To complete my Kyosho fleet, I finally found time for the Kyosho Lazer project. I drove the Lazer for 2 seasons back in the days and I learned 2 things. First, the Lazer is a beautiful designed car - second, not all beautiful cars are fast. Okay, my race results were ok, but it was hard work to steer this thing through the mostly slippery dirt tracks here in Germany. I remember, the Yokomos at this time had a much better handling and drivers, what usually was behind me, were able to beat me. Only on the super rough natural tracks with bomb craters were the right terrain for the Lazer! Today I know, why the Lazer has so much problems with handling, but we will come later to this point. Anyway, I loved this car, because it looked so great and the durable design.
With this project I wanted to fix some of those issues and I really want to race this great buggy again!
The super long suspension arms are only one, of many features of this car.
With the lower Optima Mid LWB body it looks best. I always hatet the original ZX and ZX-R bodies. They was pretty ugly and bulky in my eyes.
Looks good!
The rear view. Do you spotted the 3D printed lower wing mount?
Before thing shine, they must go dirty. Here you can see, how I work on the motor plate...
...next step sanding the edges...
...and here is the final result. Time to shine!
Under the lid. This is another project to match all the other Kyosho cars of my fleet as close as possible. Same look and feel. Same electronics and hardware.
The new Kyosho Re-releaseTurbo Optima shock are installed. They are amazing! Yes, it was expensive to equip all my K-Cars with those shocks. But it´´s worth the money.
LRP Flow X speedo/Reedy 10.5T Combo - the stuff to race! many people ask me, why I use the LRP speedo. The answer is, you don´t need a programming card and no smart phone to adjust your speed controller. I want to drive all this cars for next 20 years (damn, then I will be a very old fart!) and it is maybe better to programm your speedo the old way with buttons, LED´s and some beeps.
I redesigned the whole chassis of the Lazer. It is pretty narrow now and the Lipo battery fits very nice on the right side, while the whole electronic is on the left side.
The geometry of the shock towers is new. I put the rear shocks to the front of the shock tower. Shocking! So you get more rotation in the tight corners.
It took a long time of testing to find the correct spring/oil combination. If you have a RC Car with long arms, like this, you need very hard springs and oil. Especially the front springs needs to be very hard. I found the solution with the Re-release Cat XLS kit front springs. They are perfect!
Rear view. I made a anti roll bar from piano wire. I am not a fan of bling tuning, but I found some blue anodized aluminium suspension mounts from Korea. They will hold much longer, than the original plastic parts. I remember, I made exactly this parts for my old Lazer back in the days while my education as precision mechanic at Philips. I was the first who occupied the CNC milling machine. And I gave it back 3 years later, when my education was over. This is 30 years ago and I totally forgot how to programm this and other cnc machines.
Front end. Lunsford titanium turnbuckles around. CVD drive shafts from RC Mayonnaisem what are excellent! I made a steel weight plate under the electronics to gain some weight. Also under the battery is a steel plate. Plus many extra weights in the chassis.
I made a belt tensioner to avoid belt jumping when bracking on high grip tracks. What I totally forgot was the fact, that the Lazer has a fascinating drive train! 3 diffs and a lockable front one-way. This is pretty amazing! Hope, the mid diff in the spur gear will not melt down, like Donald Trump these days. I will try to catch the slipper unit for the Lazer somewhere to be sure.
3 differentials, friends! Great for bumpy tracks!
The huge spur gear is one visible feature of the Lazer!
Nice colour combination. Blue, black, shiny metal and gold shocks. Try to figure this in orange colour. Nooo!
I really like the look of the upper outer ball ends of the suspension. Looks stupid and cool at the same time. And it works!
I designed new c-hubs with 10 degrees angle, instead of zero degrees. made from Shapeways high quality HP printer material. Strong!
I also redesigned the rear hubs. The original hubs has two problems. There was no toe-in at the rear suspension and the hubs has 2 hole locations. A too low and a too high location for the hinge pin. One of the reasons, why the Lazer has so much handling issues back in the days was this terrible geometry. So I designed the new hubs with the correct location for the hinge pin and I also gave the hub a 3 degrees toe-in per side. This will help a lot!
This is a photo from my old Lazer. I made a new very narrow chassis for this car and a lot of bits to make it better. It came out so light, that I had to put 80 grams weight in the car to reach the minimum weight for races. At a time, where most 4WD cars has much overweight.
I raced a HEL speedo from Ralf Helbing, HEL batteries and the great Kyosho LeMans motors with aluminium endbell. Yokomo rims was standard here. And a CS T-Charger in the background.
Another shot of my old Lazer. As I wrote, I really nice car with a not so nice handling! I am very interested, how my Neo Vintage Lazer will handle. But I have a very good feeling now. And it is a great addition to my other Kyoshos of my fleet. Time for first tests!
