A new old car!
Bought as a Re-Re kit in May 2023, the Optima-Mid scratches a couple of itches for me. The Salute is a wonderful car to own, but I worry about getting parts if I damage it racing. It’s also arguable whether the transmission is up to modern brushless motors without a slipper clutch. Being a re-re, there’s much better availability of spares for this, and a proper slipper clutch out of the box.
It’s also a car that I never owned back in the day, having always been a Schumacher fan boy.
- Mendip Summer Championship RD 3 – 05/06/2023
At Mendip, we have a Gary. Garys are useful things that restart generators all day when they keep conking out, patch in spare generators when the first one permanently pegs it, and a billion other things that you don’t realise need to be done until somebody points it out. I wasn’t Gary-ing yesterday, but I will be in a fortnight. So I kept myself as much out his way as I could, and got on with the business of competing the B6.4d and giving the Optima Mid it’s first run out.
2WD first. I shoved in a good first session using Tivvy settings. 13 laps when the best was 14, so happy with that. I don’t really want to talk about the 2nd heat, because on the first corner of the first lap, I stuffed it into the outer fence like a dickhead.
I completely broke the servo horn, which was obvious on first inspection. Not so obvious was I think I damaged the actual servo. It worked, but seemed a bit wonky. Bugger.
Luckily, The next two Quali sessions went more to plan. Despite the slightly wonky servo, 2 sucessively quicker 13 lappers. Without the servo breakage, I wonder if I could have qualified 2nd or 3rd in the B Final. But as it happened there was enough to take 7th, which was enough. The finals were good fun, and hard fought despite the dropouts. The generator problems and the very sunny, warm day, caused a very long day and quite a few to get headaches and so forth. But perseverance eventually yielded an extra place on quali, and the knowledge that, without the servo issues, and if I had used a second set of tyres, there was a lot more to come.
The Optima Mid was just a giggle. Once I twigged that the steering Servo was essentially buggered, It went around lovely. A bit twitchy on turn in, a bit high on ride and rolly, but nothing that can’t be cured.
Overall, a great, knackering, long, tiring, excellent day. 🙂
- Kyosho Optima Mid … DONE!
The Optima Mid is done! Below I’ve got a little piccie of the Top Desk cutout I made to accomodate the ESC. I think it worked out quite neatly.
The paint job looks even better in real life. The red is Hobbynox Red Pearl. An it has a very fetching colourshift effect between primary red, and it mostly is in the pictures, and a bright hot pink. Very chuffed with the results.
I’ve also swapped out the receiver and servo, which I hope will give a better result.
- Mid Nearing Completion
So the chassis is done. not sure about the servo and receiver which I might have to swap out. I have a Futaba Receiver in the Mission FT and a spare Etronix Servo left over from when I first got the KD. I think I might do that Saturday before I prep for the first run out at Mendip on Sunday.
The build was quite easy. The only niggle was not being able to fit a modern ESC anywhere on the lower chassis without fouling the upper. The manual says it’s fine to cut a small slice out of the upper deck to fit one, so I got the dremmel out and did that.
The body is coming along well. The usual livery but with Hobbynox pearl paint. Just the white coat to go.
- Perfect Saturday 🙂
Managed to restrict myself to just Bags A & B yesterday so that I can geek out with Practice and Quali for the Monaco GP on the Telly while getting on with Bag C. Heaven 🙂
