I've never been a big fan of trucks - I don't mean truggies in particular, but trucks in general. That said, the TRF 801XT has a pleasing looking bodyshell. Over the years I've seen some pretty hideous looking truggy bodys, but thankfully the 801XT comes with a rather classy looking body, which definitely gets the thumbs up.

Tamiya didn't go for anything too radical or crazy here. The main body is a little narrower than some and large side pods sweep out at either side to meet the side guards and form a good close fit to keep the dirt out. The polycarbonate is a fairly standard thickness - not basher proof stuff but should hold up pretty well.

The JConcepts Illuzion 8th scale wing is a great option and fits the 801XT perfectly.

Tamiya supply a large sheet of decals - strangely though they also supply window masks which is unusual for Tamiya, but they still need cutting out. I chose to make my own window masks from vinyl on the cutter so I could make accurate window borders. The decals look good but as with most of my cars I wanted to create my own designs so a quick dip into Adobe Illustrator later I had some stickers made. Because of the large stepped side pods I couldn't lay down the huge stickers I wanted to.

I didn't have all the painting materials at hand I needed for this shell - funnily enough it was Tamiya acrylic thinner I couldn't get hold of so the paint didn't go on as nicely as I'd wanted but I was still fairly happy.

Tamiya supply a tough and functional rear wing with the 801XT - the only bit I can't quite understand are the notches cut into the rear side dams? The wing comes pre-drilled and goes straight onto the wing mounts. These things take a lot of abuse (depending how much you crash) so I also got hold of one of the JConcepts Illuzion wings as a backup. These really are stylish items and match the cool looking bodyshell better than the stock wing.

Options & 'Hopup' Parts
Tamiya released a wrath of option parts for the TRF 801XT at the same time as the truck itself. These include setup options such as the spring kits and anti-roll bar (Stabilizer) kits, as well as various strengthening and lightening options.

The truck is built tough and certainly no lightweight - so if a lighter truck is your aim Tamiya have a few options to help things out. The lightweight chassis shaves around 35g (1.23oz) with a series of milled areas under and around the fuel tank, rear of the chassis and electrics.

To lighten the rotating mass of the drivetrain Tamiya released lightweight drive shafts and these around 5g each, or 30g for the whole lot of 6 driveshafts. The main shafts are the parts where Tamiya shed weight here - with 3.5mm instead of the original ~4.3mm shafts. A lightweight spur gear is also available, which replaces the gear on the centre differential and has a lot of machined holes around the outer diameter to save weight. If you're not racing at the highest level these parts probably aren't important however.

Above: Kit driveshaft at the top and lightweight option below - you can see the difference in shaft thickness.

When it comes to adding strength and stiffness, Tamiya provide a couple of options at the time of writing. The blue anodised alloy chassis stiffeners replace the moulded kit items and add a bit of bling in the process. Again - it's not vital as the kit items are plenty enough to stop the car bending in half - but adding stiffness can be a good thing especially on certain types of tracks, and lets face it, they make it look cool.
Finally, Tamiya also released alloy rear hubs in the earthy brown colour anodising, to match the front hubs - unbreakable for sure.

Lightened spur gear	Alloy rear hubs	Alloy centre braces

We'll be running these option parts in a later test - but for the review of course we kept the truck standard to give the best idea of how it performs.