Marui Hunter - My first buggy... Found one to restore :-) - and a Galaxy RS too :)

[silvertriple]

There is something weird on this car. I thought about those screws for quite a while yesterday evening.

They are doing the job, as good as the Marui tapping screws counterparts... But why would you actually replace the screws by something else, while all the rest seems to be of light use...

I remember having read an article in the eighties about the Hunter preparation, and I found it on rc-paper website few months ago while accumulating some data about Marui Hunter (especially when looking at the V1 vs V2 chassis, while looking for proof there was 2 different iterations of the chassis), but at that time I did not paid attention. I search it again yesterday. And found it:

https://rc-paper.com/details_page.php?id=rev_autorcmfr-0049&pg=40 (it's in french, but there is some interesting pics)

Part of the article is about making the Hunter lighter than it is out of the box.

Looking at the screws, they are actually lighter than Marui 4x12 screws. It may be the sole possible explanation for this. The removal of the battery using a small circuitry looks as well like going it the same direction to make the car lighter. Some screws were removed from the rims as well probably to add to the lightweight concept (that is the only explanation I can imagine for those).

And the shocks works very smooth. Looks like this car was prepared for a purpose.

If it is the case, then in conjunction with the tires, the rear arms suspension arms mounted upside down may be very well set for a specific purpose. It may have participated to break the right side shock tower...

But on the other side, when looking at the gearbox, the oilless bearings have not been replaced by ball bearings. Why would you do all this if you don't put ball bearings in the car????
In short if someone has an explanation, I'm interested...

[silvertriple]

Finished the unbuilt of the Galaxy.

• Transmission is like new, Shafts shows very light use : the car was probably broken quite soon in its life. I'll replace oiless bearings by ball bearings, and will use a printed idle gear with ball bearings (or maybe I should use one and compare the span life of the standard versus a printed one)

• MSC tracks are in very good shape. Will go for an ESC in any case, as Marui MSC tracks were not having a long life, and the fact they were not really progressive (3 steps + rear, like the Tamiya). I remember having hard time with my original Hunter, to the point I was rebuilding the tracks with my soldering iron after each run at some point...

• At the exception of the chassis, all the parts just require a bit of TLC. After a good cleaning, it will be good to go on another chassis.

• For the chassis, at the exception of the shock towers (both broken - fixation of the shock tower extension was probably too tight), it is good to go. I will use some glue to get it back to state, and add gear cover from The Optima House which will be the real shock support for the Hunter that goes on it

On the Hunters side, TBG mould doesn't seem to be repaired yet. I'm thinking to some new ideas. Apparently a Turbo Optima body could mount on it. I suppose many body could mount on this chassis, as long as the body is large enough on the roll bar area, taking into account a cut of the body will be required for the motor area... I believe a Shogun body could be perfect for this.

I also have thought about the weak points of the chassis. They don't seem to be the same whether it a Galaxy or a Hunter. On a Hunter, they tend to break on the front area, and it seems that doesn't happen on a Galaxy. I believe the top structure on the Galaxy is participating to this. And my son start to bug me about a Galaxy rather than a Hunter... Another idea came in my mind due to those points: i'm starting to think about a printed roll cage, in a Samurai or Javelin spirit to go on the Hunter chassis. The fact modern radios are allowing to remove the radio lid would help to have something quite streamlined, and with an interesting design

I didn't start the cleaning work or the rebuild activity today, as the plan is to go fro a run with my son in the afternoon. I may do some building or cleaning activities tonight, however....

[silvertriple]

Did some cleaning of parts in the afternoon, after a run on track with my son and friends earlier.

The M4 metric machine thread screws got me thinking tonight. Since I have 2 broken chassis not usable as too much broken to be usable, I decided to do some test with some M4 screws. 

I used a M4x10 machine thread screw instead of the 4x12 auto tapping screw:

• screwed right in the hole in tubes, it breaks the tube. Made 2 like this. Two broken tubes.

• add lubrification in the hole (ptfe or grease) before screwing the screw in, and it seats perfectly without any breakage. I confirmed this in multiple holes (5 of them).

In short, I have a replacement for the 4x12 screws missing in the kit. It's even better than this, as it also work in the damaged thread as the root of the screw is larger than the root of a tapping screw: It's the perfect solution for those holes where the tapping screw was turning free...

Now I only need to find about 40 M4x10 machine screws and a another complete set of M3x10 screws, as there will be 5 Marui cars from this project:

• the Hunter already built

• the Galaxy RS already started

• the Galaxy with the good proper chassis

• the Hunter (runner), with the black broken/repaired chassis from the Galaxy, with the gear cover from The Optima House to do the proper work for the shock tower - It still need a body shell.

• my son's Hunter (runner), with the black chassis with holes in the gearbox (I need to find a way to close this), and again a gear cover from The Optima House - It still need a body shell.

And after all of this, I will still have a complete set of parts + other parts. I will figure out what to do later with those...

[silvertriple]

After the cleaning, I decided to start the red galaxy. I need some room, so the best way is to get the parts that are not in a box waiting for other parts to join a châssis and become a car...

As planed when I set my bid on the red Galaxy, I swapped the chassis. As all the parts beside the chassis were in perfect state, that will be easy...

I will just put the pics with not much precision, as it is essentially the same as the Galaxy RS except I paid attention to the operation sequence, and the blue part are actually red in this one, with a nice 550 size Marui 360RS motor...








I actually built it to the same point as the Galaxy RS and remaining steps will be parallel builds...

State as of now





Both cars will use a modern ESC and a FS-A3 RX. They both have been built with a reinforcement link between the shock towers, as I intend to run them times to times...

[silvertriple]

Unexpectedly found new wheels for both the Galaxy and Galaxy RS


This will be perfect for the shelve. I'm not sure I will dare to put those wheels in the dirt... But who knows, they were designed for this. The fact is that all the rims I had with the cars have some damages due to the runs, and it is not so nice. My usual way to deal with this is one set for the shelve, and one set for the run: modern tires may be more adapted than good old gums to run, and they will probably resist longer...

In any case, I'm not sure I'll resist longer to finish the Galaxy builds

[Coelacanth]

Nice, I don't recall ever seeing silver wheels offered as a hop-up option for the Galaxy/Hunter. It's also cool to see both a red and blue Galaxy together.

[silvertriple]

Nice, I don't recall ever seeing silver wheels offered as a hop-up option for the Galaxy/Hunter. It's also cool to see both a red and blue Galaxy together.

The silver wheels were the norm on the Galaxy (not the RS) red, with the Marui 360RS motor. And they existed as replacement part.

As matter of fact I was curious to see if they were identified differently
Marui 017 - Front Wheels
Marui 018 - Rear Wheels

I was sure they existed. the NIP description in Japanese look different between the white and silver, and the prices in yen where indeed different and more expensive for the silver ones.

As matter of fact, Marui 019 - Front Arm Set was also having variants : one for the Hunter (no shock mount on the arms), and one for Hunter and Galaxy (with shocks mount on the arms). They were the same number, but I could not check the description as I only got one for Hunter.

And @Coelacanth, the intention is really to have the Hunter, the Galaxy and the Galaxy RS on the same picture once they are finished (to be honest, when I started this, I never thought it would be even possible to get the 3 as the red one is pretty rare)...

[Coelacanth]

Nice, I don't recall ever seeing silver wheels offered as a hop-up option for the Galaxy/Hunter. It's also cool to see both a red and blue Galaxy together.

The silver wheels were the norm on the Galaxy (not the RS) red, with the Marui 360RS motor. And they existed as replacement part.

And @ Coelacanth, the intention is really to have the Hunter, the Galaxy and the Galaxy RS on the same picture once they are finished (to be honest, when I started this, I never thought it would be even possible to get the 3 as the red one is pretty rare)...

I guess that explains why the silver wheels were also pretty rare, and why I don't remember seeing them. Most of the Galaxies I've seen, and the one I resto-modded for my brother and that I originally built back in the 80's, were the ones with the blue cage. Ironically, I preferred silver wheels to that weird beige color and painted my bro's Galaxy wheels with silver paint...but silver almost never paints very well on plastic. And when I tried removing that decades-old nasty silver paint from the wheels with acetone, they started to melt.



I ended up finding a way to mount some nice gloss black Carson wheels on his Galaxy with taller, lower-profile tires. Not stock anymore but I thought it looked nice. I also redesigned the rear shock towers, replacing them completely with fabricated carbon fiber parts.

[silvertriple]

I guess that explains why the silver wheels were also pretty rare, and why I don't remember seeing them. Most of the Galaxies I've seen, and the one I resto-modded for my brother and that I originally built back in the 80's, were the ones with the blue cage. Ironically, I preferred silver wheels to that weird beige color and painted my bro's Galaxy wheels with silver paint...but silver almost never paints very well on plastic. And when I tried removing that decades-old nasty silver paint from the wheels with acetone, they started to melt.



I ended up finding a way to mount some nice gloss black Carson wheels on his Galaxy with taller, lower-profile tires. Not stock anymore but I thought it looked nice. I also redesigned the rear shock towers, replacing them completely with fabricated carbon fiber parts.

I was aware of the silver wheel NIP packaging and their rarity, as among the guys I discussed with, there is one guy in Australia who mentioned the set. But until yesterday, I never saw a picture of them. And if you look at the Marui (red) Galaxy box art, the wheels are white on it, on the Marui catalog, however, the car was having silver wheels.

I remember having seen your thread while doing some research on the Hunter. And as per my understanding, the original shock towers on the Hunter/Galaxy is the weakest point of that chassis. It seems that with the shocks tower extension, the issue is less often seen on Galaxys, but still it is present, and on the Hunter, it is quite surprising it breaks so easily with the pivot... As per my understanding, the profile of the tires participate to the dampening, and using low profile modern rims and tire set may only weaken the shock tower more. That is the reason why I first initiated a link between the shock towers to help force partitions for both Hunter and Galaxy... I'm curious on how your Marui Galaxy is holding while running on Offroad on this particular point, and would be also interested in more details on the modifications you've done

[silvertriple]

Since months ago, when I saw the cluster and did the checks on both the Marui Hunter and Marui Galaxy RS manual, I had evidences there was parts unused on both Galaxy and Hunter cars. I thought a lot about this. My assumption is that there was a plan with a 4 friction shocks buggy with this chassis...

I found out some webpage in wayback machine about the Tokyo Marui cars today. The website is now closed, but it still appears on the archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20190412065112/http://vintage.dirt-burners.com/2017/05/15/the-rc-cars-of-tokyo-marui

There is on this page what I think is the evidence of the 4 fiction shocks Marui car based on the Hunter/Galaxy chassis.

The Hunter prototype was using a Rough Rider like body. And it did have a air scoop at the rear end and no monoshock. Near the rear tire, you may distinguish a friction shock



So basically, on the Hunter/Galaxy cluster, there is part of what is required to build a Hunter prototype
Edit : Almost as n.63 is present on the cluster but with no parts. I suspect this was intended to be the equivalent of the 43 parts used at the front.

[Coelacanth]

I'm curious on how your Marui Galaxy is holding while running on Offroad on this particular point, and would be also interested in more details on the modifications you've done

I don't think my brother has run it much since I did the resto and surprised him with it for his birthday, after it sat forgotten in a box of RC stuff I had for many years. The mods I did definitely improved the major frail points of the chassis, and I've documented everything in the resto thread:

https://www.rc10talk.com/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=18492

Another major weak link are the dinky little 1.5mm steering rods and slop in the steering assembly. Those skinny rods get bent very easily with the smallest front-end crashes. The shocks are very poor, too. Upgrading the car without upgrading the shocks is kind of paddling upstream. I think the weak flexible plastics helped the damping as much as the poor shocks did.

[silvertriple]

I'm curious on how your Marui Galaxy is holding while running on Offroad on this particular point, and would be also interested in more details on the modifications you've done

Another major weak link are the dinky little 1.5mm steering rods and slop in the steering assembly. Those skinny rods get bent very easily with the smallest front-end crashes. The shocks are very poor, too. Upgrading the car without upgrading the shocks is kind of paddling upstream. I think the weak flexible plastics helped the damping as much as the poor shocks did.

I've reviewed your thread, and the shock tower are known to be prone to failure at start (On the Hunter they were breaking most because the pivot was hold too tight by many owners, but on the Galaxy, the shock tower was taking the full efforts, and it seems it breaks as well - as per the red Galaxy - both shock tower broken): not sure how much your mod can hold when running...

I've planed to do something for the 1.5 mm steering rods for the runners... And for the shocks, I believe the red one were modified: they work extremely well. I believe (but still have to check this) the piston has a hole in it. Compared to the one of the Galaxy RS (blue) they really work much better. One friend told me exactly to do this - one or two holes in the piston, and a very light oil... I will experiment that.

[Coelacanth]

What I can remember from the shock tower mods...remember, this project was completed 10 years ago...was that the blue rear shock towers were the weakest point, and too flexible for the upgraded 45mm 3Racing shocks I installed. Replacing those blue plastic towers with carbon fiber pieces, mounted to the stock black chassis mounting posts, made an improvement in the rigidity of the assembly. I didn't think the original black shock tower mounting points were so bad that they needed modification as well.

I was able to compare the suspension functionality before/after my mods and it was a significant improvement. I also believe it was more sturdy than the original setup, but I'm sure the car wasn't bashed around much after I restored it and gave it back to my brother. I honestly don't think ANY Marui car can survive much bashing, every single Marui car has more than a few design brain-farts and failure points, which is why so few have lasted until today. The Samurai is infamous for it's frailness, and I encountered a good number of design and engineering brain-farts with the Shogun I restored, too.

https://www.rc10talk.com/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=44446

[silvertriple]

I honestly don't think ANY Marui car can survive much bashing, every single Marui car has more than a few design brain-farts and failure points, which is why so few have lasted until today.

You would be surprised by what my original Marui Hunter endured back in the eighties... That being said, I also quite agree with what you say. The Hunter/Galaxy has quite a bunch of potential failure points, the first being the material choice for the chassis. That said, it could have been much worse: Nichimo definitely showed it was possible to do something worse

On this chassis, having had 8 chassis in hands in total, I have quite a good view of the potential failure points, and that from both Galaxy and Hunter: when used as a Galaxy, the chassis tended to break in the battery area and the shock towers. When used as a Hunter, that was in the front area right behind the front train, and the shock tower. And then there was the transmission and its infamous idle gear, and their oil-less bearings (which had their part as well in the idle gear issue), and overall, the tubes to hold the essential threads for the structurally important screws (also potentially participating to the idle gear issues)...

Yes, maybe it is even more than just a few potential failure point, as I did not count additional ones around the chassis - but overall, those nylon reinforced parts seemed to work quite better than the chassis itself.

I will look at your Shogun thread. I got a small thing with Marui, and I may want one at some point

[Coelacanth]

I remember back in the day, after I built a Hunter for my cousin and the Galaxy for my bro...and wanted a car to best them all, I hoped for a Frog. I got The Frog for my birthday. I remember us bashing around those cars, and it seemed that Galaxy always ran and handled better than the supposedly superior Frog, no matter what I tried to upgrade it. It wasn't long after when I said "To hell with this!" and got an Optima. Never looked back.

The Marui models were less expensive than the Tamiyas in the same price points, but drove arguably better.