58693 Tamiya TA08pro first impressions

After opening the box I just thought I would take a look at some of the new parts for the TA08PRO. The first thing you notice is that this chassis shares a lot of DNA with the TRF420. No TA club level chassis has been this close to its TRF counterpart since the TA04 and TRF414. 

The first thing I noticed is that when viewed from above the chassis is very similar to the TRF420.  

The TA08pro chassis is 87mm wide, only 2mm wider than the carbon lower deck of the 420. 

The flex of this lower deck was very similar in feel to the TRF420's lower deck, possibly a bit stiffer. This is thanks to Tamiya using carbon re-enforced plastic for this chassis. This is cool as usually you would get a Glass re-enforced chassis in the pro-kits. So no hop-ups required here unlike the earlier club chassis. 

The chassis also is a decent weight. It comes in at 93g. This is 23g heavier than the carbon deck on the TRF420, and 9g heavier than the Aluminium deck. This is good when you consider that the TA08 chassis also has the lower bulkheads moulded into it. The combined weight for the TRF420 bulkheads is 22g. So when you combine the figures you get this

• TA08Pro Lower deck (Inc lower bulkhead) = 93g
• TRF420 Lower Carbon Deck + Lower bulkheads = 92g
• TRF420 Lower Aluminium Deck + Lower bulkheads = 106g

In fact when thinking about this a bit more the chassis technically has the RF suspension mounts also included, so when you factor in their weight this chassis is lighter than the TRF420 Cool :)

Enough about the chassis, the other things I've initially noticed are as follows

The differentials have the heavier steel outdrives, although they have the new blue VG differential o-rings to eliminate leakage.

Here is the length of the new suspension arms. The sway bar mounts are the same position, but the arms are not longer, which could have been interesting.

The front bumper mount is a lot more substantial than the new TRF420 mount. I can see some potential benefits of running this mount on the TRF420 / TA07MSX ;) I wonder why they have changed it so much for the TA08 pro? I am sure it will come more clear once I assemble the kit this weekend.   

The other thing that I've noticed is that the rear inner mount is set at XB, and the rear block is XB, but because it's mounted upside down it actually is equivalent to 'D'. So if you want a rear aluminium split block for the chassis buy the 54883 XB adjustable block for the rear. The kit comes with a fixed plastic mount so you can only adjust the Rear inner blocks to change the toe-in and have no track width tuning. 

These are just a few of the things I've notice once the box was opened. I really do think that this chassis could have a lot of potential. I will start building it tomorrow and will make a live article so I can share the process with you all.