501 or 511

[steve-thebabystore]

I already have a 501 and started racing it, I'm looking at a 511 as well - what were the differences?

[qatmix]

easier diff access is the main one.. other than that not really a great deal. The battery placement is different on the 511, but as we all use lipos now both 501 and 511 guys have them in the same place.

[Dyna]

I run 501x's and after driving one back-to-back with a 511, there is very little difference in perfomance, once you have adjusted chassis weight distribution.

The 511 is easier to work on for diff access though, as has been mentioned.

[jimmy]

The 511 comes with cheap nasty ball studs that shear off before you've actually tightened them up
I wasn't impressed with what you got for your money with the 511 - the 501 with worlds-sized belts and pulleys was and still is an awesome car.

As has been said - other than changes to make working on the car 'different' - the main difference was the cells being 6mm further forward, but that's no longer the case with lipo's.

[djmcnz]

I had a base 501X (not Worlds) and then got the 511 and as everybody agrees there's not a lot of difference. The 511 is easier to work on (diffs as mentioned) as well ask requiring far less spacers and shims which I always found a pain to deal with trackside.

The 511 is a little more nimble, even moreso with the upgrade kit... I find it settles a little quicker and is perhaps a little easier to tune.

You need to consider availability also, 511's a quite hard to come by these days.

[Fredrik Emilsson]

I made a small design comparison between the 501X and 511 a few years ago.
http://www.tamiyaclub.com/showroom_m...87535&id=13377

In my opinion there is a huge difference when it comes to maintenance.
If you look at photos you will see that the 501X was like an onion with several layers of parts on top of each other.

If you wanted to remove a diff you had to remove camber mount in order to remove the damper tower, in order to remove the top deck.
After that you could remove the diff. Well, you also had to remove the diff cover. But that diff cover design mistake was same on the 511...
So ~10 screws later, with parts all over the pit table, you could finally access the diff.

The front (rear) suspension mount had to be removed in order to replace the rear drive belt. When you did this you had at least one suspension arm hanging in the turnbuckle. You were lucky if you did´nt loose any shims or suspension balls.
At the front you also had to remove the tube between the center bulkheads.
So you could add 2-4 more screws to the list above if you wanted to change the drive belt.
There are more to tell, but I think you get the picture.

Performance, probably no difference for average driver.

My thoughts...