Royal Ripper

This is my 4WD/4WS Royal Ripper that I originally purchased new back in the mid/late 1980's after wanting but not being able to afford a Supershot. It was an obscure buggy even BITD but, at $70 USD for a NIB kit, it was a good deal for a 15 y/o but boy was it cheap for a reason. As most now know, the Royal Ripper (and it's big truck-brother the Crusher) are infamous for their friction-laden drive trains and extremely fragile plastic parts. I can remember installing a Novak T4 ESC (now in one of my Astutes) and a Speedworks 427 4WD motor (now in my Nissan Skyline) to try to 'overpower' the friction problem but even that didn't work - no wheel spin at all! I wish I would've thought about ball bearings back then because this thing could've definitely used them. (Fortunately, I recently added them and the car really came to life as a result and is now able to spin all four wheels without a problem.) The rear gearbox of the original then broke very soon after that and, after numerous failed attempts to repair it (the wrong way), I gave up trying to fix it because it had been discontinued by then so I couldn't purchase any parts for it. However, I wanted to salvage what was left in an effort to keep the car running so I ended up removing the broken rear gearbox, fabricating a rudimentary/ugly back half of the chassis out of square brass tubing to support the rear suspension components and an 'open' gear box located inside the chassis close to the front gearbox using pieces of the cracked rear gearbox and some of the rear gears screwed together to eliminate any differential action. This effectively converted it to a FWD runner which surprisingly worked very well (could spin the front tires easily). It ultimately sat on the shelf for ~17 years as I couldn't decide whether to throw it out, sell it or try another hybrid fabricating experiment just for kicks. That was until I stumbled upon some insanely cheap replacement parts on Ebay that got me interested in restoring and running this rare car again. I have since accumulated many spare parts so, between that and some five-minute epoxy on hand, I think I'm prepared to handle anything that might break. It's now mechanically up and running after fitting a used rear gearbox with a Mabuchi 540 motor, roll cage, wing mount, an old (but reliable) tamiya MSC and vintage Aristocraft/Hitec electronics in a new top chassis deck. The only thing left to do is a new paint job for the body and driver using my wife's favorite color combination of white and gold (white body, gold SS stripes and helmet). It will primarily be for the wife to use since I now have a ton of spare parts/epoxy to fix it as needed. She got to try her hand at driving it for the first time recently, did quite well and really enjoyed herself so I think I'm on the way to adding a new r/c fan to the hobby. :-) I think you need some courage to run these cars today since there are very few parts available and they break very easily. There is a short YouTube video of this in action (with the wife driving) so check it out if you'd like. Thanks for looking and hope you enjoy.