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Just acquired this . its from all the way back in the 80s, me and my brother raced against it often at our local track so we were stoked to score it. He ran it mostly in oval modified with a vette body so we are gonna to a full Kyosho Salute tribute/resto here. Probably use no rere parts. Gonna get a Lemans 360pt for power. we will run a 1060 esc and lipo tho cause we like to run them. Davids heavily involved so he might enter it into a botm later. It has a belt in it so will stay with that. It also has Thorp 48 pitch gears on the outside of the case.

Looks good here's one I did for a friend after he dug his childhood car out of storage.

https://www.rc10talk.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=41811&hilit=salute

That looked very nice!

I have one just like it from back in the 80's
this is going to be my next project rebuild with stock parts but modern electronics
the motor I have I have 3 of the 240 Le Mans motors and two others that can be rebuilt
but I am thinking of doing one of the new slow rpm speed rock crawler motor's and make it a rock crawler or a slow speed monster truck!
But being able to swap it back to the Optima when ever wanting to.
This car was by far the most fun to run on a indoor dirt race track!!

Nice! I always loved the early Optimas. I saved all my money back then to buy a Turbo Optima and was really amazed how well it soaked up the bumps and ripping around with the 240s with the 9 tooth pinion! It was like the "turbo" kicked in when the 240s hit its power band! Good memories. Great car!

Coming along nicely. got an Optima screw kit from Germany or somewhere (wish i could remember)....totally tits compared to Tonys or RC Screwz....everyone is perfect with 86' manual so far...they are machine screws tho, not wood type but perfect on size and length...plus they are black which i dig

Tap photo for clarity...
Still needs steering servo....waiting on rere mount so i do have to tape it in.

Wow, that cleaned up beautifully! I'm not familiar with the Salute. Other than the body, how does it differ from the Optima?

Thank You! Its the same car as the Turbo Optima just came without the motor (240S) and a different body. Its an 86'

Its the car we both wanted almost as bad as an Avante back in the day. Another added to the collection.

Ahh, those were the good ol' days...I worked at a hobby store back then. A coworker friend and I both had Turbo Optimas and did some racing on Sundays, and decided to split on a Salute kit so we'd both have spare parts.

Coelacanth wrote: ↑Fri Jan 29, 2021 11:38 am Ahh, those were the good ol' days...I worked at a hobby store back then. A coworker friend and I both had Turbo Optimas and did some racing on Sundays, and decided to split on a Salute kit so we'd both have spare parts.

Classic info! How much was Salute back then?

I can't quite remember, but it was cheaper than the Turbo Optima kit because it didn't include the motor. We also had our employee cost-plus-10% discount, or we probably wouldn't have been able to afford the hobby. For some reason I'm thinking it was somewhere around $300 Canadian, before our discount?

Do u wish u still had it? y/n

Nah, not really...except as a collector car, perhaps. But I'm not really a collector, I'm a resto-modder.

Even back in the day, I wasn't really a fan of the Salute body, but we sure put the parts to use. And after I restored my original Zebra Optima from that era, some of those parts went to building one of my other two Optima projects, CYANide and Barney. I'd take any of those over a Salute anyday because they took way more work and planning. I can appreciate the restorations here, though...I love the memories they bring back!