Mrowka

The kingpin bushings so I can fix the front hub on my white Javelin. Kyosho America shipped the day I ordered and the USPS delivered within 48 hours. And I live in a state which is in the middle of nowhere, a long ways from Kyosho America.

Even if you have more motor than skill (for the time being) some transmitters let you limit the throttle settings until you learn to handle the power.

Hey, my kidlet insists on "helping" me fix my copters and buggies.

I just tested with a re re Turbo Optima converted to a Javelin. The Turbo Optima body does not clear the Javelin roll bar.

Of course.

Took one of my Javelins out, together with my little man. Said child managed to crash the Javelin and broke a front hub.

I was an teenager in the mid-1980s, but I didn't have a Tamiya or any other kind of buggy then. I suppose, looking back, that it wasn't so much Tamiya's peak years as much as it was for r/c cars in general. Revolutionary changes were coming every few months; companies (not just Tamiya) were trying new things and nobody really knew what would work or when, so experimentation and improvisation wwre the key. New companies came and went, and all had radically ways of making a buggy. Probably something similar was happening with drivers at that time as well. By contrast, from what I can tell, today's r/c buggy scene is more corporate, more professional, more homogeneous. Everyone involved knows everyone else and what they are up to, and most of the companies' products are fairly similar to their competitors. Radical changes are rare, and evolution, not revolution drives those changes. We can argue later whether these things are good or bad.

I did 15K in the rear differential, 10K in the front. This gets a result prone to tail-sliding, which is a good or bad thing, depending on what you like. With alignment at factory specs, it had power oversteer well nigh undrivable. With a bit more front toe-out, it is fun and easily controlled. Others have reported good results with 10K in front and 7K in the rear.

After trying softer front springs on on of my Javelins last week and deciding that I didn't like it, I tried stiffer rear springs. That and a click more motor timing made life real interesting on gravel. Wheelie city. Then my son tore a tire off the wheel. We took the Javelin home and installed a different set of wheels and bashed around the backyard. By that time, the battery was ready on my Fox. Soon after starting out, I noticed a clicking sound, every time I put it into reverse. Looks like I'll be opening up the transmission on the Fox....

I have a Turbo Optima re re (converted to a Javelin) with a powerful ARRMA ESC and a hot Fuze brushless motor. Probably about a 7T. Fast and reliable on 2S. I don't know that I'd try it on an OG Kyosho, however. Mainly because parts are harder to come by and more expensive.

Kyosho makes aluminum rear bearing carriers for the Optima/Javelin re re. OTW117GM. I'd like to get my hot little hands on a set, but more than that I would want OTW125 universal joint swing arm shafts. (Hint hint please please!)

Start by seeing whether you get a weird sound or resistance when you roll the buggy on the carpet with with everything turned off. If you get a noise or unexpected rolling resistance, disconnect the motor and see what, if anything, changes. Keep working backwards through the drivetrain until you isolate the problem. Do not drive it until you fix whatever is wrong. I don't know anything about this particular Tamiya model, but I had something similar in a Kyosho Javelin last week. Turned out to be a motor pinion. Go figure. Also, cheaper motors are typically not rebuildable. That doesn't mean that they are necessarily bad, just sorta disposable.

Your guess is as good as mine, although this particular pinion seemed to be working just dandy, until it wasn't. So I am not sure what could turn a circular pinion eccentric as part of normal operation. For that matter, it doesn't explain how a grub screw could suddenly get wobbly, either.

Took one of my Javelins out yesterday for a bit of light bashing. All went according to plan, when I started getting a whining noise.The drivetrain was sticking whenever the pinion was at a particular spot, but when I disconnected the motor, everything was smooth again. I took off the pinion gear (30T 45p Robinson) and saw no obvious damage or wear. The motor worked fine with the pinion gear off. Nor could I find anything wrong with the spur or counter gears. But the noise quickly started up again when I put everything back together. Having no good ideas, I took the car home and installed another Robinson pinion (29T) and everything worked fine again. Go figure. Looking at the original Robinson gear, I noticed that the grub screw is *really* loose and wobbly in the hole (no matter how far down it is) and the hex in the grub is a bit stripped. I compared with another pinion to see if it was just my imagination. The only thing I can think of is that maybe the grub screw was so wobbly that it allowed the pinion to move, relative to the flat spot on the motor shaft, with the result that the pinion was no longer centered, relative to the motor shaft. But not so wobbly that it would spin on the shaft. Does this make any sense? Or does anyone have a better explanation?

Odd. Lunsford titanium turnbuckles aren't that much more dough on US eBay, and I recently bought Kyosho titanium turnbuckles for about $5.00 a pair.