I had some massive issues with the Speedix build when I took it out to "maiden" flight and basically got the hump with the whole flying thing and decided to take a break (hence why I haven't been online for a monthish)

Anyway I decided over the Christmas break I'd start the process of going through all my land-based RC that I haven't really touched for about 10 years or so.  Was an awesome week of just tinkering with RC stuff in the garage and enjoying using them again.

I'll start putting all the "stories" of them here but in the mean time here's a bit of a video of one of them - a HSP 1/8th nitro that I never managed to get working right out of the "Ready-to-Run" box that now starts and runs as it should  

My sense of scale was all out looking at the pic, I thought - I wonder if Aaron has put the same ford engine from the Caterham / Lotus 7 into a tractor!?

(02-Jan-2018, 03:28 AM)Tom BD Bad Wrote: My sense of scale was all out looking at the pic, I thought - I wonder if Aaron has put the same ford engine from the Caterham / Lotus 7 into a tractor!?

lol

Since around 2008 I've pretty much not touched any of my RC stuff but last year (2016) I started back into the hobby by building a few quadcopters and trying to learn to fly.

After the Speedix failure I wanted to take a break from quads.


I don't want to buy anything new, so instead am going to get this old gear going again and "restore" to basher status. Might chuck on fresh (modern) radio gear through as my old stuff is seriously outdated and probably not as reliable as it should be.

Over Christmas I decided to resurrect the Nitro stuff - at least to the point of knowing whats broken and getting some parts ordered. I can run the engines during the day at home which will only slightly piss off the neighbours instead of doing it in the evenings after work 

Kyosho PureTenGP Spider Mk2 4WD
This was given to me years ago as a non-runner. No documentation, a very rough Subaru WRX body (2-door WRC circa 1998) and only three branded parts. It had a Kyosho front bumper and a CEN 0.12 engine with a Tamiya muffler.
Back in the day I never really worked out what it was, I was pretty sure it was a Kyosho chassis but not sure if it was genuine or a clone.  

As it turns out it's a Genuine Kyosho, just a fairly uncommon chassis with an incorrect engine. How uncommon? Well there's no manuals available direct from Kyosho, I luckily found a scan of a rather tatty one via some serious google luck.

http://www.rcscrapyard.net/au/kyosho...pider-mkii.htm

The engine it should have:  http://kyosho.com/jpn/support/instru...11_gs11r_m.pdf
--
When it came to me I was told the clutch was stuffed, but otherwise it was fine. Sure a front dogbone was falling out, a drive belt (it has 3) was missing and it was covered in a thick layer of black dirt and congealed nitro fuel, obviously it was "fine". 

I put it aside.

A few years ago I pulled it out and gave it a semi-good clean. I went to town with the Export Degreaser and got a good amount of the crud off. Filled the motor with WD40 and turned it over a bit, then put it aside again.  

Somewhere between then and now I think I've lost the body shell.

Yesterday I finally pulled the motor off to dismember the clutch.  
Yep, the plastic shoes are munted and the spring is missing. Naturally these need to come from distant lands (or within Australia for only double the price). I've also decided to get a new flywheel and clutch bell as the pinion teeth are really worn and the flywheel didn't match the pics (its a CEN flywheel I think):

- AB-15 Clutch Shoes
- AB-17 Clutch Spring
- FD-21 Flywheel Set
- SD-53 Clutch Bell

All in it's about AUD55 ex-Japan. All NOS parts

As the chassis is belt-drive, and there's a belt missing I figured I had better get fresh belts. Unlike the hard parts which NOS is OK I don't really trust that a belt which has been sitting around for ~15 years to be "as new". So a set of "Tough Racing" TM-17 and SP-53 belts are coming from Korea. AUD23 down for those.

The rest of the chassis is visually complete, except for one missing screw & nut on the front bumper. The original builder wasn't the neatest operator and the motor install has a few chewed up screws. I think in time I'll get a few genuine screw bags to replace these, but despite being cheap in Japan (200Y) the postage is always cranked up to a point where 10 screws for AUD15 is just silly.

I'll ignore the motor for now and keep cleaning up the chassis now that the motor is off. Will degrease it some more and maybe nail it with the pressure washer to get the crap out of the screw heads and other nooks. Heck I might do the same to the engine!

For some reason I think I'll find that the CEN engine is toast, it turns over freely by hand and I managed to un-stick the carb barrel so I guess there isn't anything to lose giving it a crank over. Just have to find some crystals for the radio gear (29MHz! luckily I have a 29Mhz stick transmitter but have my doubts whether I have a matched crystal pair) otherwise there another job to be done finding a TX/RX combo from my boxes of stuff. Might have to raid the TA-03 for stuff...

---

And now for some pics...


Looks OK from here..


Minus dog bone, shocks are probably dry and a little less congealed muck that the rear.


Rear uprights to upper arms wobble a bit and the shocks need attention/rebuilding.


Engine looks salvageable, just needs (more) cleaning


What’s left of the clutch!

Turns out the rear upper arm wobble is due to missing 5.8mm balls. I'm pretty sure I have spares of those or I can make a new adjustable arm up from my spares pile.

Decided to do a bit more with this tonight so cleaned the chassis some more and did a quick service of the dampers.


Neatened up all the sprue dags, cleaned, drained old oil, filled with fresh oil and reassembled correctly.

All by one were mostly filled with oil - just not enough - and the 4th was close to empty. They all are a bit smoother now.



Found some 5.8mm pillow balls for the upper rear arms. I scavenged them from a stock suspension spring off a Kyosho Mini-Inferno clone. Fitted perfectly and best price ever.

While refitting the front dog bone I realised why it fell out, the lower king pin had dropped out.

Apparently super common so when the replacements arrive I’ll pull all 4 and locktite into place.




Started to put the motor back together enough so I can have a go at starting it. Can’t work out how the tank gets pressurised with the muffler setup.

Will also do a servo Test and see if they’re up to the task.

I washed the car this morning and then didn’t really leave the garage, instead I kept tinkering with this.



I pulled the muffler apart last night and left it soaking in some Orange Agent to break down the filth on it.


This is kind of a before and after, the housing in the right was fully immersed and brushed clean. The one on the left has more varnish type of crud on it and it’s tough going.


This leads to the next problem, the muffler is meant to have a small nipple on the end of housing - it should be on the left of the centre hole of the top piece. It’s not. Instead it seems to be blanked off.


Yep some clown has wound in a self tapper, which has then lost its head. If this was a typical cheap hobby screw it’d be made of a drillable metal and I’d just drill it out. Not my lucky day.


In the end I drilled a small divot in the snapped end. Used pliers and a screw driver to wiggle it from the inside and then finally used a small drift and a hammer and punched it through.

The nipples come in various thread sizes (up to M5) so I could afford to be brutal. I then tapped the hole it left with an M3 thread and it’s all good.

Not much else I can do on the motor now until I get more parts (like that nipple) and some fuel line.

The clutch parts etc are not going to turn up soon, but maybe after the public holidays I’ll got out to a local hobby shop and see if they have some bits I can use.

In the mean time I remounted the flywheel after doing a fix on the spacer. It turns out The CEN engine has a mix of Kyosho and CEN bits and the don’t always work out well.

When I first took the motor off I thought the crankshaft or clutch Bell was bent as the pinion gears were wobbling about 2mm “off centre” as it turned over.


The cause was much simpler, the crank has a shoulder that is proud of the bearing face. Unfortunately the Kyosho flywheel spacer doesn’t accomodate this, but the alloy CEN spacer does, but without the Kyosho spacer the clutch doesn’t position correctly.

Out with the small files and I tidied up the mess or days where it had been pinched up, and deformed, then using a round file created notches for the shoulder. It now sits flush as it should.




At this point I whacked the flywheel on and refitted the exhaust.



Exhaust has come up ok. Could clean it more but really just want to drive this thing!

---

Turning back to the chassis, the screws holding the motor mount plate in place had trashed heads, so I grabbed some M3 socket heads and swapped them over. Great idea except the 4th hole is stripped. First though was to put a nyloc on it, but of the 4 positions it’s the only one where a nut would foul. In this case the front belt drive pulley.



This leaves me with two choices; tap them all out to M4 and introduce a new fastener size, buy a new motor mount plate. A third option is to leave it as is for now.

I’ll also be using the socket heads to mount the motor where the time comes.

Another thing that cropped up is one of the dogbones in the rear was really badly bent. I’m not entirely sure how it got that bad when there’s no other signs of severe damage. I can only presume a big crash and some plastics were replaced but the extra $10 for a pair of dogbones was too much.

Straightened out as best I could but ordered a replacement pair. I think I have some 45mm shafts from another thing but couldn’t be stuffed trying to find them.

---

And I’m done with this until some parts arrive (or I slum it at the only local shop when they open)



I pulled off the original 29Mhz AM receiver and chucked it in the bin as I have this super retro Futaba radio that I bought back in the 90’s that I have the matching receiver for. Despite the plastic being heavily stained (will have to bleach the bromine off it) it works well.

Re-laid all the wiring and found that the battery pack isn’t delivering power - used another and voila. The servos all work nice and smooth. I was able to reset the servo horn position for the throttle/brake so once the clutch parts are here all that will be left is the throttle linkage adjustment.

I’m a slow learner so will repeat this mistake again.

However the CEN engine in the Kyosho sputtered into life today!



It’s a single needle carb and I have no manuals (nor could I find anything online) so it’s been a case of meddling with witchcraft.

---

In for a ....

Grabbed the pair of alloy knuckles as a “vintage” hop up they’re quite cool to have.

Also made an offer on the “wreck”. Will see how that comes back.

Main reason is that I really need to factory exhaust. The Tamiya muffler wedges on the chassis and also the outlet doesn’t pass neatly out to the rear.

Neither will stop me caning the crap out of this thing but it does dampen the idea of making a nice body for it.

The other little I’ve fixed is the body mounts.

For some reason the front and rear body mounts were swapped.

I love that Futaba radio, it looks like some of the Bang and Olufsen stuff from that era, classic!

It took a couple of weeks to arriver but the wreck turned up during the week. 


This is the pic of it the seller used.  I could see it had the correct muffler and a few other parts that are hard to get so treating it as a parts donor would be OK.  The pull start was listed as broken, but the engine as having compression.  The parts for the GS11R that it should be are fairly uncommon but there's a few stores with Pullstarts and really only the heads are completely unobtainium.




It is exactly as the seller described and I’m pretty stoked.  From the pics and description I had I expected some things to be missing and broke. 
The first glance shortlist:
- Pullstart spring mechanism (a couple in Australia and a couple worldwide)
- Missing air filter (available new ex-japan)
- Missing front bumper (new available from a few stores in Australia and worldwide)
- Missing random screws, a spring retainer and partial body mounts.
- Missing silicon exhaust dump pipe (available ex-japan or use aftermarket)

The good bits:
- Has complete and correct engine which turns over and has some compression
- Clutch and bellhousing seem serviceable and not excessively worn (gear wear is negligible)
- Ugly wheels with new tyres
- has the chassis bumpers that my original one is missing
- has the tall 9? fin cooling head
- driveline seems tight
- servos move smoothly when pushed - needs radio gear.
- all plastics parts seem intact and attached correctly
- fuel tank is clean internally 

Other observations:
It’s an earlier generation of the chassis as the pullstart is red (later are black).  
The shock housing tops are blue not gold like my “WRX” kit.
Upper deck is black anodised alloy not silver like mine.

There’s some pitting corrosion on the alloy parts of the motor and a lot of dirt through the chassis but nowhere near the fuel leak sludge my original one had.  

I may have gotten enthusiastic one evening during the week...




Pulled the motor off the Wreck, gave the remaining chassis bits a decent start of a clean and put aside to dry.

Looks like the chassis needs some brake and linkage parts (SP51 and FD65 respectively).  Luckily they’re both quite available.





Engine had crud caked on.  Decided to have a tinker and pop the pull start off.



May as well take the clutch apart too (it’s in near perfect condition)



Managed to fix the pull start!  Turns out the cord and spring are used but not destroyed so I cleaned up the case, soaked and scrubbed out what I could and the cord now retracts back reasonably well, certainly it’s good enough!  But that wasn’t the real problem.  The oneway bearing has seized.  So it and the Shaft got to bathe in WD40 for a while.  The bearing came good, again not great but good.



I tried a few things to give it a quick clean and Autosmart G101 seemed to work best.  I wasn’t interested in perfect, more like “good enough” as I don’t know how good this motor is I don’t want to overdo the care right now.

I fully stripped the carb as well and cleaned it out, seals all seem ok which is nice.  Internally I didn’t do much expect flood the case (and rotating assembly) with WD40 both during and after the cleaning process.  It’s pretty clean and I didn’t want to strip this more than I had to!

It really has come up nice for the amount of effort I’ve put in.

It always amazes me how much stuff is around online once you start looking.  Case point this exploded diagram in PDF form.  http://buyrc.co.kr/upload/product_manual..._image.pdf  

From this I've been able to get part numbers for generic items that aren't listed in the scanned manual I have.  Leading in-turn to me ordering the correct air filter, battery clamp zip-ties and brake linkage parts from Hobby Japan on eBay (which charges the Japanese RRP and ships very reasonably).  All that was about AUD30 delivered.  

The other thing thats starting to become quite a bonus is unlike eBay sellers the few hobby stores in Australia that have their inventory online and have stock of some of these old parts also don't sell on eBay where "vintage" parts are quite expensive.  So some of the bits like a front bumper for the wreck are about AUD50-60 plus postage via eBay, but are only AUD20 from a store here plus about AUD10 postage. 

Got a few sources (usually with only one or two of each part) lined up now and will buy bits as needed for the restoration of the wreck and finishing touches for the other.  The wreck looks like it will be a total spend of about AUD180 to be back up and running (sans radio and body) and my first one will be closer to AUD250, but I'll have some common spares left over and three engines in that should be all serviceable for fun use.

To mix things up a bit I had been tinkering on and off with the CEN engined Spider.  


Drive belt on.  Won’t replace the other two until necessary.


New Kyosho Flywheel, clutch shoes and clutch spring.


Ready to slip on the clutch bell and test this out!



Oh for f---s sake!

Kicked it over out the back of the garage and was able to get a consistent enough idle to be comfortable chucking it onto the driveway.  A bit more running and a few stalls - this single needle thing really does take some stuffing with to get tuned apparently.

Nekminnit pull start doesn't recoil.  Get it back together and have another go.

Nope the spring won’t hold position and after a couple more tries the cord fails.  Luckily it's one of the few parts still available.  So USD25 later it's on its way from Taiwan.  I also tracked down a Piston and Sleeve pair from the UK which is coming for about UKP25.  That should freshen the motor up sufficiently for it to actually run correctly which would appear to be real reason why it's untunable..  

I also jumped onto Aliexpress and grabbed a spare 12CX engine which is a vague clone of the Kyosho GS12 engine.  It was AUD65 delivered and these small bore motors are getting harder to find at decent prices in the correct carb configuration.  I actually ordered this before the piston and sleeve so it may end up being nothing but a "spare" or it'll go into the Wreck so we can preserve the GS11R.


The 12CX...

With the Kyosho dead for a bit I drained the fuel tank and used that to part fill the HSP truck.

When I parked the truck last it was dirty but running well, maybe a bit rich on the top end but running well.

Hmmm was a bit of a bitch to start and seemed a bit richer than last time.  But went out and cut some doughnuts and then it sputtered to a really rich stop.

Fuel dripping from the mid-needle, and the high speed needle vibrated out. 

FFS

Wound the high speed back in to a safe but rich setting and bashed through the rest of the tank.  

Gave it a wash down and had a bit of a think.

See when I stripped the carb last I’d ignored all the perished o-rings and just got it to run.  But the o-rings also serve to stop the needles from coming out thanks to friction.  

So time to dodgy up new seals on the mid-speed and the high-speed.

Luckily I have one of those “universal” o-ring sets from Aldi.

Had to reduce the outer diameter of one on the high speed but hey that’s what sandpaper’s for isn’t it?

Got it back together, roughed a tune on and kicked it over.

Now I finally understand the “can tune in a tank of fuel” internet wisdom.  It still needs some finesse but is better than ever.  

Apparently carb o-rings matter.



Wheel nuts also matter it seems.  No spares but no big deal.  Wheel did depart at speed but the truck was able to be driven back

Was running very nice up to that point, properly quick under full throttle and not much more fine tuning in the mid range.