Turbo Optima - Should I?

[GeekSpeed]

Hey all.

I am looking at picking up a Turbo Optima for a decent price. I am just trying to decide what to do with it if I get it. I have been getting into racing more, so I thought I might get it ready for some vintage races. Well, I'LL be racing vintage, everyone else will be racing modern. ANYway, I am thinking of converting it to belt drive, but am at a loss as to what changes to make from there. Here is what I think is the minimum:

2.2 wheels/tires
13.5 BL
Hard servo mount
Shock rebuild or replace

What is the best way to do 2.2 tires and is a BL even possible? Are the stock gold shocks pretty good with a rebuild, or should I just get some new ones. What would you guys do?

Thanks!

[TRX-1-3]

Yes.

[markbt73]

Yes! Buy it. They're a labor of love, but worth it. As for the gold shocks, they're as good as RC10 shocks, if not better. Not sure about the drivetrain with brushless power; maybe others could help. There is no slipper clutch (well, there sort of is), so launches might be kind of hard on the gears and belt, and the gears are 32 pitch, so options are limited. (An Optima Mid might actually be a better choice for racing, since it has 48 pitch gears and a better slipper.)

2.2 wheels are easy; Optimas use now-standard 12 mm hex wheels. Anything will fit.

[Coelacanth]

I say go for it...because I did that twice, once with a chassis completely re-engineered for onroad, and once for offroad, bulletproofing everything that I could. Neither were made for racing, mind you, and probably each breaks a half-dozen or more rules so they'd never be allowed to race...but you can get a lot of ideas on how to go ahead with your project by seeing some of the things I did. 13.5T brushless is just about perfect, and you can control the punch with any modern ESC...and install a torque limiter gear from a Turbo Optima as well. It's not a true slipper gear, but will help to protect your gears when jumping. To make the switch to modern 2.2" wheels, you'll ideally want to swap out the dogbones for swing shafts/CVDs, they have 5mm straight axles with cross-pins to take 12mm hexes. You can still use modern wheels with the existing axles, but the taper-fit hexes sometimes slip with modern brushless power. Also, you'll tend to find most modern wheels are all high positive offset, which causes problems with the wheels rubbing on the insides, especially the rears. You have to try to find wheels with a more neutral or negative offset--something that has a more deep-dish look, like muscle-cars back in the day.

The CYANide and Barney builds linked in my signature both show extensive resto-mod ideas for the original & Turbo Optima series.

If you already have Gold shocks, you won't need to upgrade. There's not much that works better.

A belt conversion is a great upgrade, the chains were always stretching and you were always adjusting the friction or removing links.

A hard final pinion gear for the rear gearbox is also an essential upgrade; the original soft aluminum gear wears out quickly, and getting into the rear gearbox of an assembled Optima is a fair amount of work, and something you don't want to be doing often. There's a thread on here somewhere where one of our members found an inexpensive alternative to this gear, it just requires some shims.

I agree with Mark about the Mid being an easier chassis for modernizing; the gearbox and belt drive better lends itself to a resto-mod project, and there are many threads on here by members who've done "MIDernizing", alcyon's car is a good example. He has a thread on here that's good reading:

http://www.rc10talk.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=34776