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Very interesting project. I can see the appeal of turning to electric power for near silence and far less engine starting equipment to lug around. But I think it will be odd not to see smoke coming away from a Burns!

For quite some time I have had my eye out for a new set of the Turbo Burns dampers and it seems eBay has sucked me in again

Now I have extra tuning coils and pistons to tune it a little better...

I also picked up two 'shorty' lipo packs for my Optima runners. I had a quick look and can see these will easily fit in a little more snug than the 4 individual cells that I have been using. When I can find the time I will have another play around with mounting these batteries in.

Those fit in your Optimas? Can I see a picture of how you shoe-horned those in?

Coelacanth wrote:Those fit in your Optimas? Can I see a picture of how you shoe-horned those in?

Hi Marc. I simply ground down the edges that wrap down around the stick pack. Mine are now flat. I used to tape Lipo packs in place but the width of the battery would deflect the shell and I don't like that look.
I am going to fabricate a new motor plate and design another means of holding this shorty in place.
At some point I'll have a thread on my Optima's and you'll see what I do with it then.
Cheers-Jason

J.M. wrote:

Coelacanth wrote:Those fit in your Optimas? Can I see a picture of how you shoe-horned those in?

Hi Marc. I simply ground down the edges that wrap down around the stick pack. Mine are now flat. I used to tape Lipo packs in place but the width of the battery would deflect the shell and I don't like that look.

That's the problem I have, anything longer than a 6-cell vintage-shape battery is too wide for the original Optima body, and there is very little room in there between the W-shaped chainguide brace and steering servo assembly for a much wider battery to fit...I'd love to see what you did to get a smaller but wider battery in there, I might do something similar with Barney, as that will use an original Optima body.

With the success of my first Burns electric conversion I still want to do another. I have been collecting some parts to rebuild my second Burns car. This time I want to go with an Optima box art design and have a few other small ideas I'd like to do with it.
At this stage these are the spares I have collected from both ePay and some very helpful members here.
I have not completely decided on what I need for my builds from this stuff but I'll know at some stage.
Cheers-Jason

Man that thing turned out killer! Excellent work! Very clean conversion. Back in the day I never really dreamt of owning a Burns because it was so damn expensive to a kid with no money.