Optima vs Turbo Optima differences

[tamiyadan]

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[keithrc]

One other small difference I haven't seen anyone else mention yet, the Turbo had a different "diode" for the stock mechanical speed controller. This diode was much smaller on the original Optima, I'm guessing the Turbo needed the larger diode to handle the extra power of the intended use of the 8.4V battery.


Keith

[uzzi]

I may be wrong but I thought the diodes on the mechanical speed controller was to regulate the voltage to 6v for the receivers back in the day. That being said the Turbo Optima had the bigger diodes as it was designed to run on 8.4v and the original Optima ran on 7.2v.

[tamiyadan]

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[mugenbulldog]

I had a later optima and they had moved the resistors to the turbo location at the back. I think it also had the taller shock towers, can't be certain but I never throw anything away and I don't have short ones

[Martco78]

I bought a vintage Optima rolling chassis recently, just really for the fun of fixing up.

Having gone through this thread I'm not entirely sure of its lineage and whether it is actually a Turbo....
It came with no body, a set of new re-re wheels and tyres and fitted with a set of vintage gold, bottom-loaded RC10 shocks. It also has a belt drive, but I have yet to strip it down to inspect.
I have since fitted the re-re shocks and run it down the street with the brushless set-up temporally lashed-on that is showing in a couple of the photos. It went very well.

From this thread I can see that it has the taller shock mounts, the ribbed suspension arms, the alloy under-tray and appears to be ball-raced throughout as per the Turbo. However the steering servo has the upwards arm and straight rod and the drive gears appear to be like nothing described in this thread or the manuals I can find (my motor pinion BTW).

Can anybody shed some light?

[EvolutionRevolution]

Aftermarket or homemade delrin countergear.

That's pretty much required with a brushless, the original gears would self-destruct with hot modifieds back in the day...

[Coelacanth]

From this thread I can see that it has the taller shock mounts, the ribbed suspension arms, the alloy under-tray and appears to be ball-raced throughout as per the Turbo. However the steering servo has the upwards arm and straight rod and the drive gears appear to be like nothing described in this thread or the manuals I can find (my motor pinion BTW).

Can anybody shed some light?

A lot of people with original Optimas upgraded parts on their cars with Turbo Optima parts, like the shock towers, stronger webbed control arms, stabilizers, Gold shocks and wheels & tires. But what makes me think your car might've originally been a Turbo Optima was the aluminum belly skid-plate...it's pretty uncommon to see upgraded Optimas with that skid-plate added. I've seen lots and lots of Optimas that looked almost like Turbo Optimas but had no skid-plate. So, my guess is that your car was originally a Turbo. Another way to tell is to see if your original counter gear has a spring or multiple spring-washer assembly held down with a brass nut; this special "limiter gear" only came on the Turbo Optima & Salute; the regular Optima/Javelin had a solid counter gear. As Evo-Revo said, the one on your car is aftermarket.

[Martco78]

Thanks, guys. That helps a lot.
I'm guessing the 'up' steering servo arm is also a mod a turbo owner might do as it is more direct than the stock down + z-arm.

I'm still going to give it an Optima body though, as it is my favourite and I'm not such a fan of the Turbo.

[Jirka]

Yes, the Z-rod was not a good at all except it allowed to have faster steering = longer servo arm. But since one of the problems in (Turbo) Optima's steering was that You had use only servo/doubleside tape to install servo to somehow grease plastic "(90) Servo mount", servo was moving while steer. Because of this people tried to use 2 zip ties to secure servo mounting. In Turbo Optima the Z-rods ball ends were in different levels in 3D space and this caused even more all kind of twists and forces to steering components. Going back to Optima up-rod did make the steering a bit more effective etc. .

I believe that Your Optima was originally Optima that was upgraded almost to Turbo Optima. Lower arms did break quite easily on Optima and the original owner just bought Turbo Optima arms to his car. Optima's lower chain guide did break easily and to avoid this to happen again, he also bought "(143) Chassis Guard" to avoid breaking lower chain guide again. Are there any scratches between the chassis guard and the lower chain guide? The Chassis Guard was really light and was acting as a "chassis long" skid plate. Gears seems to be just hot ups, similar can be seen e.g. here: http://www.rc10talk.com/viewtopic.php?f=79&t=22021 , see Blandin's "Ultima" . RC10 shocks to Optima and to other cars were quite common mod BITD if You had RC10 too.

I think You can and maybe should use the upper shock mounting holes on both front and rear towers.

Finding original 1986 made uncutted and unpainted Optima body might be a bit hard and take a few years and relatively lot money. I would suggest that get either some repro body (I got mine from Marwan) that is a few mm smaller (there are some conversations about this elsewhere on rc10talk) than original body was or then Kyosho's rere body, if that would fit nice (I do not know about those Kyosho rere bodies, maybe so other member can confirm this).

Jirka

[Martco78]

Thanks Jirka.
Good idea to check the frame rails. That could be the smoking gun.

You got me thinking and I went a way back through ebay sold items for Optima and I found the car as it was previously sold before it came to me.(See picture)
The guy I bought it from had stripped the body, wheels, shocks and stabilisers for his own use/resale before putting it back up for sale with the re-re wheels and RC10 shocks. It had originally at that time a reasonably well-used box-art Optima body which came up for resale recently which tipped me off.

I still got a good bargain for my needs, but those Hot Shot wheels would have been really nice!

I'm not so bothered about authenticity, just the fun of building and running older machines, so I will probably go for the re-re Optima body and decal set which are now readily available here.

[Martco78]

Whipped the bash plate off this evening and sure enough, the rails and chain guide show signs of wear supporting the idea that it could well be a well-modded Optima. Also the fact that it had those custom wheels on it previously helps perhaps to indicate that the original owner was keen on mods.
Additionally, as I now have my detective hat on, there is not the same amount of expected wear on the suspension arms as the rest of the chassis, again supporting retro-fitment.

I'm pretty happy to close the case on the parentage for this one for now

[Coelacanth]

Cool, I guess the parentage doesn't really matter...if you have most or all of the all-important Turbo upgrade parts, who cares what it began life as? It's a great car either way.