Marui Galaxy Rebuild - Finished!

[Coelacanth]

This is a really nice build! So did I read that right, your giving this back to your Brother?

Yep, it was his to begin with, but the "upgrading" will be my gift to him for his birthday. He'll hardly recognize it when it's finished!

I got the rear suspension done tonight. I made a template of the completed right shock tower and carefully duplicated it. When fully compressed, the tires ALMOST touch the shocks/springs. Very close! I must say these 3racing shocks are quite nice for about $20 for a 4-pack. I needed to open up the 2 holes in the pistons and switched to 25-weight oil as they tend to be quite stiff. They're probably perfect out-of-the-box for an on-road/touring car, but too stiff for off-road use.

[Coelacanth]

I pretty much completed the chassis rebuild. The front shocks were easier to upgrade than the rears, fortunately. I went with the narrower Kyosho Optima front shock springs, which fit the spring retainers and just fit over the threaded part of the shock bodies. Because they were narrower, there turned out to be no rubbing against the upper half of the control arms. They don't absorb as nicely as I'd like, even with 25-weight oil and opening up the piston holes, perhaps because the car is so light, with all the plastic and such...but they definitely work, and work a lot better than the stock pieces of crap--which were not much better than Tamiya Grasshopper or Hornet shocks.

I added a set of Academy GV2 front wheels, generously donated by tsan (thanks, man!), and some Tamiya tires that I picked up for $5 from the guy that sold me the Marui parts. The GV2 wheels needed 5 x 10mm bearings, fortunately I had a bunch of leftover Optima bearings.

Lastly, I reassembled the differential gearbox. I'm impressed with the progress thus far, it's no RC10 but now, it's a long ways from a stock Galaxy/Hunter. My bro is probably gonna crap his drawers!

[tim.sanderson]

Good job! That looks really slick. I'm glad the wheels worked out for you.

[peetbee]

Looking fantastic, I wish mine had been as good as that when I ran it all those years ago!

In your picture "RearSuspDone2.JPG" you can see the gear shaft that I was talking about. This is what allowed the gears to strip on mine as it's a bit too free. Although the hole in your motor mount that it passes through doesn't look too worn so it may be ok. I'd just check it carefully before running

[Coelacanth]

I re-soldered everything on a Kyosho Le Mans 360ST endbell after giving the motor a good spraying with Easy-Off followed by compressed air. New capacitors, springs & brushes, motor leads & 3.5mm gold connectors were installed, and a 16T pinion gear. Now I just need to wait for an ESC to arrive and I'll be able to test-drive this car. It should be a significant performance boost over the stock Mabuchi 540 can.

[Coelacanth]

In your picture "RearSuspDone2.JPG" you can see the gear shaft that I was talking about. This is what allowed the gears to strip on mine as it's a bit too free. Although the hole in your motor mount that it passes through doesn't look too worn so it may be ok. I'd just check it carefully before running

I see what you're talking about...the shaft seems to be pretty secure. I suppose it wouldn't be too difficult to bolt a piece of metal or something across the shaft, keeping it in place should it ever come loose and pop up.

What I noticed mounting the 360ST with the smaller 16T pinion gear is that the motor had to be pressed pretty much all the way down to the bottom of its adjustment slot to mesh properly. The car originally came with 3 pinions: 18T, 20T and 22T, but I thought it might be wise to reduce the ratio with the higher-revving 360ST and bigger-diameter rear tires. I won't be able to tell without a test run--I have to wait on an ESC to arrive.

[Coelacanth]

Here's a different look, with some Carson wheels I just received from nvxwax and a set of Traxxas front spiked tires. The rears are a second pair of vintage You-G tires I had in storage for 2-and-a-half decades. I think the black spoked wheels look better than the white dishes...what do you guys think?

[Mr. ED]

got to see it with the cage on to make up my mind. How did you end up doing the rear wheelconversion?

[Coelacanth]

got to see it with the cage on to make up my mind. How did you end up doing the rear wheelconversion?

I believe it was your suggestion to use Tamiya Frog adapters, which turned out to be almost perfect! They were in fact about 4mm too long, so I hacksawed off that much from the outer edges, filed them smooth...they work wonderfully (thanks, btw)! I'll put up a picture later.

P.S. Everything else I tried was just too short, not quite reaching to where the axle threads started. I almost was motivated to just cross-drill a new hole closer to the threaded ends, but didn't want to deal with screw-ups if the holes weren't drilled perfectly straight through the shafts...

[GJW]

nice mod's so certainly are persistant! have you ever modded a hunter?

[nvxwax]

Here's a different look, with some Carson wheels I just received from nvxwax and a set of Traxxas front spiked tires. The rears are a second pair of vintage You-G tires I had in storage for 2-and-a-half decades. I think the black spoked wheels look better than the white dishes...what do you guys think?

I like the Carson wheels but i might be bias Nice work

[Coelacanth]

nice mod's so certainly are persistant! have you ever modded a hunter?

I built one back in the day, but never modded it. I just checked the manual for the Hunter, there are a lot of suspension differences between the 2 cars--and not just changing the rear from 2 shocks to mono-shock design. The front shocks criss-cross inside the front of the bathtub and work even less effectively than the stock Galaxy shocks.

I wonder if the Galaxy's blue shock towers could be easily installed on the Hunter? I suppose they might...the same shaft that pins on the control arms attaches the shock towers. The Galaxy control arms also have holes to mount a pivot ball for the shock bottom to mount onto. The rear would take some redesign too, but anything's possible.

[maruirc]

I found that the galaxy suspension is poor. The hunter is much better in the front than the galaxy. I have left mine completly stock. No big motor for any of my marui. The gears just can't handle a bigger motor for long. All I added were a ESC and bearings and a new 540 motor if needed. Thes buggies are plenty fast with a stock motor and new battery.

[Coelacanth]

The problem with either Hunter/Galaxy suspension was as much the awful shocks as it was the position & suspension design. Those hinky-dink tiny-tube shocks were woeful, and hardly better than non-oil-filled Hornet shocks, IMO. The rear suspension's complete lack of a proper hub meant there was no way to keep the tires flat on the ground. It was very primitive. I couldn't do anything to improve on that, but at least adding shocks that work properly was a big step in the right direction. The Galaxy was supposed to be a better buggy than the Hunter, it was a step up in price.

The Galaxy RS was claimed to work with an 8.4V battery pack. I haven't done any testing yet but I would think a stock 540 on 8.4V would be just as stressful on the gears as a 6-minute motor on 7.2V. I'll probably have to play around with pinion gearing, but I'll have to do some testing first. Waiting on an ESC...

Thanks for the comments!

[maruirc]

I've done that and found it is faster but with a 8.4 battery it's too bouncy with the hunter and with the galaxy it bottoms out too much. A 6 cell battery is enough. The OEM speed controls are junk but if your restoring to vintage that's all they are good for. A esc is much better on the driveline. The pinion gears wear out too fast I found out. Where did you find a 16 tooth gear. The gears in marui 2wd are 48 metric pitch?