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bjorklo

Kyosho Optima Mid Restoration

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So I always wanted a Optima Mid actually since back in the days. Even dough I can remember that I never understood the others how they could consider anything else than Tamiya. But this car is such an awsome buggy, it got the right look and some very nice decals.

That said, my Optima Mid is no looker, but I hope I can turn it into an nice survivor car.

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I have disassembled the car, so that i can wash all the parts.

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I have already bought a new body (TBG) and decals (MCI Racing). I guess I could just have painted and applied decals to a new body and added some new tires, and this one would have looked stunning on the shelf, but I can’t just get myself to take such an short cut.

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Finally got some more done on this car. I have now taken and disambled all the parts. I also found the body and decals, i saw that I was missing the transmission cover and the belt covers so I have ordered them.

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I then took most of the aluminiums parts and polished them, I was thinking of replacing them with carbon parts, but since I don’t have the correct thickness I thought I just polish them. I should mention that I used Autosol metal polish and a dremel.

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Here is a 50/50 pictures where you can see the big differencs

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The bottom chassis looks really bad, and it has some very strong glue to it.

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In order to get the most of the glue of, I used Sitrus spray. It took allot but not all.

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After a hour rhe result turned out ok

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All the parts done.

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Got the parts from TBG to protect the belt

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I also found some time to do the mandatory wash of all the parts. So now I can start to assamble the car again :)

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Looking at the gears, to see how bad they really are, if there is no hope, or will they be ok for some more time? I was surprised to see that they weren’t that bad, it was actually just dirt on the gears that made them look to be in very bad condition.

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Here you can se a 50/50 picture which on the left side I have removed the dirt and not on the right side.

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The the next gears

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All this dirt was on the gear between the teeth..

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Done

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Then the last gear to clean and regrease.

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All done

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Started then to assamble the rear gearbox. Decided to put some ball-bearings instead of the non bearings.

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I noticed that the belt also had some dirt between the theets so needed to give it a wash.

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I forgot to take a picture from the inside, if I ever take it apart again I will try to remember to take a photo. all mounted togheter.

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Next step to do came to a rather quick stop. As I’m missing the triangle shaped part.

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Lucky for me, Mark Tootell, in the Facebook group «Kyosho vintage RC» helped me with some measurements. So I should be able to make one myself using carbon fiber.

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Got the bracket made, after the second attempt, I was a bit rusty and used a to big cutting disc on my dremel.

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Final result

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Got an instant problem when i was to mount the bracket and motor mount to the gearbox. It says in the manual that I should use 3 m3X45mm screws, but I could only find 2 of them. So off to the hardware store to get some.

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OK so i didn’t find any that was 45mm, so I bought 40mm in hope that it would be ok. Once I got home and tried it I realised that the manual was wrong since the 40mm was way to long.

So carried on to mount the spurgear.

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It’s comming nicely togheter, I think this chassis will be really nice.

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Was a bit concerned to mount the bottom belt cover since i almost had no double sided tape, but cutting it in thin pices gave me just enough. Off course I will not have enough for the 2 other belt covers, but I’m pretty sure I have more, the question is where? In the manual it said that I should use threadlock on the edges of the belt cover, but since this one will not see to much run time in my possesion I choose not to do so.

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Not sure what this part is called, but I don’t have the original tape to mount on it, but i found some sponge with glue from my Super Hotshot build.

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The result didn’t turn out to bad.

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Battery tray mounted

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This is how far I got in this time. starting to look like a chassis again.

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Did a quick polishing on the knuckles

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There is a little slack in the front suspension so I added a spacer

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One side almost done. The turnbuckles was a bit worn, so I painted them.

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So at this stage I should mount the front bumper. But I can’t get myself to mount the used very worn bumper, so I ordered a new one.

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Nice. I am doing something similar for a friends Lazer ZX. I could do with a couple of the king pins to complete. Seems hard to find at a sensible cost.

Do you find the transmission spins freely? This lazer feels like it has a lot of drag.

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Then I'm glad I have them and not need to find them :mellow:

Yeah so far it seems to be ok, but I will let you know once I have mounted the wheels and it's a bit easier to turn it.

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Did you need to remake that OPM5 triangle? 

I thought it was only to mount Kyosho's rotary MSC :) if you're not needing that then it's not required. 

 

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Yep confirmed :) it's only for MSC, nothing else vital is mounted to it.

And I believe it's only some lower spec Mid-based cars that got the MSC in the kitbox.

Is yours the basic Optima Mid? Which manual are you referring off?

Think the Turbo Mid (gold shocks? Or did Turbo have platinum. Turbo Mid countersunk chassis) didn't get any MSC provided. 

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1 minute ago, WillyChang said:

Yep confirmed :) it's only for MSC, nothing else vital is mounted to it.

And I believe it's only some lower spec Mid-based cars that got the MSC in the kitbox.

Is yours the basic Optima Mid? Which manual are you referring off?

Think the Turbo Mid (gold shocks? Or did Turbo have platinum. Turbo Mid countersunk chassis) didn't get any MSC provided. 

Pretty sure Turbo Mid had Gold Shocks, whereas the Turbo Mid SE had the platinums

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4 hours ago, WillyChang said:

Yep confirmed :) it's only for MSC, nothing else vital is mounted to it.

And I believe it's only some lower spec Mid-based cars that got the MSC in the kitbox.

Is yours the basic Optima Mid? Which manual are you referring off?

Think the Turbo Mid (gold shocks? Or did Turbo have platinum. Turbo Mid countersunk chassis) didn't get any MSC provided. 

Yeah I had to remake it, because it's not totally true that nothing else mount on it. you mount it to the upper chassis plate holder, which helps stiffen and hold the gearbox in place. and the upper chassis plate. That is why I made it, since I will not mount a mcs in this one, since it came with a Tekin esc. 

My car is the Optima Mid, and that's the manual I'm using for putting this car back togheter. 

4 hours ago, mtbkym01 said:

Pretty sure Turbo Mid had Gold Shocks, whereas the Turbo Mid SE had the platinums

The regular Optima Mid also had Gold shocks. 

optimamid_promo1.jpg

 

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A little more done as I mounted the rear suspension and the steering.

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This was not an easy task getting the e-clips on, since I don’t have e special tool for that.

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Then it was the steering mechanism turn

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55 minutes ago, GTodd said:

Dude very nice!!!! I really need one of these.

Thanks. Yeah, your should get one :P It's such a nice chassis/car.  

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4 hours ago, GTodd said:

Dude very nice!!!! I really need one of these.

This thread is making me want a Mid, and a Turbo Mid to go along with my Turbo Mid SE

3 hours ago, bjorklo said:

Thanks. Yeah, your should get one :P It's such a nice chassis/car.  

You’re doing a great job on this, I’m liking it a lot

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5 minutes ago, mtbkym01 said:

This thread is making me want a Mid, and a Turbo Mid to go along with my Turbo Mid SE

You’re doing a great job on this, I’m liking it a lot

Thanks mtbkym01

Those 3 cars together would have been awesome.   I got the Laser ZX, I think they will make a nice couple on the shelf. 

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The first thing I needed to do was to fix an mistake I did mounting the upper arms on the wrong side of the damper tower. It was Keith Clancy in the Kyosho vintage group on Facebook who was so kind to make me aware of this. So I moved them to the inside, and it looks so much better now

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I then moved on to the dampers, I disassemble them to clean them and to change oil. I did a light polish to them, but it didn’t do to much a change, but they atleast became clean.

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The black rear springs was very worn, so I painted them with a coat of black. The front springs was also not in that great condition, these was not black originally but I did paint them too. I think it didn’t turn out to bad.

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Then it was just to mount em onto the chassis. Originally there was these plastic nuts, but they were beyond the point where it was possible to save them, so I used regular black tinted nuts

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Looking really good, I must say

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Next up is to install the steering servo, so time to have a look at the electronics. I had to change the receiver as the one that came with the car is a 75mhz, and I’m not sure where my 75mhz controller is.

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Looking closer on the electronics they also for sure needs to be cleaned.

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It was a pain to remove all the double-sided tape, but it turned out ok. And the the rest also turned out ok after a clean.

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I then went ahead and mounted the steering servo. I must say I think Kyosho should have made a protection part in plastic for the part of the servo sticking outside the chassis. Because I could clearly see the wear on the servo due to this.

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This was as far as I got this time, hope to get some more done soon.

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Today I got allot of time to continue this project. I started with the upper deck, i did another clean and I polished it to make it shine again.

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Here is a 50/50 pictures showing the big difference

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Unfortunately the picture of the end result is not that good, but there is a “big” difference from before

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Next thing was to mount the belt protection shields, it was not the easiest part to mount these after the upper deck was mounted, but it has to since the belt goes inside them.

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This rubber part had to be mounted to protect the belt from the motor bay

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Belt protection done

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Then it was the motors turn. This motor is pretty dirty and it makes a strange sound I think.

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So I decided to try to do something about that. I thook the motor apart.

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Turns out that one of the ball bearings are worn out so that will need to be replaced.

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So I found a donor motor to take the bearing from, but I also took the brushes and a special washer

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All the parts cleaned and ready to be mounted again. I did also grease the ballberings and I grinded the brushess and rotor.

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Now it’s time to see if it sounds any better than before. And I think it actually does.

I noticed that I was missing one part that is supposed to be between the motor and the alu mount, so if anyone got one spare and would be interested in selling it to me please let me know.

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I also decided to change the conectors on the motor, to be more standard.

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Looks pretty nice, if you ask me

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It’s time to seal up the gears

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Looking good, real good

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Next up is the rest of the electronics, since there is a very limited space available I decided to mount the ESC where the servo for the msc would have been mounted.

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The receiver I mounted as shown in the maual

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When I was going to mount the wing mount I noticed another part I was missing, one of the two small square parts that goes in the middel of the mount. So agian, if anyone got one spare, please let me know. I just made an temporary one of a body post.

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Last step before starting to work on the body is to mount the wheels and tires, since I’m still waiting for the new tires to arrive, i just mounted the wheels.

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So that’s it for the chassis, just waiting for the tires and front bumper to finish the chassis. Once it’s all done I will take better pictures and show you

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I have been working on the body, wing and undercover, for a while now, but I must say that I’m not 100% pleased. Firstly I noticed that the body don’t seems to be the correct one, since this one have a “bubble” on one of the windows, please correct me if I’m wrong. A quick search shows that it’s most likely for the Turbo Optima Mid. I also had some issues with applying the decals, that made me not able to get mine to be identical to boxart. That said I have made my version for now, but I might at a later stage get a new body and decals and redo it.

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It was very hard to see the cut lines, so I drew them on, to make it a bit easier on the cutting.

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After I had cut some of the body I put the old body outside the new one to mark the special places I have to cut. But I noticed a big difference in lenght of the body. Does this have anything to do with short and long wheelsbase?

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I had to try it on, once I was finished cutting it and made the bodyholders hole.

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Painting done, I used Tamiya PS-1 White and random black I had.

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Started to apply the decals, and it was a nightmare to apply the big ones, I don’t know how many times I had to take it of and redo it. Later on I noticed that I had applied it a bit to much close to the front, by then it was to late to redo.

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After realising this mistake I searched for Kyosho official Optima Mid picture and found this.

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I also used Glenn Barclay’s Optima Mid as inspiration. More of that car could be seen by clicking picture of the car below 

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I then needed to try it on the chassis, just to see how it looks. And by the way the new bumper has arrived so I have mounted it.

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I also wanted to see how it, looks with tires, so i took the wheels and tires from my Vanquish, since the Kyosho tires still haven’t arrived. I think both the wheels and the tires could pull this of.

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So here is the finished body, the true original entusiast would not like this I could imagen. Again since I don’t have the original tires yet, i decided to use rear Egress tires, since they are very similar to the original one’s

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So what is next for this car? I will mount the rear swaybar, velcro between body and undercover, I will adjust the the steering and dampers. I also need to change the reciver since the one i had was a bit to large. Also I need to change the steering servo as it has stopped working for some strange reason? Mount the original tires once they arrive, and to some tirelettering in white. As mention before, i might get the correct body and a set of new decals to redo the body. Hopfully I can soon add a short very gentle running video, but time will show.

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This thing is killer! thanks for sharing the build, I am envious..... maybe someday in the future I will be lucky enough to get my hands on one.

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1 hour ago, Dtn8. said:

This thing is killer! thanks for sharing the build, I am envious..... maybe someday in the future I will be lucky enough to get my hands on one.

Thanks Dtn8, glad you like it. If we are lucky Kyosho will rerelease this model and it would be much easier to get hold of one and get new spare parts. 

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21 hours ago, bjorklo said:

Thanks Dtn8, glad you like it. If we are lucky Kyosho will rerelease this model and it would be much easier to get hold of one and get new spare parts. 

I totally agree & have my fingers crossed that there will be a rerelease.

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