Kyosho Pureten Alpha GP rebuild

[stavers]

Hi guys,

 

This is my first post on here so hello everyone.

About 8 or 9 years ago I bought a secondhand Kyosho Pureten Alpha GP (had no idea what it was I just wanted a cheap Nitro r/c car and bought it off eBay!), ran it a few times and stuck it away because it never behaved itself.  I then dug it out a few months ago to play with as my brother-in-law bought a new nitro r/c buggy and I got the bug again!

 

Long story short the car was a bit of a dog, with a hacked up Impreza bodyshell, a GX-12 that hardly ran, a leaking exhaust manifold and a few other odd bits wrong.  I rebuild the front diff as one of the drive gears smashed and then it ran in to a kerb and twisted the chassis.  I then decided to give it a full rebuild, replacing basic stock bits with genuine Kyosho hop-up bits.  This is rebuild story in pictures...

 

First off was the chassis.  Since it was bent and a fairly well abused in general I started with a new one.  This is is AGW3 hop-up version (only differences I can find are that it is gold and the engine mounts directly to the chassis as opposed to being on a mounting plate that is bolted to the chassis).

 

Then the front diff was stripped down, re-greased and rebuilt with ball bearings from the AGW1 kit.

 

Then came the hubs (again with full ball bearings), shafts and new suspension.  The car had started out with friction shocks so I bought a couple of pairs of W5161 racing shocks and filled them with 35wt oil.

 

Next up was a new AGW2 2-speed transmission.  Since I was going down this route I sourced a Vespel (ceramic?) clutch and a barely used GX-15 engine to give a bit more torque.

 

 

Note the 2-speed clutch housing.

 

Then, after a rear diff rebuild (and another new set of drive gears as this one had failed too) with bearings this was all mounted and another set of W1561s were added.  I spaced the rear shocks to be a bit taller than the front ones working on the assumption that the weight transfer when accelerating would level the chassis out.

 

Getting that 2-speed transmission to bolt together was not fun...

 

Then engine on...

Note the exhaust pipe is part of the AGW4 high-torque system.  Not the usual tuned pipe.

 

Then original radio gear and cleaned fuel tank

 

And the tuned exhaust

Note the little "K" on the rubber joining pipe - quite liked that!

 

& she looks like a full chassis once again

 

 

In order to try and save the chassis should another kerb arise I bought a foam covered bumper

 

& finally a new Porsche 911 GT3 body shell

I think there is a mounting issue which I will get around to sorting.  I am still using the Impreza mounting posts so they might need some modification to get the Porsche shell to fit properly.  It seems to be too far back.

 

 

So that was the rebuild.

I have taken it out for a quick shake-down and first results are positive.  The engine runs very sweetly, the exhaust sounds brilliant and once it drops in to 2nd gear it shifts very well indeed!

 

I haven't started to fully tune the engine yet so I am still running the rich factory settings.  Once I have run the engine in a bit I will then start to lean it off and play around with the shifting point as the engine seems to bog down a little before it changes gear.  I think leaning it off will help.

 

Hope you enjoyed!

[Tear101]

Very nice! I've got one still that I got brand new back in about 2000. Ran it a lot for about 5 years and really enjoyed it although it kept killing front diffs so I ran it as as rwd only. Now sits in the shed all alone!