Kyosho 30635 - Fantom EP-4WD

[silvertriple]

Today, I started something... For the small story, I had a Kyosho 1/12 back in the eighties, it was 4WD, there was a chain, and a one way at the front, and a prototype body... I did not have a proper place to run it at that time, so it was sold almost once build, and I did not really run it. When I saw the rerelease, I added it to my list, and did not thought about it more. This week-end there was a vintage event with both offorad and onroad track and I had nothing to run on the onroad track... Maybe I should rather say, nothing built yet to run on the onroad track during a vintage event.

I bought the Fantom kit few weeks ago. it was waiting under my desk. Early July, there is one vintage event only track focused (no offroad track). I want to participate, so I need to have at least one or two cars ready. I'm still missing something to be able to finish the other one, so I started by this one. I have a mini size servo, a motor, and esc and a RX, so everything is good...



I started the build early afternoon.

Bag A : Front knuckles
It's quite surprising : you open the bag, you lay out the parts, you assemble them...


... and the bag is over. Right side is reverse thread, and there is groove on the cup to help identify it.


One Bag, one step, if it continues like this, with 5 bags, it will be a quick build.

Bag B: It's all about the front train.


First you assemble the structure...


Then you add the knuckles


That's probably the most difficult part of the build : you need to push the spacers between the structure and the knuckles and get the screw to enter in.
And Bag B is finished. 2 bags, 3 steps.

Bag C: it's about steering
First the servo saver


Quite easy, actually.


Then you assemble the steering tie rods, including the input one.


Next is to put all of this on the chassis plate


And on next step, you add the body mounts, but I forgot to take the picture...
And bag C is over.

Bag D: It's about the rear train, and it starts by the Diff gear


It's quite fast and easy to do


The rear axle mount is next, and I also forgot a picture... The ball bearings are inserted in a part allowing to set the height of the chassis (useful when tires are worn, for example).

Next the rear train goes on the chassis, with the motor and the pinion


You may notice on this picture I forgot a part on the front. It was added after that picture.

Bag D is over, and we are about to start the last bag.

Bag E: it starts by the radio plate.
Very easy and quick


The most difficult is to insert the 3 rubber washer which I suppose are there to reduce the vibrations...

And at the next steps, the radio plate joins the chassis... In which you will be required to add the battery before adding the chain...


Then comes the chain... I don't like the fact it seats on the radio plate, and I'll work out a chain guide in 3D print.

Once the chain is in, only wheels remain to be added... And that's it for the chassis.

I trimmed the body shell after this and it did not took much time to get there...

[silvertriple]

There is things that disturbs me in the layout of this car:
- the chain rubbing on the radio plate
- the risk of the ESC power plug going to mess with the chain
- in the case you use Lipo battery, the risk of having the balance connector messing either with the ground or the chain...

I had to do something.

I made a chain guide and 3D printed it. It does guide the chain. I does allow to attach the power plug. It does allow for proper storage of the balance plug.


I'll put this later on Thingiverse...

Edit : https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5405187

[silvertriple]

My friends tend to take their car on the track at night during the vintage events... I have one planed early July, so I need to do something for this so I can actually run my Fantom at night... But I wanted something not attached to the body shell, as I need to refix them often on the cars where I did glue led buckets inside the shell, and I didn't want to drill the body shell...

Thought about it, took measurements, and designed two parts...


One for the front, one for the rear, easily removable for day run. I will just need to add masks at the proper place on the bodyshell while doing the paint job for satisfactory results.




And this is already on thingiverse https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5407045 (I'll update with a jpg for masking at some point)

This is basically the reason why I did not made the paintjob yet (and also because I did not want to finish the car in one single day ).

Next steps :
- Molotow liquid chrome effect in the led buckets, led connections
- paintjob. Need to think about the colors and the layout...

[Frankentruck]

Out of curiosity, what models do you think they would be running in this race when you're running the Fantom? For 1/10 scale, 2wd and 4wd didnt usually get put in the same races.

[silvertriple]

Well, first, we are not really racing... There is no transponders on the cars, and no chrono, and some of us runs some cars from the eighties freshly restored and they do not want to break anything... We are just enjoying running our cars together...

And as for the cars running, I saw few Fantoms, and other pancars, but I'm not familiar with the chassis. One of the car I saw was one made by its owner...

Generally, we come to those events with multiple cars of different categories, so we can run together with cars of the same category... But we do not formalise too much on the categories... On the track the other day, there was both 1/10 and 1/12 cars at the same time, and sometimes from multiple categories... Generally, when you see one taking one specific car and bringing to the track while you have a similar tool, you would just get yours and go to run as well... And sometimes you don't want to run, and just enjoy the discussions. In Belley, where I was last weekend I had 11 cars (my son 3), and all of them were off road... I would have loved having a few on road cars as well, as I never went on the on road track this week-end, as I did not have proper cars... (In short, I'm more a casual runner than a real racer )

[Frankentruck]

Thanks for the explanation. I haven't seen vintage racing/running events in person and was curious how this might be done. Only 4wd 1/12 scale would be a very small group to be in. I've never been a serious racer because it was mostly on road racing near me, but the category rules also limited my options.

[silvertriple]

The fact is that back in the eighties, when the Fantom came in, there was no distinction between 4wd and 2wd cars... That distinction came later.

[silvertriple]

A bit late about this...

Due to the fact I wanted to use white as background on the bodyshell, I decided to use liquid mask


I have 2 hobby knifes designed to be used with the index, I will try those for this (my wife had those for scrapbooking, found the idea being good, and decided to try).


I layed out my cutting plan on the shell using a black marker. Maybe I should have used a thinner one, as it was not really easy to spot the mistake during the cut or during the paintjob (no pictures, sorry).

Started by some translucent purple at the bottom and at the top. The plan changed slightly when I started to remove the mask for next layer : while my cut was proper, I probably waited too much for each layer to be dry before applying next one, and as a result it did not peel in one layer, but 3, making it slightly more difficult than plan. As a result, I made some mistake and readapted my plan, rather than stripes of light and darker blue, it will turn in fading blues...


I was not really happy with my paintjob (symmetry issues, some stuff that I did not see, and some areas where the liquid mask was not in proper adhesion with the bodyshell, probably because I did mistake while removing the previous area... Decided to use some tricks. Black lining first.


Then some vinyls to hide the poor job I made on the shark tails and some addition on the front wheel extends (to hide some small issues I was not happy with...


Added some chrome on the driver figure visor...





I'm still not happy with my paintjob, but that will do it. I still need to add the leds, some sponsor and numbers...

[silvertriple]

I did run my Fantom and the Spider Touring Force TF-3 this week-end in Macon on a nice on road track with nice curves and a long straight line...


There was a lot of fun on this week-end with a lot of vintage rc passionate people. Stands of the site were full. Exposition for some, running for some, and both for some...












The track is allowing for some serious running with bigger scales, so the running session was organized based on the registered participation : during each hour, there was two fifteen minutes sessions for electric powered cars (1/10 and 1/12 mixed), one for gas powered (1/8 and 1/10 mixed - including one EP converted 1/8), and one for big scales (1/4 and 1/5 mixed).

There was a lot of fun, and the big scales are truly spectacular to see running (I took some videos, and will share some later), and also when you have a guy running in 1/8 like a champ, with very nice trajectory and regularity (maybe he was running like a champ because he is a champion)...

My son got his newly built Calibra TA02 and his TT02. He got some escaping front dogbones issues on the TT-02, I may need to find him some universal shafts... This is the only issue he reported, he had a lot of fun but did not attend the second day.

On my side, I ran 5 cars there :
- Kyosho Fantom EP-4WD, in terms of track car (about 15 runs of 10 minutes over the week-end), it quickly became my favorite. The one way requires a bit of adaptation, but once you got the fact you need to keep some trigger in while in curve, that is just super fun, as when the rear lose traction, the front kicks in after a short transition
- Kyosho Spider TF3. Initially, I had a doubt about the Kyosho superstock 34 motor I had in this car. I got it with the chassis, and when I built the car, the first try triggered a decision to order in emergency a new motor, just in case. I did 6 runs yesterday, the chassis is having a very nice behavior, very clear and running straight. It was missing a bit of power, but I decided to keep it this way for the time being. Today during the two first run the car seemed to have more brake than yesterday, so I changed the ESC setup, and during the 3rd run, the car stop in one the lines, with smoke going out from under the shell... The lipo was safe, but the motor was super hot. Basically, the motor is dead. I replaced it later on with the replacement motor (a Tamiya Superstock RZ 23 turns), and it ran like a charm, with the additional power which was good in the long straight line
- Tamiya Lunchbox (I never go without this one, for the time when I'm too depleted to run a car seriously) : it was a lot of fun to run on the track with it, and far from being ridiculous
- Tamiya M06 (1 pack only, it is too much imprecise for this exercise, and I think that since I got the two Kyosho built, I will almost never run anymore)
- Nichimo Spirit FF : I took it to the track, as the ground clearance is too low for being run off road seriously. A on road track is where the car runs very well. Except the silver can make it definitely too slow. about 10 minutes run, printed transmission is still working like a charm. I'm curious to see if this can survive a bigger motor, and the idea start to germ in my mind to put some on-road tires on this car for the fun...

There was some people selling stuff, and my son scored a nice BearHawk, while on my side, I succeed to score a nice Marui 360RS motor in better state than the one I got already...



Overall, a very nice event, lot of fun, and waiting for the same event next year already

[cas22]

Hey Mate,
just a note to say i really like your color scheme on the plasma, very nice, and thanks for the detailed build too.
People take a long time and a lot of effort to post these like you have, and often they are not appreciated.
Yours was, im now ordering one, even though ive been off road 1/10 for ever.(and cant really justify the cost)
Thank you.

[silvertriple]

My son likes my Fantom... During one day at the club, he finished to damage the bodyshell... That was in September... Last time I ordered some bodyshells to TBG for multiple projetc I took a Plazma Alfa Romeo bodyshell, as it should be fine for the Fantom... It's here since quite a long time already. I've not done anything yet, but I need to get the car ready for teh Vintage events of the year... Specially considering that in May, June and early July, each time there will be both offroad and onroad tracks...

I trimed the bodyshell after my day of work...



I actually prefer this bodyshell to the original Fantom one... I need to define what I do with the decoration... Maybe like my Alfa Romeo GTA based on M06 chassis, or something totally different... But this time the idea is to keep it very simple... We'll see soon

[silvertriple]

Initially, I planed to go fetch spray cans tonight, but tonight is long week-end, and that means there will be a lot of trafic on the highway heading to Alps, which is one of the surest way to spend 2 hours driving instead of usually 1 hour... I decided to do with what I had remainin in the spray cans (and there is quite a few empty ones now)...

Here is the livery of my Fantom for the vintage events this year






I still need to prepare the leds for this car... And to reprint the front bumper/leds holder in TPU and perhaps with extended light buckets... But at least no nee for paint anymore...
Numbers and few sponsors maybe...

[silvertriple]

There is at least one of the Vintage events (if not two) this year where there will be night runs on both offroad and onroad... I need some of the cars to be ready in this extend...

I've modified the front Led holder I designed for the Fantom to suit the new bodyshell, printed in TPU and installed leds (not the definitive set, as ths one as too many leds on it).



The front one is also working as bumper, so it will reduce risks to damage the bodyshell...

Ad here is the result with the bodyshell...




The lightning of the driver helmet is totally unexpected and due to the one too many leds in the led set... But I may keep the idea for fun

[creflo]

Found a Fantom re re from Japan, its on the way. Curious what esc others are using. The Lemans 240S is really heavy. I want to keep a vintage kyosho theme, so I guess I'll stick with the lemans esc but its like a lead weight.