Old School Radios, giving another life into it.

[MOmo]

Borrowd from internet.

Funny how I came looking about doing an OIN radio upgrade as well.

I have one these and I thought it might be simple enough to rip out the old board and convert to 2.4ghz. I wanted to keep the stock appearance and function but improve range. My goal is to actually race it in stock buggy.



Momo

[slow_jun]

Cool idea,but is it using an IC or transistor based circuitry? If there is a Ppm signal it *can be done.

note: * can or cannot

[Typicray@rainmans]

Borrowd from internet.

Funny how I came looking about doing an OIN radio upgrade as well.

I have one these and I thought it might be simple enough to rip out the old board and convert to 2.4ghz. I wanted to keep the stock appearance and function but improve range. My goal is to actually race it in stock buggy.



Momo

If you end up doing this please post a how to thread. I have one and a weekend of work would definitely be worth the look on all the racers faces when a buggy with an ancient radio wins.

[terry.sc]

I have one these and I thought it might be simple enough to rip out the old board and convert to 2.4ghz. I wanted to keep the stock appearance and function but improve range.

Easy to rip everything out and drop in new electronics, all you have to do is remove all the old circuits and wire a new board onto the two control potentiometers inside.

As for range, transmitter power wasn't regulated back then, quite often the old radios had 500mW of output power while anything from the 90s and later are limited to 100mW. You can find an ancient radio has a much bigger range than a modern radio.

[TheObstacle]

If you end up doing this please post a how to thread. I have one and a weekend of work would definitely be worth the look on all the racers faces when a buggy with an ancient radio wins.

About a year ago, I converted my old Futaba wheel TX (the one in my profile pic) to 2.4GHz, and it works great. Writeup with pictures is here:

30 year old Futaba Silver Wheel radio converted to 2.4GHz

[TheObstacle]

Just took a look inside a "Brown Box" Futaba like the one MOmo posted a picture of (I happen to have one I cannibalized for parts long ago), and it looks like it doesn't have a separate RF board like the "Silver Box" model, which could make a conversion like I did a bit tricky. Could still be doable if you can find the right signals and cut a few traces on the circuit board, though...

[orangemazda]

cool, I may have to convert my old Ko Propo!

[Welshy40]

Nice, I did my Sanwa Gemini Exerd several years ago and believe is the first with a 2.4 conversion, it looks harder than it really is but you do need a really hot soldering iron otherwise you will mess it up. I still think the older transmitters are better than the new so why not continue using them

[slow_jun]

Yeah, now. Radios are too much complcated. You just need end points and trim and your ready to go!! Hhahaha