed, so if you dont fix it fast the track will wear off the wheels (It happened me twice, and if you take a look to a lot of videos of a sherman running at the backyard, you could see that most of the returnr rollers are jammed)
The electronics are a shit. Yeah, they were great back in the day when they were created, but today they are really really obsolete.
The barrel does not have recoil, and some tanks dont even have working lights.
Some people has problems with the shitty track tensioners and the iddler wheel is the only one that does not have any kind of bearing or bushing. The wheel that takes all the tension is the one that has nothing! Fortunatelly mine works good so far.
About the tracks, well, I run my Sherman about 20 minutes over concrete and I noticed a lot of wear on them.
Most tanks are really expensive. I can understand why for the price of a tamiya, you can buy a small motorbike and people justifies it.

At the other hand, a Heng Long with a lot of upgrades also costs some cash, yeah, but I can drive my tank wherever I want, over mud, (lke my avatar ---------->) high grass and thinks like that and I noticed that the plastic is WAY WAY WAY harder than the tamiya. When I work on the sherman I use a cutter, when I work in my heng long, I need to use a dremel. About the tracks, Im using Mato tracks, and they are like the first day, so for me, Im afraid I will stick with an upgraded heng long.

For me, the best part of the Sherman was assembling it, but it does not have too many pieces after all... So I dont think I would buy another tank, unless I sell the stock electronics to get back a big part of the cash.