Kyosho Pureten nitro 1/10 touring car recomissioning

[bishbashbosh]

Thought I'd share some pics of the various work I'm doing on this Kyosho Pureten Nitro 'Plato Astra'.  Acquired this to use as a garage ornament but couldn't help myself to get it running, which inevitably took more time and money than expected

 

I don't know much about it other than it looks like it's one of these 'magazine builds', a DeAgostini/Kyosho venture from around 2005: https://www.partworks.co.uk/nitro-racer-180-c.asp

[bishbashbosh]

As it came to me initially.  Untested, missing fuel tank and radio gear.

[bishbashbosh]

First task, striaghten the exhaust pipe so it fitted out the shell.  Upon trying to start it noticed the clutch wasn't working (stuck on) - a strip, clean, rebuld and greased bearing sorted that with no extra parts needed.

[bishbashbosh]

Managed to get it running with a temporary fuel tank and 15% fuel.  Happy days.  So next up would be radio gear and receiver battery to test drive it - for this I went for Flysky GT3C and 6v NiMH 1600mah receiver pack with Overlander charger.  The receiver size difference made me chuckle.

[bishbashbosh]

With a test drive in sight, I knocked up some alloy brackets to mount the universal fuel tank as I was too cheap to buy the proper Kyosho one that would have just bolted in.    Lower cable ties now replaced with correct countersunk screws through the chassis.

[bishbashbosh]

Ready for test drive!  Except the steering arms were locked solid, steering servo didn't work at all and the throttle servo barely had enough juice to move the throttle body.  Steering freed and oiled, and both servos uprated to Etronix 9kg metal geared items which work a treat.

[bishbashbosh]

I managed a few small test drives but had some teething problems.  It's now running and tuned as well as a novice can do it.

 

One thing I did find annoying was being unable to start and refuel the car with the body on which led to be driving with the body off a lot.  Time to remedy that.

 

Step 1 - rotate the pull starter 90 degrees to face the 'passenger' side of the car.  Small amount of filing required to properly rotate the backplate to support this.

[bishbashbosh]

Step 2 - shell modifications.

 

Used a deep socket to mark out the location of the glow plug on the roof to drill a glow starter hole.

Windscreen got a hole drilled for refueling and cooling.

Passenger window got a hole drilled, which allows me to poke the pullstart handle out upon fitting the shell.

 

Holes were a mix of metal step drill and metal holesaws.

 

Voila, the car can now be started and refueled with the shell on.

[bishbashbosh]

First and second test drives were cut short because the pullstart spring became dislocated and the cable didn't retract.  The pullstart seems a nonstandard size on this GX15 engine so a £6 eBay job wasn't the fix.

 

It's now drilled with a mushroom head bolt keeping the spring locator firmly in place.  Free fix and proven to be working on my last outing.

[bishbashbosh]

The fuel system was giving me some grief - serious air bubbles from the tank and difficulty in fine tuning.

 

This was remedied by some longer fuel lines from the exhaust (more stable tank pressure) and longer run from the tank to the carb.  Pictured are the new lengths.

 

While there I added some fuel hose clamps to isolate the fuel tank between runs, hopefully saving the need to drain the tank as often.

[bishbashbosh]

The shocks were pretty non functional - this model has oil filled rather than the earlier model's friction shocks.  They got a rebuild with 30wt shock oil.

 

Also upgraded the wheel metal bushes to ABEC5 bearings by simply measuring the bushing and ordering a suitable bearing (5x10x4).

 

 

[bishbashbosh]

There's a few outstanding problems I'm waiting on parts to fix now.  

 

Various bolts are rattling loose during running.  It lost an exhaust manifold screw (M2.6x25, such an awkward size) and the engine mount bolts keep coming loose resulting in disengaging from the pinion.

 

It also managed to lose the air filter foam (twice) so a new air filter is on order.

[Yorkshireman]

Nice project mate. Sounds like you need some thread lock on those bolts !

I remember the time I lost my air filter on my Trophy Truggy....was running on gravel at the time.....totally ruined the engine ☹️

[53HRA]

Good little runners these are. I have some how accumulated  3 and  a half of these in the garage  

[bishbashbosh]

10 hours ago, John Booth said:

Nice project mate. Sounds like you need some thread lock on those bolts !

I remember the time I lost my air filter on my Trophy Truggy....was running on gravel at the time.....totally ruined the engine ☹️

 

The filter I've ordered is a different design (circular foam) so hopefully stop it falling out? Time will tell.

 

When new bolts arrive they'll be threadlocked for sure!  Although the engine plate looks a bit malformed where the bolts go so might contribute to the loosening.

[bishbashbosh]

9 hours ago, 53HRA said:

Good little runners these are. I have some how accumulated  3 and  a half of these in the garage  

 

Keeping my eyes open for cheap non runners for spare parts although there seems to be plenty of spares available on eBay.  Something I'd quite like is 2 speed if that's possible to retrofit.

[Stormbringer]

We found with our Kyosho cars that even with threadlock the engine mount screws came loose quite often 

[bishbashbosh]

1 hour ago, Stormbringer said:

We found with our Kyosho cars that even with threadlock the engine mount screws came loose quite often 

I've also ordered some Allen head m3x8 screws and curved anti vibration washers to try and help! Haha 

[Araujo90]

On 05/08/2021 at 01:26, bishbashbosh said:

First task, striaghten the exhaust pipe so it fitted out the shell.  Upon trying to start it noticed the clutch wasn't working (stuck on) - a strip, clean, rebuld and greased bearing sorted that with no extra parts needed.

Bro, great project, I hope everything goes well, and that it takes a lot of fun with him. I also have a Kyosho, very similar to yours, mine is pureten GP Alpha 2

[Siw]

I have one of these!

last run 10-15yrs ago!

found it in a box in the garage this afternoon, have ordered some rear suspension arms and a rear diff casing. Hopefully I can get it running again too!