Infinity IF14 Build ,Set-up and Review Pt1

The Infinity IF14 is one of the latest additions to the 1/10 RC touring car market. The car’s original concept was made by SMJ (Speed Mind Japan), but later taken over by Japanese manufacturer Infinity.

This procedure may seem a bit odd, but happens all the time, even in full-size F1 racing. One of the first times this was done in the fifties, when the Italian car manufacturer Lancia faced bankruptcy. Enzo Ferrari, who was desperately looking for a competitive car, bought the remaining Lancia D50 racers, upgraded them and won the world championship the year after.



In our hobby, Tamiya bought the Tech Racing concept, improved it and badged it as the TRF415 and made one of the most successful tourers out of it.

The people at Infinity probably know their history as they hired some of the greatest RC drivers on this planet to race this car to success. The design was finalized and improved by former world champs Jilles Groskamp and Andy Moore, and is currently also raced by Marc Reinhard, Naoto Matsukura and the great talent Akio Sobue.

The car is packaged in a neat small black cardboard box, with the Infinity logo on it. The box is protected by a gloss outer sleeve. When you open the inner box, the red color gives you a hint of the high-end quality of the car. The carbon chassis and bumper are the only loose parts in the box. All the other parts are packaged in plastic bags and badged from A to N.

The manual is very clear and precise and is a good guide throughout the building process.

The first things I normally do when building a car is to clean the bearings and to glue the sides of the carbon parts. As this car will be primarily used for mod racing, I didn’t bother to clean the bearings. I was a little disappointed about the metal shielded bearings. I was hoping to find rubber shielded ones for easier maintenance. The bearings run real smooth, but I have no clue if they are better or worse than those of the competition. It might be a good idea for Infinity to indicate the ABEC value of the bearings (the higher the value, the better the bearing).

The carbon parts themselves were top notch. The finish lower deck is perfectly symmetrical and really nice looking.

First thing to do according the manual was to build the diff. This was done without issues. I only slightly grinded the opposite gears of the satellite gears with 400 grid sandpaper. As the first test of the car will be immediately a race on brand new carpet, I decided to fill the diff with 7000 Tornado oil. This will perhaps be a little too heavy in the beginning, but will become right for the finals. The car doesn’t come with fluids, so you’ll have to purchase them separately.

The spool also assembles without dramas. You just have to pay attention to the orientation of the outer plastic spool ring. The rounded edges need to face inwards.

The chassis with the drive train installed. I checked some of the online setups and decided to put the diff and spool in the lower position.

I normally always run these items in the upper position, but decided to give it a try as Marc Reinhard seems to do it as well. The belts are a bit tight in the lower position.

I really liked the fact that the lower bulkheads only make contact with the chassis around the screw area. The diff and spool holders can easily be adjusted because the dented area is quite large.

The carbon damper mounts fit very well. The only small issue is that the rear screws can’t be completely taken out without removing the lower horizontal ones first.

Like all the other aluminium parts, the servo mount is a thing of beauty. I really like the design of it with the integrated floating servo mount.

According to the team drivers however, the chassis mounted steering posts give a bit more steering. Because Florian is always on the look for more steering, I also purchased these option parts. (picture 11).

The plastic parts are very hard, so I inserted a screw before mounting the turnbuckles (which is something I really hate! ).

Another very neat feature of the car are the integrated antenna mount/battery stoppers/central chassis mount. It’s such a simple idea, but very ingenious. It allows you to perfectly position your battery. .

The suspension mount holders are a bit different then the ones from other touring cars. The mounts themselves are bolted to the bulkheads with small 2.6mm screws. The mounts come in different sizes. At the front 6.0 mounts are provided and 4.5 and 4.0 for the back.

The inserts are plastic parts with which you can adjust kick-up, anti-squat, toe-in, etc. As I said before, the aluminium parts are really high quality. In order to facilitate the mounting of these mounts

I put a small drop of light oil in the inserts.

In order to insert and remove the arms, it’s better to take both of them out at the same time, not one at the time.

The suspension arms are of a similar design as the TRF416WE car. There are 4 different shock positions by swapping over the arms. (Picture 14 and 16).

The IF14 comes with double joint CVD shafts front and single joints ones in the back. Both of the shafts are 43mm long, but the rear ones are made of aluminium instead of steel like the front ones.

I normally put anti-wear grease on the drive shafts, as per most manuals. At the ETS in Ettlingen however I saw Jilles Groskamp putting only some light oil on these parts, in order to minimize friction. Therefore I put some Dryfluid on mine to see if it would work as well.

The front ones weigh 9,29gramms and the rear ones 6,72gramms.

You use two bearings on each of the front CVD’s, but the inner one needs to be only 3mm thick, not 5mm.

The Suspension arms are a great fit. I polished the metal pins and inserted them without drama in the arms. They were a good and free fit.

The only part that needed reaming was the front C hub carrier.

The front assembly weighted in at 21.54 grams.

Now we are onto the sway bars / stabilizers. I always thought that finding the correct position of the stabilizer holders was a bit awkward. On the IF14 you can position the holder in-between the two marks on the stabilizer itself. A really handy idea!

The car is equipped with a metal ball raced stabilizer mount (The RC Racer developed one for the TRF series cars as well), which makes setting up the stabilizer really easy now.

The kit comes with high quality shocks. No drama over here, just some short shock bodies with the normal design of an upper adjusting ring. There is no mark on this ring, so I grinded a marking on it for easier adjustment. In the front I used 3 turns and in the back 3.5 turns to get it to the right height.

I also put the shocks up the scale and it weighed in at 8,01 grams. The 2017 Xray dampers are a tad heavier at 8,73 grams.

The chassis is now nearly complete. Just need to fit the electronics and the bumper etc.

I was eager to check if the body mounts of the IF14 fit those of my Tamiya cars, and they do. I was a really happy camper after this discovery :)

The battery needs to be taped down with battery tape. The car comes with a rubber sticker to prevent the battery from moving around.

The stoppers allow you to adjust the for/aft movement of the battery by about 3mm, which also comes in handy.

This picture shows everything that was left over. I hope someone finds a new packaging method soon, because this is really annoying.

So other than the packaging, not many other negative points. Infinity didn’t add fluids or double sided tape, and they could add some more spare screws and parts. Especially the 2.6mm screws and small e clips are easily discarded, so a small help bag would come in handy.

Overall though I really enjoyed building this car. The quality of the carbon, plastics and aluminium is really impressive. The car also has some nice features, like the bulkheads with limited surface contact, stabilizer mounts, battery stoppers and suspension mount holders. The car is slop free and comes with a good set of dampers and springs as well.

In the next article (Click here) I’ll set up the car before we take it to its first race!


Build by David Joos

Thanks to Tonisport
Tonisport is the official Eu importer for Infinity, and you can contact him via www.tonisport.de