Vintage RC Mags

This is just a quick post to show the vintage (and a few not-so-vintage) RC magazines I picked up tonight. I haven't really gone through through them yet, but it looks like there are mags from at least the early 80's, into the 2000's. (4 out of 5 of these magazines are even in plastic sleeves) So far, I've seen some RC Car Action, RC Model Cars, ROAR Rev-Up, Radio Control Car Racer, Radio Control Modeler... even some newer Xreme RC. When I get the time, I'll go through them better, maybe catalog what's there. I may even PDF some of the older ones...
Here's a pic of the haul. (excuse the quality... I had to use my video camera to take the photo)

LeMans 240ST

Once again, my buddy Joe Bielski has hooked me up with another bit of vintage Kyosho goodness. He hooked me up with a Kyosho LeMans 240ST. This, along with the Kyosho Gold shocks he gave me, is going into my Ultima. Looks like I'll have to buy Joe a case of beer.

LeMans 240ST specs:
cage 540 type / 4 min race / 22Tx1 / 0.80mm / bronze bushing / 24.000rpm / 7.2-8.4V

Sometime this week I should be getting my fiberglass upper plate & rear shock tower I ordered from Dave (aka DW911) from RC10talk.com. I've cleaned all the bits and pieces of the Ultima, so once I have the new parts, I can put it all back together again. I was thinking of putting the original mechanical speed control into this buggy, but I'm not sure if it would hold up to the 240ST. I think the Ultima II I bought on Friday comes with an old Novak ESC. I might just put that into it instead.

[/Tim Sanderson]

2 ebay scores

I picked up a couple of new vintage projects over the past week or two. All of these photos are from the ebay auctions... I won't receive the cars themselves for a another week or so.
The first was a Kyosho Raider:

Apparently, the tires on the back of this Raider are Proline Octa-Grabs. Here's an old video giving a quick run through of the Raiders assembly. Part 1 of 4:

The second auction I won this past Friday night. I'm not quite sure what is is, it seems to be made from several different cars. The gearbox and suspension arms look like they come from an Ultima, while the shocks might be from one of the old Traxxas cars. I'm not sure what the deal is with the chassis... it has an upper deck, with some sort of wacky steering servo setup. There is also another set of front & rear wheels/tires.

Speaking of ebay, I've discovered a better method of paying for things online. I've been using PayPal's bank method, which is quite a pain in the ass. It takes far too long for the payment to be taken from your bank account. It's been taking over a week to go from auction win to payment processing. On top of that, I've had problems with PayPal not withdrawing payment when they were supposed to. The best option is to link a credit card to your PayPal account in order to make the payment go through instantly. The only problem is credit cards and I don't get along too well, so I prefer not to have any. My solution to this was to get a prepaid Titanium + Visa card from Money mart, so then upon winning an auction, I can load up with cash and use to immediately pay for my purchase. It costs $20 initially, then costs something like $2 to load up. Once it's loaded, I can immediately link the card to my PayPal account. Haza!

[/Tim Sanderson]

Ultima red shocks

I've made few changes to the blog The only one the average reader will notice is that I have enabled anonymous commenting, so that anyone can comment on what they read here. Please feel free to post your likes/dislikes/turn-ons about anything you read here. :)

I've cleaned up the Ultima parts, and I'm just about ready to put 'er back together again. All I am waiting for are the new upper plate and taller rear shock tower that I ordered from an rc10talk.com guy named 'DW911'. The upper plate is to replace the busted one that came with the car. The taller rear shock tower is so I can install a set of Kyosho gold shocks that I got from Joe Bielski a couple of weeks go. (Go Team Venture!)

Even though I don't plan on using them, I figured I'd still spruce up the original/stock red shocks. As you can see they are little dirty and scratched up. What you can't see is one of the collars is broken. A couple of the shafts have some slight binding, making shock travel a little sticky. Hopefully it's just a matter of cleaning out/oiling the o-rings to free up the movement.

After wrestleing with them a little bit, I finally managed to get the bottoms unscrewed from the bottom of the shocks. After pulling out the shaft/piston, I realized it was quite a bit different than modern 2 piece shaft/piston unit. (see inset) The piston and shaft are one piece, with no holes in what would be the piston. I guess the piston is quite a bit smaller in diameter than the shock body, allowing the oil to pass around the outside of the piston, instead of passing through the holes. (I guess it's a good thing I decided to install the much better gold shocks)

Tim Sanderson

Ultima teardown part 1

I started the teardown of the Ultima this weekend. Here are some of the photos:

*EDIT* I added a few photos I forgot to add to the original post *EDIT*

Tim Sanderson

Upcoming Projects

I've been ready to tackle a couple of projects this week, but have decided to wait until I pick up my 'new' camera this weekend. (a Nikon D70) I figured I'd wait until I could take some much better photos.
The first project will be the tear-down & cleaning of the Ultima. The second will be a little more ambitious. I'm going to be converting my RB5 into a mid motor, saddle pack chassis. I've already got the basic chassis layout drawn up in CAD, and bought some 3mm thick Plexiglas to make the mock up/prototype out of. The final chassis will be made out of something like carbon fiber or fiber glass. Hopefully I'll have my first mock up ready this weekend.
Tim Sanderson.