EBAY LOT: 09-03-02 An expensive pile of Kyosho tat.

This was one of my earliest Ebay purchases way back in February 2002 and as I’ve always had a perchance for large lots of RC cars or parts I just had to go for this one, now as this was such a long time ago now my memory of the event is a bit hazy and my transaction records are incomplete so a lot of the details are pure guess work on my part but I do vividly recall that this particular transaction wasn’t all it was cracked upto be, in fact it was to my first lesson in how troublesome certain Ebay sellers can seem.

Anyway I had seen the Auction and decided to go for it, the seller was a mister Brad Long (Twins83) I won the auction for about $60 or so (I can’t quite recall the exact amount) and I opened communications with the seller, from what I can recall his Email manner was far from perfect and he stated the total price including shipping to be $101.08 so I paid him via Paypal, but a few days later he emailed me back again and demanded a further $34 which annoyed me quite a bit as he had already quoted me with a reasonable shipping price, I think I made my reservation clear to him at the time but grudgingly paid the excess anyway.

According to the post date (I still have the box) it was dispatched on the 26th February and according to my records I received the parcel on the 9th March or rather I had to collect it from the local Parcel Force depot, which was about 20 miles away in Coventry for this was the first of many parcel I have received that got stopped by customs and had an excise excess charge stamped on it to the tune of £25.66 needless to say this got me right *****ed off at the time, and as this was the first time that this had happened to me, I had no idea why it had happened but it still made me very cross to know that a parcel that had originally cost me £74.87 had now increased to a whopping £125.92 : (

At least the price that Brad paid to ship the parcel was fairly consistent with the overall shipping price that I paid to him, it was UK Customs fault for the real price increase, which is probably why I left him a Positive feedback, though strangely I never received one in return from him? Still I learnt some valuable lessons from this transaction mostly about how to stop your international parcels encoring the wrath of UK Customs and Excise, the method that I have since develop to prevent this problem seems to be working : )

As for what I got in the parts lot, well for the most part it was mostly Kyosho stuff and Raider Chassis at that, after I’d sorted all the stuff out to see what exactly I had I found that there were 7 chassis in the lot and all in various states of repair, I had acquired 4 Raider chassis in total, there was an Outlaw Raider chassis there two as well as remains of a Rocky and either a Turbo Optima or a Salute chassis, there was also a huge mass of wheels and tires of around 20 in all, and there was bags of parts, plastic mouldings from other Kyosho vehicles, gears, shafts and numerous other small unidentifiable metal and plastic pieces of all different kinds.

I’ve since made a lot of use out of the various stuff that makes up this lot, but it’s the cars I made out of it that are the most impressive achievement, I have risen no less than 4 cars from this junk pile, my Original Blue Raider, the body came along with the lot so building a car from the remains was actually quite easy, Outlaw Raider Stadium Truck, this was a slightly more difficult task as I had to source a number of non-standard parts to rebuild, Rocky, the Rocky was a pretty much complete chassis, but again I had to get a number of spares before it came a car again.

The Optima chassis however really needs a story of its own, I was fortunate enough to be able to rebuild most of it from the parts taken from the parts lot although I’m not entirely sure it’s completely original, when I first got it the rear suspension and gearbox where detached and it was fitted with a belt drive, when I tried to rebuild the rear gear box I had to revert it back to chain drive as I did not have the rear belt diff sprocket, also I had managed to acquired a copy of the Turbo Optima Manual which seemed to fit in with how this chassis went together but there was supposed to be a special slipper clutch on the spur gear which I did not have and replaced with a fixed gear instead, the chassis is in a pretty poor condition and it’s missing the rear dog bones and the wheels fitted are Ultima rears as I did not have any Optima originals to spare.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it, I think I could continue it’s restoration but I will need a great number of parts to do that and I’m still not certain? Is it a Turbo or a Salute? I would really like to know, The rest of the cars have there own showroom entries so please take a look at those for more details, the rest of the lot still supplies me with many spares now and again, and although the circumstances behind its purchase are a bit dodgy, I’m still glad I bought it looking back in hindsight : )

UPDATE (7th July 2003) I have just sold the Optima chassis, months ago a guy called Felix had showed an interest in it, and the transaction had progressed vitually upto the point of him sending me the money when it all went silent, assuming he had sudderly lost interest I went on with life none the wiser, anyway the other day he sudderly contacts me and still wants to buy? so he sent off the money (£30) and I boxed the car up ready for dispatch today, but not before doing a final bit of work on it by fitting a motor and finding some rear driveshafts out for it, so its now a proper full rolling chassis, to be honest I couldn't give the car all the attention it deserved so hopefully I've sold it to a better home :)