Marui Galaxy Rebuild - Finished!

[Coelacanth]

This project will be decidedly less interesting to most of you than something more high-end, but I thought it would still be interesting to see exactly what I could do to hop up the humble Marui Galaxy. This car belongs to my brother and somehow ended up with me, unused in its box for two and a half decades. He probably doesn't even remember what happened to it. Back in the day, it was a reliable runner. The gearbox is rather simplistic but works well. The suspension, however, was horrible. BITD, I had spare red Kyosho shocks back when I upgraded my Optima to gold shocks, and they were a near-perfect swap for the Galaxy's front stock shocks.

I've partly disassembled the car now and found the gears and U-joints to be in good shape. Other than the usual scuffs & scrapes, the plastic parts are in good condition, too. The wing was a write-off, having been ripped off once, re-mounted with different holes and looking kind of goofy. I have a new wing for it that will look much better than the stock wing. All the 4 plastic bushings for the front wheels, and 4 oilless metal bushings for the rear U-joints/axles will be replaced with bearings. I needed a pair of 55mm shocks for my Project CYANide project, and that turned out to be nearly the exact same length the Galaxy's rear suspension has, so it wasn't a waste buying a 4-pack of 3racing shocks. Lastly, I want to convert the rear wheels to 12mm hexes. The Galaxy already has axles cross-drilled with drive pins; I just need some pretty wide hex hubs and adding some low-profile wheels with modern tires should be a snap.

I plan to rebuild a spare Kyosho Le Mans 360ST, which should be a nice improvement over the stock 540 tin can. I'll need an inexpensive ESC with reverse, something like an Associated SC-200 would be ideal. I've already yarded out the 4-battery receiver pack, MSC with (broken) resistors and throttle servo.

Upgrading this car should be a bit of fun...hopefully it'll be ready for his birthday on Feb. 2.

[pattywagon34]

looking forward to this "restoration"

[tim.sanderson]

Very cool, Coel. Looks like a fun build.
Is that a heavy car? It looks like it weighs a ton!

[Coelacanth]

Very cool, Coel. Looks like a fun build.
Is that a heavy car? It looks like it weighs a ton!

Good question, tsan...It's mostly plastic so maybe it's not as heavy as it looks. But, just for the heck of it, I'll weigh it on a digital scale and compare to my Optima. Unfortunately, I don't have any other 2WD cars to compare it with.

[peetbee]

Cool, I had one of those years ago.
If you plan on running it check that there is no play in the gear shafts.
Mine kept stripping the gears as one of the shafts could move slightly as the motor mount didn't stop it lifting up one end.

[Coelacanth]

Thanks for the tip, peetbee, I'll make sure to check that out when time comes to put things back together again. The simple design and ease of building makes cars like these fun to tweak, to see what you can do to overcome the obvious design flaws and try to make them at least drive capably.

[Coelacanth]

I got most of the plastic parts cleaned up tonight. I also weighed the entire Galaxy car. With the MSC, motor, all parts to be reassembled (except batteries), it weighs in at 1176 grams. My Turbo Optima, with ESC + motor + receiver tips the scales at 1441 grams. I can't say if 1176 grams is light or heavy for a 2WD car--anyone else have some numbers for comparison?

I also have some wheels & tires lined up for eventual use. I'll include a set of knobbies and spongies for off-road and on-road driving. The bigger rims & mounted low-profile You-G tires actually weighed 54 grams compared to the stock wheels & tires, which each weighed 80 grams...I thought that was a pretty impressive weight reduction, cutting 52 grams from the total weight just by switching to modern wheels & low-profile tires.

Now, I have to sit around a week or two for some 11 x 5 x 4 bearings to arrive...

[peetbee]

Hope it helps, I went through a couple of sets of gears before I realised what was happening. A small plate/spacer under the motor plate should stop the shaft from lifting.
I'd forgotten I used to own it and for the life of me I can't remember where it went - got rid of it in the pre-ebay days!

[Coelacanth]

Here's a simple mod I did to beef up the Galaxy's steering linkage. The stock linkage uses piddly 1.5mm threaded rods which--as you can see--obviously don't hold up to much abuse. A few curb hits and they bend very easily. I had some 3mm threaded steel rod lying around and some leftover 4.8mm ball ends/cups, so I enlarged the holes in the servo saver and bolted on the ball ends & cups. The steering knuckles will also get 4.8mm ball ends installed and this Galaxy won't wilt as easily after minor bumps & bruises.

[peetbee]

Cool, you should lose a lot of slop with that mod too.
The bent end in the servo saver was always hopeless.

[Coelacanth]

I finished the steering linkage tonight. Reamed out the knuckles for some larger 3mm-threaded 4.8mm balls. I had to file off some plastic from the right side of the plastic bath-tub as the larger ball-cups would catch on the edge when steering left/right. You can see the rounded area I opened up just where the driver's side tie-rod & ball-cup emerge from the chassis.

It seems to work great, with absolutely no slop.

[pattywagon34]

very nice.cant wait to see it when its done.
keep up the work

[Coelacanth]

I managed to track down some new blue plastic parts for $5 and a set of 3 new chassis covers for $8, both items from a local seller that has a veritable stock-pile of vintage Marui parts. Turns out he bought out a local hobby store's parts when they closed, but (perhaps unfortunately) it's almost all Marui. Unfortunately he didn't have a new roll-cage...

When I originally built the car, I never installed a front stabilizer, because the kit didn't include piano wire, and that was what was required to make the stabilizer. (I remember searching in vain for the piano wire in the kit, and couldn't believe it wasn't included!) Anyway, these days, I have piano wire for wing stays, so I measured & bent an appropriate piece. For the first time, this Galaxy has a stabilizer!

The shock spring cups I bought previously that were too small for Kyosho Gold-style shocks turned out to be a good fit for the older Kyosho red shock springs. The shock ends fit a bit loose but not enough to worry about.

[Coelacanth]

The Galaxy's stock rear suspension absolutely blows chunks. I must say the car was extremely badly designed! It doesn't work well with the stock parts, and the design is such that modding it to make it work better was a major challenge. The biggest issue is probably the bigger shock bodies obstructing the movement of the rear control arms. The Galaxy's design is pretty primitive, with no way to adjust camber. This means that the tops of the rear tires can bump into the shock springs and spring adjuster because they swing inwards as they move upward with maximum compression. Improving the suspension on this buggy proves to be a helluva lot more challenging than simply upgrading the shocks!

I must've spent all day trying to figure this out, first trying to mount the shocks behind the towers instead of in front, but even though I got the obstructions resolved, the shocks were binding because they were located too far behind the axles, I think. The Galaxy absolutely needs to have the shock bottoms located in the stock positions in order for the suspension to have a remote chance of working properly.

Well, I finally figured out how to get the suspension working well, but it meant totally re-engineering this plastic craptastic car. I removed chunks of plastic from the trailing edge of the control arm, and the leading half of the black shock tower brace. This allowed me to keep the suspension travel moving more or less smoothly and without the shock body being an obstruction. I fabricated a shock tower from a piece cut out of a spare beat-up Optima upper deck and an hour of hack-sawing, Dremeling, filing & drilling. One benefit is that it's stronger and much stiffer than the overly flexible blue plastic shock towers. I believe that flex was contributing to the binding.

The shocks are 3racing 54.5mm shocks, which are new, and almost the perfect length to match the originals. The bottoms are 4.8mm balls & cups. I got one side done and let me say this, it works WAYYY better than stock!

[SFC K]

This is a really nice build! So did I read that right, your giving this back to your Brother?