Marui Shogun Restoration

[clintf]

Indeed. I encountered similar issues many years ago when I first built the Marui Galaxy RS for my brother, it's actually funny that I still vividly remember this from way back in the early 80's. The manual steps for installing the front stabilizer referred to a piece of piano wire that had to be bent to match a diagram, and that piano wire was nowhere to be found in the kit. When I resto-modded the car a few years back, I used a piece of my own wire to fabricate the stabilizer. I think the Marui manuals can be a bit sketchy.


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That's interesting and good to know as I didn't realize that part was actually supposed to be hand bent. I recently bought a fully assembled Galaxy RS on eBay as a collectable - to replace the long gone one I had one as a kid in the mid-80s which my dad built. Looking at a photo I took when I had the "new" one apart I can now see that stabilizer was not quite precisely bent to shape.

[Coelacanth]

I still don't know if the kit was supposed to include the piano wire, or if Marui just assumed everyone had spare piano wire lying around at home.

The manual shows the picture of the wire along with all the nuts & bolts & washers, so you'd ASSUME it was an included kit part.

[Dadio]

I was just looking at the assembly diagram for the Hunter front suspension and has it got a spring on top of the knuckle as well as a coil over shock ?

[Lonestar]

Only springs at the front of the hunter - and a so-stiff-it's-useless shock at the back

Great work on bringing this Shogun back to life

To the other posters: can we PLEASE write MaRUi, and quit calling this Mauri as I've seen countless times along the years, here included? Who would call their cars Assocaited or Tamyiay?

[Dadio]

Only springs at the front of the hunter - and a so-stiff-it's-useless shock at the back

Great work on bringing this Shogun back to life

To the other posters: can we PLEASE write MaRUi, and quit calling this Mauri as I've seen countless times along the years, here included? Who would call their cars Assocaited or Tamyiay?

This is even more funny for me as I'm dyslexic and COULD NOT SEE THE DIFFERENCE even when you were pointing it out i had to look really hard to see you'd spelt it two ways !

[Coelacanth]

I got both gearboxes and arms reassembled, bushings upgraded with bearings. I gave it some subtle bling by replacing some of the worn black steel screws with some T-Works gold-plated hex-head screws leftover from my Gold Celebration Optima restoration. I think it gives the Shogun the little bit of added Midas Touch that such a rare car deserves...plus of course box-art restos isn't my thing.

I have the original worn black steel dogbones installed in the front only temporarily; I bought some nice shiny dogbones from AliExpress for about $5 CAD, shipped, waiting for those to arrive...it could take a few weeks, though.

[Coelacanth]

Pic of the steering servo reinstalled. I think this was an oversight or afterthought by the Marui design team. See that rectangle hole cut out of the bottom of the chassis? It seems the only purpose it serves is to allow Marui's own down-pointing servo saver and horn to move without contacting the chassis.

This makes it quite a challenge to improve. I found the servo and linkage works much better with the horn pointing straight up at neutral, with zero binding, but then the horn will be obstructed by the front gearbox and upper brace parts installed above it. So, I was forced to find a way to make it work better with the horn pointing straight down at neutral. I didn't want to re-use the original white Marui servo saver because the original builder screwed on the round outer servo saver cap reversed, which deformed it and prevented it from being reinstalled properly. I tried to use a Tamiya servo saver next, but it was too thick, protruding out from the servo too much, and caused the ball-end to bind on the center link rod. I tried to remove the obstruction by mounting the servo with some spacers underneath the mounting posts, but then again, the servo assembly was too tall and obstructed the front gearbox/brace parts. It looks like Marui designers, when faced with this oversight, decided "Let's just cut a hole in the floor of the chassis to allow the servo horn to work properly".

I managed to use a spare turnbuckle and some decent 4.8mm ball-ends to upgrade from the stock hinky-dink 1mm pre-bent servo linkage rod. I did away with the stock servo saver, just using a cut-down spare servo horn installed directly. This is intended to sit on a shelf and not be a runner, so a servo saver will be unnecessary.

The driveshaft had a few slight bends in it, I did my best to straighten it out. Anybody have any ideas for upgrading these to something more beefy? I did some searches for adjustable driveshafts but didn't find anything relevant.

Some pics of the chassis reassembly, mostly complete. The gold hardware is leftover screws I had from my Gold Celebration Optima, from www.rc-tworks.com, a seller I discovered years ago doing searches on eBay. I think it was probably this set, I bought two sets so I'd have spares...for under $20 USD per set, why not? It came in handy to spice up this Shogun.

https://www.rc-tworks.com/collections/screws-gold-plated/products/gss-optima-gold-plated-steel-screw-set-90pcs-for-kyosho-optima

[Coelacanth]

I obviously didn't want to re-use the mis-matched wheel pairs originally installed on the car, as one set was the ugly grey wheels from the Coors-Melling Thunderbird, and the other set was original but badly-damaged gold wheels from the Shogun. I found that Kyosho Optima hex hubs mated fairly nicely to the Marui tapered axles, and wheels would bolt on with enough thread, but I found that the axles would pull in-and-out with about 1/8" of play between the hex hub and uprights:

The solution for this turned out to be quite easy. I used the leftover nylon hub bushings (that I'd replaced by bearings) to fill the gap, inserting one before inserting each hex hub. I was then able to mount some Turbo Optima wheels I'd previously dyed black years ago, with some Super Pin Spike tires that fit those wheels perfectly...but I honestly can't recall who made the tires. I thought they might be Tamiya Supershot tires, but those tires seem to have lateral spike rows rather than diagonal. Oh well, they look pretty good with the black-on-gold color scheme, and certainly better than putting on the original wheels. It also injects a little Kyosho blood into the build, which seems to happen with all my cars.

[Dadio]

This is looking really good ! What tyres are they , they remind me of Tamiya Pin Spikes for the old Hot Shot , I used to love those tyres but they didn't last long .

[Coelacanth]

I can't remember either, and they sure do look like old Hotshot or Supershot tires. I picked them up at the hobby store where I worked back in the 80's. No, they don't last long, that's for sure. These were stored in a Ziploc bag all these years.

I got to work coming up with a repair for the rear bumper mount that had one side broken:

The plan was to fabricate a little piece of Kydex to bolt down on top of the remaining unbroken (but warped) mounting ear down onto the rear bumper mounting posts, and put some kind of spacer on top of the left side post where the broken mounting ear used to be. After some careful measuring, filing and drilling, I think it'll work out pretty well, and at least be a bit more sturdy than simply re-mounting the rear bumper with only the remaining unbroken mounting ear. The repair job looks pretty good. I'll probably trim it down to better line up with the gearbox.

I also got to work fixing the rough job the original builder did on the body. The front wheel cut-outs, front body mount and antenna hole weren't too much trouble, but that mangled rear body mount hole was a mess. I decided to Dremel out a nice clean hole to remove the mess, and will glue on a Lexan repair piece underneath, before giving it a fresh spray of black paint.

[Dadio]

Is the gearbox ABS , if it is it can be glued perfectly with acetone , acetone actually melts ABS so using it as a glue is like welding it , have you replaced any other grey ABS parts ? If you have then you could use a section of the replaced part to make an exact copy of the bracket and use acetone to fit it , you can even literally dissolve some ABS in acetone to make a paste and use the paste as glue .

[Coelacanth]

Is the gearbox ABS , if it is it can be glued perfectly with acetone.

Thanks for the idea, but unfortunately the mounting ear that was broken off is missing. It really is incredible that the Marui designers figured the rear gearbox--especially the 1/8" thin left side--would be a good place to locate an ABS plastic bumper mount. Marui cars are known for their fragility, it's a wonder any of them survived at all.

[Coelacanth]

It just seemed wrong to reassemble this car with the ugly red plastic Ninja shocks it had installed originally. I don't even think I would've reinstalled the original yellow plastic craptastic shocks, if it had them. Gold aluminum oil-filled shocks and some more gold hardware are just what King Midas ordered! This rare car just deserves better, IMHO.

[clintf]

Looking good, definitely keeping an eye on this restoration. There don't appear to be a whole lot of Maruis around these days.

[naushad]

I've restored a few of these buggies. Have 2 shoguns and 2 ninjas.

The rear gearbox is a pain for both models - very hard to find now NIP and the rear tabs being fragile as you've found. Essentially, with the motor pretty much in contact with the gearbox, the heat dissipation is next to non-existent so the plastic melts deforming the gearbox. The tolerances in the gearbox is such that such deformity makes it less smooth. Apart from the issues with shims, I won't be surprised this is what partly led to the gearbox not running smoothly when you rebuilt it. I recall early having to find good rear half from the rigs I bought over the years! It follows that the drivetrain probably won't cope with a mod motor.

Conversely, the front gearbox I've found less problematic - possibly because the motor isn't attached to it!