54947 TT02 carbon damper stay II Review

Purchasing hop-ups is a great part of the hobby, especially when updating a base level kit. One particular hop-up that I acquired was the Tamiya TT-02 carbon Damper Stay II. As the name suggests this part replaces the earlier damper stay for a few significant reasons. Let's take a closer look.

The packet contains the carbon damper stay, some aluminum cup and a range of fittings to ensure  that you can fit a wide variety of shocks ranging from the TRF Big bore dampers + (42354) to the kit standard friction shocks. (Tip.. Dont buy these towers before you treat your TT02 to some CVA or better shocks).

The damper stay is 3.5mm thick, so it is going to be tough enough to cope with the wide range of driving conditions that the humble TT-02 is subjected to. It also has four shock mounting positions, two more than the stock plastic version. This will help a lot when tuning the car to respond well in the corners.  The Shock tower is also able to be mounted on both the front and rear of the chassis.

In the kit you get two aluminium cups that need to be glued onto the shock tower. Any CA glue should be fine. I seem to have a great ability to get super glue everywhere other than the part I need to stick, so now use the Gel version. I just used a small amount on the outside part of the cup which you slide into the tower. Its a simple job.  The instructions also suggest to coat the edges with CA glue, technically this will help the towers to not de-laminate, but I am not worried about that and the edges are already very smooth so I didn't need to even give them a light polish.

The two cups are there to support the upper arms. These version 2 towers were primarily designed to ensure that the brilliant 54874 TT02 adjustable upper arm set (click for our review) will fit correctly. The precision of the cups and the way in which they mount is great, ensuring that the arms will be perfectly aligned.

Now it is time to add the fittings. You get a range of spacers to add to the tower to ensure that what every compatible Tamiya shock you fit, it will be in the correct position. The kit comes with the durable steel ends, you can swap them out for lighter Aluminium or Fluorine coated versions to save some weight.

Before fitting the towers I measured the weight of the new CF towers and the plastic kit versions. These new towers are 1g heavier than the kit version (8.56g). A very negligible amount compared to the potential benefits they provide.

As an aside, even just replacing the 2 included steel  screws with some lightweight ones the tower is near enough the the same weight. Replacing the ball-ends with the TRF lightweight damper ones shaves off more weight and you end up at 7.6g so it is possible to actually go lower.. although that is just me being a bit excessive.

As you would expect the towers fit easily with the two screws on the upper bulkhead.

At the track.

I've been using the carbon towers for a while. I prefer the stiffness they provide. It helps the car feel more responsive, but also more predictable. The plastic towers will always have a little movement and these chunky towers will remain nice and straight as the TT02 speeds around the corners.

The extra mounting holes are also useful, as they provide the TT02 with more adjustments that you can use when tuning the way that the chassis behaves in the corners.

Compatibility.

These towers are for the standard TT02 variants. (TT02, TT02 D, TT02 R, TT02RR). They will not fit on the TT02-S variants, or the TT02B buggies).

Overall

I think these are a great hop-up for a TT02. They provide you with a more consistent handling chassis, more tuning possibilities,

Importantly they also provide a nice bit of Carbon fibre cool to the chassis, I just wish the aluminium parts were blue not silver ;)