It is absolutely amazing how the Tamiya DF03-RA Subaru’s RC cars handling and driving characteristics change when switching from All Wheel Drive to Front Wheel Drive or Rear Wheel Drive.
I did a Front Wheel drive test a while back, impressions and lap timing results are available here. Now I finally had the time and most importantly consistent track conditions to run the Tamiya Subaru in AWD and RWD on the same day back to back.
In order to change the rc car to rear wheel drive only I simply removed the front drive shafts as shown in the picture below.
Granted that this does not produce the optimum performance compared to removing the main drive shaft and therefore eliminating the friction drag considerably, however it is quick and easy and allows for the rc car to be converted back to All Wheel Drive in a matter of minutes.
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The Results:
Driving a Tamiya Subaru DF03-RA in rear wheel drive is a lot of fun -but challenging at the same time! Laptimes where 3 seconds slower compared to the All Wheel Drive configuration. Interestingly, the Front Wheel Drive configuration was only 2 seconds slower then the All Wheel Drive lap times.
All Wheel Drive
Fastest Lap | Avg Lap | Total
12.908 | 15.410 | 1.16
12.217 | 19.552 | 1.38
13.580 | 17.362 | 1.27
11.626 | 13.429 | 1.08
11.746 | 18.612 | 1.33
11.997 | 15.550 | 1.16
13.409 | 14.969 | 1.15
12.848 | 18.150 | 1.31
12.107 | 14.879 | 1.15
12.377 | 13.833 | 1.10
12.608 | 23.858 | 2.00
11.907 | 15.954 | 1.20
12.778 | 16.936 | 1.25
11.656 | 14.857 | 1.14
12.411 | 16.667 | 1:26 | Session Averages
Rear Wheel Drive
14.330 | 22.446 | 1.55
15.462 | 23.668 | 1.59
16.423 | 20.761 | 1.44
15.392 | 23.970 | 1.56
15.732 | 19.484 | 1.38
16.734 | 23.230 | 1.56
15.622 | 22.382 | 1.53
15.772 | 19.758 | 1.40
14.390 | 24.997 | 2.06
15.612 | 17.665 | 1.29
15.569 | 21.836 | 1:53 | Session Averages
2 Responses to “Tamiya DF03-RA Rear Wheel Drive Test”
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October 20th, 2010 at 6:59 pm
Hey, great site. Was wondering if you can give some input advice. I finished the assembly of my Subaru a few weeks back and had it tearing up the dirt patch called my yard. Where there is some grass, I noticed that when the car was riding through, the front wheels were spinning fine but the rear wheels were not turning. The car seemed to switch to front wheel drive. That didn’t seem right to me. I also noticed that at times, if the car got hung up on the front with the front wheels in the air, they would spin in the air but the rear wheels would not engage. Any thoughts? I was going to take apart the rear to see if everything as it should be in the rear dif.
Thanks!
October 21st, 2010 at 12:14 am
Hi Fran,
thanks for checking out my site.
Sounds to me like something was not assembled correctly in the rear diff or in the gear box. I suggest open it up and re-build.