Mrowka

The problem with most policies of insurance is that an insurance settlement covers market value only. Not cool, not sentimental value, not labor or love. Therefore, if your missing cars have anything rare, special or valuable about them, make sure the insurance company knows about it, and try to document what is valuable about these cars and that you owned them in that state. Otherwise, you see a super rare first edition buggy with a bunch of rare and collectible vintage hop up parts, a buggy that you raised from a couple of sprues and a mail-id catalog order. The insurance company sees an old r/c car that you can buy for $100 (plus shipping) on eBay. I'm sorry for your loss, my heartfelt sympathies to you. I'm not trying to be callous, just trying to help you get as much as you can if you can't recover your buggies themselves.

Whatever it is, you're confusing it with patent, which is what engineering concepts would fall under. Logos, design features and the like fall under trademark. Writings (including, among other things, computer programs and circuits) come under copyright. Anyway, there is a reason that people are able to legally make and sell auto parts (to the extent not patented and not using OE logos or otherwise infringing on trademark) and the OEs and their licensees cannot do anything about it or sue (which is often mandatory under manufacturing licenses). In other words, I can copy the OE design for, say, a con rod, as long as the design is not patented and I don't use someone's else's trademark. The OE can't say boo. BTW, IP law in England and most other countries is heavily influenced by US IP law. IP rights, as not being natural property rights, are entirely statutory in nature (in other words, the only reason you have IP is because the legislature -Parliament, in your case, says so.) Common law has nothing to do with it, except in interpretation of the legislative act.

Makes sense.

BDAD?

You are confusing patent and trademark. "Engineering concepts" are patented all the time. That's sort of the basis of most patents. The fact that something is naturally occurring doesn't mean that its specific use cannot be patented. An use has to only be (under US law) novel, non-obvious and useful.

Those parts may or may not fit the same, but that doesn't mean that the OE has a claim for infringement. BTW, intellectual property rights are not considered "natural" property rights, in that the only reason IP exists at all is because the law says so, and not only that, but the law also states that those property rights don't last forever. Otherwise, we'd have to pay royalties to whoever it was that invented the wheel, fire, etc..

Copying a design is infringement (not thievery) only if the design is a trademark or copyrighted. Otherwise, there would be no non-OEM auto parts, for instance.

Why the hate for ball diffs? That is an honest question.

OTW101

Not an option at this time. It took me months to find one ball diff kit for sale. I guess I could wait until I scrounge up a second one, or see if I can con my friends in Europe into ordering me one and shipping it to the States. *If* I even can find one in Europe, that is. The ball diff kit is out of stock at RCMart, Plaza Japan, etc.. Or just build the Javelin the way it is.

A lot of it depends on the buggy. For instance, the Kyosho Turbo Optima Gold Edition looks like a migraine headache, IMHO, with the gold hardware and the red, white and black box art color scheme. Red, white and black look fine on a buggy with silver hardware, again, IMHO.

And a 4WD buggy to put it in, would you put it in the front or rear? Or neither? The car in question is another Javelin re re, and only after scouring the internet for months have I been able to to find only one OTW101 ball diff kit. Planned motor is at this time a HW 13.5T brushless, if that affects anything.

What somebody also needs to do is to get us a ball diff for the Fox.

There aren't many parts for an OG Kyosho that fit a re re and vice versa. If you need parts for an original, Fireboy125 on eBay has a wide selection and is lots of help and advice.

I've seen an aluminum sorta pan-chassis conversion for the Fox.