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My old Optima Mid Custom with a lot of parts upgraded and customized, pun intended
The Car was rebuilt in late 2011 with a parts lot I got from My old friend Jason yeo, which included gearboxes , a graphite LWB chassis and CS body shell. Nearly a year later I snapped the graphite chassis, silly me, I thought it was strong. I promptly bought a aluminum OT-122 chassis and new top deck.
Latest specs as of now. Aluminium chassis, Rear Lazer ZX shock towers, front FB ZX-R shock towers, OT-122 aluminum chassis, LA-245 kyosho CVDs on all 4 wheels, Lazer ZX suspension, ZX-5 knuckles, ZX-R rims, J concepts green compound tyres, Hobby king 8.5T motor and brushless ESC, Turnigy lipo saddles, Sanwa MX3X system, custom machined B4 layshaft, 2012 kyosho big bore shocks on all fours.
I plan to get a rear FB shock tower to replace the Welshy40 version I broke 3 weeks ago.

Just tested the car on a rough track. It was nimble, quick and didnt give any major troubles. I overtook one 1/8 gp car and 2 1/8 ep cars..it handled the rough sections wonderfully, without losing control or changing directions. Unlike the mpp arms i used last week , the la26 arms held up fine. I did almost have an undertray failure, and one rear tyre unglued itself from the zxr rim but what ended my run was my modified gear cover broke apart..fixing all these minor issues now and waiting to test my car against the durango dex410 and lazer zx6.

I like a vintage racer that gets raced! Nice list of mods. If I could find another mid custom cheap enough,, it would mimic your set up with lazer suspension. Noticed your zx5 ball cups. Arent those just about the best? I really like them. Been trying to build up a stach of them and the studs so I can outfit my own custom with all the same ball cups. Older traxxas ball cups are really strong and offer good travel too.

rccars4sal wrote:I like a vintage racer that gets raced! Nice list of mods. If I could find another mid custom cheap enough,, it would mimic your set up with lazer suspension. Noticed your zx5 ball cups. Arent those just about the best? I really like them. Been trying to build up a stach of them and the studs so I can outfit my own custom with all the same ball cups. Older traxxas ball cups are really strong and offer good travel too.

Yes dude those are all latest kyosho ultima ballcups and studs because thry are easy to find. I forgot to mention i have the b4 slipper and spur gear 81 T on this car with a 24t pinion. I also have a custom delrin center gear i made. the gold turnbuckles came eith my original mid i bought in 1990. Dont know what brand those are though. My experimentation netted me with 5 broken mid front arms within a year and 1 broken zx front arm 2 years back and one broken la27 c hub. I plan to make la26 arms in white nylon with minimal cut outs to increase arm strength. I will only do that if these arms fail though. Other things to note is i use ball diffs in both ends but the front diff is set very tight to induce understeer and help with stability. The track is large so this setup works as i am still able to get the car to turn into the tight sections of my local track.

That car looks like a warrior, gotta love it! I like the gold front links/tie rods and your idea putting foam pads in the openings at the front of the undertray to keep dust out. You need to put an Optima sticker on that wing, though...the hand-written job looks cheesy.

Good to see the Optima Mid still flying the flag

This particular project was the original inspiration for my 21st Century Mid project as it was Alcyons blog that alerted me to the fact that Lazer suspension could be retro-fitted to a Mid

Coelacanth wrote:That car looks like a warrior, gotta love it! I like the gold front links/tie rods and your idea putting foam pads in the openings at the front of the undertray to keep dust out. You need to put an Optima sticker on that wing, though...the hand-written job looks cheesy.

Thanks man. Its a gladiator . My philosophy is to minimize maintenance especially on the center part of the car. So i placed sponges on the entry points and sealed the driveline completely. I am glad to say it paid off and i have not touched the gearboxes for quite some time now. Yes those hand written lettering is cheesy , but if you see how many wings i go through every few runs, then you would know why i chose that route

HKS_TRD wrote:Good to see the Optima Mid still flying the flag

This particular project was the original inspiration for my 21st Century Mid project as it was Alcyons blog that alerted me to the fact that Lazer suspension could be retro-fitted to a Mid

Hey..nice to see you here too. Looks like the rest of the gang is on rc10talk too. There is a little story about me discovering the lazer suspension would go on the mid. In 1993 i bought a used lazer zx. I shelved my mid for a while but suddenly had the urge to run my mid again. While on routine maintenance i decided to try fitting zx shock towers, arms, hubs on my mid and to my surprise it all went without a hitch. It was also then i discovered that lazer ball diff parts except the pulleys are actually the same.

Latest Update, few pics before running the car today.


Ran a pack today and car worked great. Did still tumble a few times and I noticed my rear wings looked loose, I thought the wing stay came loose , so upon close inspection found that it was worse than that, the gearbox wing mounts actually was broken partially. Since they haven broke off yet I went for a few laps and another tumble later, the whole wingstay sheared off. Have a look.

Funny thing is this has never happened to me BITD all that while running this car, either the plastics became brittle or I am now pushing my Mid much harder than before. I promptly cleaned that area and placed thick double sided tape to seal the gearbox and ran without a wing, but the car was too hard to drive so I went home. I then removed the rear ZX shock tower, lined up my broken ZX-R tower and drilled new holes so that I can re use my UMW-1 wing stays.
I also cleaned my front and rear Ball diff thrust bearings and now they are a lot more smoother than before. The suspension arms held up great without breakage this time. I hope the next time I run this car will be all without incident, and I can finish a pack in peace !

Im dealing with little set backs on my mid too. I used ball cups loose from a box, and some of them have soft or stripped threads. Popping wheelies, and tumbles cause tie rods to rip out of the cups. Im almost ready to re do all the tie rods with new ball cups, then that should be solid.

I'd go with ball-cups too...back in the day, those Kyosho 5.8mm balls and open-ended ball-ends were always popping off once they got a bit worn. That's one major reason why I went with 4.8mm balls & ball-cups on all my resto-modded cars.

If you are running ball diffs in this car shouldn't you be rebuilding them on a regular basis? I noticed you said you have not touched them in some time Proper diff maintenance would probably improve your car's handling more than anything else.

Jake

I like the way the LWB mids look like a real competition buggy. The short mids just dont look quite as serious. I like the way the lwb handles too.

Seabass wrote:If you are running ball diffs in this car shouldn't you be rebuilding them on a regular basis? I noticed you said you have not touched them in some time Proper diff maintenance would probably improve your car's handling more than anything else.

Jake

I agree with you what i meant was i have not taken the gearboxes apart. I make sure that when rebuilding diffs, i put a lot of grease in the 3mm balls with intention not to touch them for sometime. I think i can speak for everyone who owns an optima mid that taking the gearbox apart is a major PITA, not to mention it also wears out the threads in the gearbox. So what i actually do is drop one side of the suspension link, and loosen the balldiff outdrive, then clean and regrease the thrust bearings. After doing this the diffs become noticably smoother. All this accomplished without taking the gearboxes apart.

rccars4sal wrote:I like the way the LWB mids look like a real competition buggy. The short mids just dont look quite as serious. I like the way the lwb handles too.

To me the swb looks better, but one cannot argue with the handling advantage the lwb gives. There is a reason after all why all modern buggies have lwb. I have personally seen how my lwb mid soaks up the rough stuff , i cant imagine the swb would do better .