BardsDirge

it's a standard servo with the tabs shaved off. 'micro' servos back then weren't race worthy.

i have just 1 block, the front one, reversed. my old old futaba standard servo is indeed crammed in tight against the frame. it worked though. i've seen other ultimas with the front mount hole drilled ~3/8ths to the right. twisting the servo clockwise enough. it puts the hole in the center of the next ridge over in the chassis. personally, if i was going to start drilling i'd just convert to the new ultimas' setup with the servo turned 90°. once you've done that you have room to run all those huge lipo hardpacks inline. [your ultima hasn't shown you what it can do till you take a dremel to your rear bulkhead and saw out the front of it to get that battery all the way back]

what i was trying to say is... you know the blocks that connect the chassis to the mounting tabs of the servo, right? the instructions say to put those blocks under the servo's tabs, towards the 'bottom' of the servo. turn them around. mount the blocks on the other side of the servo's tabs, the same side as the servo horn instead. it'll move your servo to the side enough that you can run straight adjustable turnbuckles instead of the thin bent linkage garbage. --- unfortunately my ultima has been waiting to be reassembled since i became bedridden in 09. i'm sorry i can't offer you more guidance visually. i had enough parts to build 3 ultimas. my old graphite serious business racer. A&L belt tranny, duratrax graphite chassis, traxxas shocks, RC10 bellcranks, everything ridiculously lightened. another with the stock body. in-line battery, a tamiya F1 servo mount, & 'pro xl' tranny. 4 stock front shocks, aluminum chassis, & hot trick stuff arms, all polished to silver for a scale looking "sand rail" build complete with grasshopper wheels. [looked small compared to modern buggies very scale besides a Slash] and a 'pro xl' chassis mixed with the "scale series" ferrari ultima. i flipped the front arms to stretch it to fit an HPI super scale F-150 truck body which was huge. was going to buy a trailer and pull the sand rail on it. was going to retire them with a real 'race team' look.

not the pitch from 32 to 48! no no... i meant that i used american 32p in my japanese 32p cars. it's the module or whatever it's properly called. 04 to 06...? something like that. all my tamiyas and my ultima ran empirical 32p instead of metric 32p. the taper of each tooth changed slightly but i had no problems.

you can mount your steering servo off center by putting the servo mounts on the top of the servo's tabs instead of the bottom. then run a regular straight turnbuckle [adjustable] at the furthest radius of your horn. everything will clear and you can adjust the turnbuckle length easily.. you can even do the offset to only the front mount so your servo is mounted ~10º clockwise.

oh i'm very sorry i mistook you for another user. you're the shaft driven chassis with 4 shocks. exact same advice though i spent my teen years racing guys in there 50's with unlimited budgets. i had to learn all the tricks to keep my old cars running. something is terrible wrong. you got it used, right? somebody used the wrong shafts or the wrong bushings. the gear should not move around the bushings at all. this is the key to all your problems. do you have calipers to measure everything? let's see were things went wrong. you're right, it is time to let her retire. not in this condition though.

it's probably too late for bearings. the shafts will be too worn to hold them true. replace the shafts or place very thin clear tapeee around the old sharts where you see the wear. then use i razor to trim the excess and true them up. if the tape was too thick just shave off half so the tap covers the shaft like C, or (, instead of O :) see? it will move the gear 0.15mm at the worst, but as long as it sits parallel to the other gears and it's riding clean and tight on the bearing, the shifted spacing doesn't hurt. in fact, it can help. just place the tape so you're moving the gear closer to it's neighbor. you'll take away some slop. now the pinion. of course you already know that kyosho and tamiya use different modules then american 'metric' gears, right? so try using kyosho branded pinions when you can. but they don't need to be specific to the 'rocky'. if you only find steel pinions in american 32p use them instead though. the plastic will morph to match if you let it run without load to break it in. slow. no heat. just flip her upside down and go half throttle for a battery or 2. easier to plug a jury-rigged 4 cell pack of dying household batteries directly into the motor. 2nd, that chart they put in the manual recommends very punchy gearing for competitive racing on japan's typically tight, complicated courses. it's very low gearing ratio for just casual driving. [side note : my 87 turbo ultima came geared so low i went from 16t to 22t and barely noticed lower acceleration. maybe 5 car lengths to reach top speed in high traction surfaces. no stress on the electronics though. if anything i relieved stress because when it was geared that low i was constantly on the throttle. with the higher gear i spent more time coasting through turns. anyway...] gear her up! not for speed, but to increase the contact points on your gears. bigger gears, more teeth contacting eachother, less burden on each tooth. i don't know what you meant about your mesh being hard to adjust [from the chassis flex?] i don't remember how rocky & turbo rocky mounted the motor. once you got a big f---in pinion in, adjust the mesh so the spur barely has wiggle room without the pinion moving. it should only wiggle half a degree.

the entire thing? you may as well buy the kit just for the savings and spare parts. if you really want to pick through the parts list piece by piece just go to kyosho's site and download the instruction manual. the #s are all nicely indexed and drawn. enjoy your build :)

the cap is fake?! the cap is fake. kyosho, you smeg. sorry OP.

the gold is just a scaled up red that adds a top cap. the greater volume and top diaphragm makes tuning more forgiving and proper pressurizing less tedious of a task. the reds look slightly better to me. they're more scale if the anodizing is stripped off and a short spring is used on the rear. other than that, golds are far superior.

you mean, rere reds compared to original gold? or rere compared to rere?

the original ultima wheels are 1.9 diameter. frog/hornet tires are way to tight. the axles are 4mm so you can change the fronts to any rim just by fitting a bearing with an inner diameter off 4mm or change the front axle to 5mm with a CRP kit on ebay.

the gears from a rere ultima, and even rere optima, will fit an original ultima just fine. you need to go all or nothing though as the gears are of different pitch and slightly different diameter.

you never know when you might need a mono-shock chassis for a hardbody project. let the little girl dance. she's no optima mid but she's well balanced and very forgiving.

...uhmmm... the biggest buggy wheels back then were 1.9" and i believe the raider had smaller rear wheels; even the pro. a full set of ultima re-re front & rear rims and tires will certainly work but tamiya sets will run cheaper and only require a different front bearing to fit. i don't know where 4x11mm are now but we had them back then. tower didn't have them... hmmm... OP, ignore my ***. just get ultima re-re front & rear rims and tires. i'm being stupid. time = $$$ anyway so take the easy route.