Kyosho / Kraft / Graupner Eleck Rider 1/6 Motorcycle

[morrisey0]

Random FB Marketplace search for Kyosho one night ended up with a result for a 1979 Eleck Rider 1/6 Motorcycle just on the other side of the state from me. At that point, that was all I knew about it, other than the seller had just reduced the price to $40, and that was it, it was soon on its way to me for $50 shipped.

I have to be honest with myself and understand that this may very well end up as a project I get about 50-75% done and lose interest in, but for at least this minute, I love it! I would put it in the top three of most interesting RCs of the 40+ that are in this room right now.

Greatest part of this bike is two fold: 1) appearance. From the fairing to the rider to the wheels, this thing is just super right from an appearance standpoint. 2) the mechanics. I was thinking this would come with some proprietary miniature servos and such, but nope. Standard RX, standard servos, a mech esc that is about standard size. The only small electronic part is the mini 6-cell 7.2v battery pack.

And then there is the rider. I thought when I had this coming that Kyohso just felt that a bike running around on its own would look dumb, so they added a driver for appearance sake. But I say nah. They added a rider because they could not fit all the electronics within the bike! Yes, the rider is storage! He holds the RX, and is wired through his bum. This could be bypassed at this point in time because of BEC, but at the time, they had to put a RX pack somewhere.

I was till thinking that this would just end up on the shelf as is when it got it, and I would be fine with it just like that. But after diving into it more, and realizing it is in better than expected nick, I decided to put some voltage on the motor and she ran just fine. With that, I am making this a runner!

1st thing I need is a manual, which is harder than I thought. I am working on it.

Parts wise: The rider is ready to retire, the fairing and gas tank need to be replaced. The esc may need to replaced. Will need to work out / build a new battery pack. Other than that, it looks 90% there.

Yea, if you thought tracking down RC10 parts was trying, take a crack at this! Although TBH, there is more on the bay then I expected.

I have had this Sanwa Airtronics NIB radio kit for awhile now that no one would give me $25 for on ebay, but now I think it has found its new home. It certainly isn't 1979 tech, but with it at least having a RX pack, it is true to the time period.

The rig:

Body off:

The rider:

The Rx/Tx:

Motor run up:


Great vid on the unboxing of a NIB from someone who work on the original project:

[morrisey0]

Complete coincidence. This pops up the same day I get my runner: https://www.ebay.com/itm/194317009256 This is NIB, and I will have more than that in getting this runner running. But, now I won't feel bad for wrecking this one!

[Lowgear]

For a time I was kind of interested in getting one of these. I'd watch eBay for them but the prices were always higher than I was willing to pay. I don't know what the going rate of them now is but I think you got a heck of a deal on the NIB one. I ultimately decided against getting one myself as I'm not a big motorcycle guy, and I'd be paranoid about the rider coming to life Chucky style. I never knew the purpose of it was to hold the receiver!

[morrisey0]

Started tearing it apart today (my favorite part of a restore/refresh), and it is now down to the major components of: Frame, Rear, and Front. Each of which are soaking various parts in PB Blaster at this point. Love the simplicity of it; nothing is threaded, it is all screws and nuts.

The fasteners throughout are in sad shape, and all will need to be replaced. Component wise though, it all looks pretty good. Half of the servo saver may be damaged, but it looks almost too cleanly broken, so it may not actually be. The digital manual that I have now is kinda junk, so hard to tell. Major components are all missing paint and starting to rust, but all there and mostly straight.

Parts are on order. Got a new dude and crash bars coming from Canada, and a new fairing and gas tank coming from the UK (through an RC10 body in on that order).

I think I am going to make a couple of changes from ARTR out of the box. I think I am going to run BEC and place the RX where the RX pack was, and put a Novak ESC where the MSC was. Part of me wants to keep it mostly like it was out of box, but lets face it, MSCs only existed because they were super cheap for the manufacturers to throw in the box to get you running. And as far as BEC, it should lower the CoG of the bike pretty well, and keep the RX from having to be wired into the rider.

Plan is to powder coat the frame; probably just black. Part of me really really really wants to powder coat the wheels a bright contrasting color, but that just would not be very 1979. Maybe after looking at them cleaned up, I will be okay with leaving them aluminum.

[morrisey0]

Powder coated the main frame pieces today. More pitting on the parts than I was hoping, and the PC job is DIY, but overall it came out very acceptable. My PC guy is a bit of a d1ck, but he works for peanuts. TBH, the original paint looked as though there was zero prep, and no primer applied at all. It was top coat on top of shiny steel. I feel like I could have stared at it hard enough and the paint would have come off. Once stripper was applied, the paint flaked within seconds, and I never used more than the soft paint brush, that I used to apply the stripper, to remove the paint. It was pretty bad.

So, although not perfect, I can say that the PC'd frame parts are many times better than they were when they left the factory.

I woke up this morning thinking that I needed a guide for this bike. Maybe not something to replicate or tribute, but really just a guide bike. I looked through way too many 60s and 70s GP bikes from the Japanese, Italian, and British, but I couldn't come up with a great example of a similar bike layout with a paint scheme that I had any hope of pulling off. Then I ran across this, and decided I should bring this bike a little closer to home:

[morrisey0]

Complete coincidence. This pops up the same day I get my runner: https://www.ebay.com/itm/194317009256 This is NIB, and I will have more than that in getting this runner running. But, now I won't feel bad for wrecking this one!

I feel like there is a chance that I ended up scoring more than I thought at first on this purchase. Right off the bat, you never see these bikes NIB for anywhere near what I paid for it, but I am thinking I got more than what is usually offered as a NIB Kyosho Kraft Eleck Rider. Every bike I have seen NIB is in a nice yellow box with a picture of the bike, but these packages only contain an ARTR bike. These boxes state that required accessories are: radio system, battery, and battery charger. There are no electronics installed in the bike. It is a bike, instruction manual, and decal sheet.

Just shooting from the hip here, but I am thinking the kit I got was a RTR kit offered by Tower Hobbies in association with Kyosho. There is no yellow box just for the bike, but a longer white box with no markings on it at all. Within the box is the usual Styrofoam packing for the bike, but electronics are installed and there is a Kraft battery in there. There is then a separate Styrofoam cradle containing a Tower Hobbies stick radio with accessories, but the Styrofoam is clearly marked Kyosho. There is also a separate box containing a Kraft quick charger. All of this slides in a perfectly sized white cardboard box.

The weird part is the runner bike I am working on has Tower Hobbies servos in it, which I thought was weird as the bike was built in conjunction with Kraft. I am thinking the TH RTR kit may have been a popular option wheh purchasing this vehicle.

[nitrous36]

Wow, that bike looks pretty impressive for '79 tech. Good find.

[morrisey0]

Made some pretty good progress on the bike the last couple of days, and then a major screw up.

Off the bat, this is my first try at doing a restore / refresh semi-correctly. I am a runner guy; I pull parts off and clean them, repair them, or replace them (whichever is cheapest and quickest), and put the vehicle back together. I want them to look pretty good, but "frame-off, every bolt" restore is not my thing. Not sure why, but that is how I have been attacking this bike. I am looking at fasteners, and if they have any pitting, they get replaced. My servos have way-too-long leads, and I would usually wrap that up somehow, but no, I am going to shorten them to correct length. Not my usual style, but I am okay with it at this point. But yea, whole new respect to you guys that do this all the time! The patience needed is more than I thought, and probably more than I have!

This is how she sits tonight. The one real weak spot of PC is in the "gearbox." I knew it was weak, but figured once there were gears in there, you wouldn't be able to see it. That ain't going to happen, and the inside needs another coat. Good thing I was lazy and didn't fully clean up the PC station.

The screw up to finish up the weekend was the gears / sprockets themselves. I didn't like the white of them, especially the rear sprocket. So, I chuck them all in some grey dye, and whatever they are made of isn't taking it, and they end up orange'ish and nasty. Next course was to go full black, and really no better. The material is taking it horribly and unevenly. I don't know how I am going to fix that situation at this point.

[morrisey0]

I told myself when I started this build that this was 1979 vehicle, I would build it with old school parts, nothing printed .................................. I failed!

I will probably end up with two printed parts on this rig, and am still trying to figure out the second one. The first one was to make my modern, 2s lipo packs look acceptable in a space meant for a 7.2v nicd pack with some super special cells that I can't even find at this point. The original nicds were 600mah, so the 2000mah lipos should be a good improvement in drive time. I printed out a case to insert the lipos into, and when closed up, looks like a home-wrapped pack from back in the day. Just need to install the mini tamiya plugs and the lipos will be good to go.

Top - original nicd batt
Middle - lipo in case
Bottom - lipo

[Coelacanth]

I keep thinking I want to add a bike to my RC collection, but the good ones, and often those are the vintage ones--are out of my budget for what I want to pay for a project. For now, I have to live vicariously through projects like yours. Thanks for that!

[morrisey0]

Progress as of 9-8-2021:

Outside of some wiring, I am caught up to waiting on parts again (sound familiar?). Rear tire and chain are ready to go on, but weirdest thing about motorcycles, they are very unstable sitting still, so it is easier to leave it off until the end for ease of working on it. Frame, drivetrain, steering are all good to go.

I went against better judgement and am going to run (at least start with) an original style MSC. I am waiting on that.

The body parts are on the east coast of the USA now, so I am hoping for 2-3 days on those.

I am also waiting on front suspension parts, so front fork is on hold. USPS is saying 5 days on that.

[morrisey0]

While waiting on the body, I started getting into the decals needed.

You would think H-D stuff is generic, and always has been for 100 years, but no, there are loads of different styles / fonts/ logos/ cursive / etc. I think it may be so generic that no one notices what is real and fake at this point.

The cursive script of the HTT wasn't too hard to find, but the checkered flag logo is non-existent, and is written in some font that doesn't exist publicly. I just had to make up my own. After examining dozens of fonts, I went with the closest one, although it is still too "tall / compact" and the A and R are completely off. I am gong to have to roll the di and hope that a HD XR750TT expert doesn't closely inspect my 1/6 model.

[morrisey0]

USPS surprised me today and brought me suspension parts early.

She is pretty much mechanically done at this point. Next up is to install MSC, shorten servo wires, and wire her up. Then I can go ahead and get the wheels on. Body, crash guards, and rider should be here tomorrow. I might actually finish this thing!

[morrisey0]

Quiet Saturday morning around the house ...............

[MarkyDents]

Lookin gooood