Kyosho Turbo Optima Mid SE

I won this car on eBay a couple of weeks ago, and it arrived on Tuesday. Here are a few pics of it, before I start the tear-down/clean up.

You can tell by how poorly the body fits, that this Turbo Optima Mid SE has been stretched out.

Beneath the shrink wrap are some 1200mah Sanyo SCR's. The tires are Schumacher, with very little wear. The wheels look like they are ProLines, dyed red.

Here's a better look at the aftermarket chassis. It's actually in very good shape, with only minor wear on the bottom.

Here are the Platinum shocks, as well as a pretty decent high speed Futaba servo.

And here are the Novak ESC and receiver.

I'll be sure to take some better photos when I take it apart for a good cleaning.

[/Tim Sanderson]

Kyosho Raider Pro ARR

I picked up a Kyosho Raider Pro ARR (almost ready to run) today. To be honest, I never even knew that this version of Raider existed! It is an ARR that came 90% assembled. Apparently, this car was one of several that was run at the first Molson Indy race in Toronto Ontario, back in 1986. It must have been some sort of a promotional thing that happened before the race, much like Traxxas did with the Slash at at least on NHL(?) hockey game. If any one could confirm that they ran these at that race, I'd love to hear it!

As you can see from the photos, the body is not only painted box art, but is in extremely good shape. The only problem is the wing is a little beat up, and mounted to the rear body mount, due to the wing mounts being missing. I'll have to see if I can find the mounts on ebay or rc10talk.com.

The car has all it's bits and pieces, including the manual speed control. He told me the car still runs, but I didn't bother to test it out. I don't plan on ever running it. Although, it might be fun to take it for a few laps at Speed World! The bottom is scraped up a bit, but nothing too nasty.

Something interesting is this Raider says "MADE IN KOREA" on the bottom of the chassis, where my other first version Raider simply says "JAPAN". The motor is pretty interesting too... although I'm sure it's similar, the label is totally different that the original Raider's 'Le Mans 05' motor. I'm fairly certain they are both nothing more than fancier looking 540 silver cans.

It's in very rough shape, but it came with the original box. It's got all sorts of water and sun damage, but you can still read and see everything that is on it.

Not shown is the Challenger 250 radio, Aristo Craft 15 minute charger, instruction manual and Tamiya NiCd battery pack that came with the car.

[/Tim Sanderson]

Kyosho Optima 4WD Mini Z MB-010

How awesome is this!

A 1/24th scale, shaft drive 4WD Optima Mini Z! According to oOple.com, it should be released sometime in October. I definitely need to get my hands on one of these. Apparently "Lots of different bodies being lined up for the future" Hopefully they'll release the Turbo Optima, Salute & Rocky bodies.

I've never been a Mini Z fan, until now!

Photos taken from the kyoshosan website.

[/Tim Sanderson]

Losi 22

I finally made it back out to Speed World in Hamilton, Ontario, for the first time in like, a month. I've unofficially retired the RB5, in order to run new Losi 22.

I've got it set up for Carpet, meaning in it's mid motor configuration. Wow! This is an awesome buggy! I can push it as hard as I like, and don't have to worry about it traction rolling. And the amount of control you have while airborne (thanks to the 4 gear transmission) is incredible. After running a few dozen laps, I managed to get my lap times as low as 12.5 seconds... probably at least a half second faster than I would have been with the RB5. I can't wait for next Friday's club race!

Here's a quick little vid showing the 22 in action. Thanks to Super Pit co-founder Bill Jones for recording me as I ran some laps.

You can hear the diff barking throughout the video... that's because the diff was a bit of a mess when I got the car. I've been too lazy to change the diff balls yet. Eventually, I'll be dropping the Team Associated SC10's gear diff into it.

[/Tim Sanderson]