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This is my little Optima MID project. It all started with the acquisition of a cheap on-road Kyosho chassis that was subsequently identified as a highly upgraded and home-chassied Optima MID Scale Series car, to be precise the Nissan Skyline. Gold shocks, dual ball diffs, full ball bearings, turnbuckles, and some very nice home-made carbon parts replacing the original alloy chassis, FRP shock towers, and plastic rear body mount. The custom chassis only allows the use of a stick pack, but the pack can be placed in several different places. Also, HPI star wheels with Kyosho on-road tires. Great buy for about 50 bucks. See pic below for how it looked like when I got it:
I then acquired the Ferrari F-40 manual (same chassis) and Optima MID Thorpe hard gear set from Ebay, as well as some parts that needed replacement. I also noticed that the front dogbones tended to pop out at full lock, so the hunt for universals was on.

Some time later I found an incomplete and little used Optima Skyline with box, UNPAINTED body, and several wheel and tire sets , missing the rear diff and unfortunately the sticker sheet. Some pics of the box below:
(The box has an error in the description saying that the model comes with front universals. It doesn't.)

I also acquired some Kose universals for the GP-10, which cost me considerably less then what Kyosho universals for the Optima go for on Ebay. Although these would be just too short for an Optima MID buggy, they are perfect for the onroad version. So the car was cleaned up and rebuild with the new parts into this (shocks were very dirty and still need to be rebuild):
Front end: Rear end: To be continued...

Very cool build, I love the dirt oval conversions, Just one more reason i want a CNC router lol

This build will be very interesting for me, considering all the challenges I faced (and still am facing) with my Optima-to-onroad conversion. You've already been very helpful with my questions about alloy control arms. Looking forward to this!

Some news on this project: The Optima MID's front end had lots of play issues due to the ill fit of the C-hubs and front uprights. Some aftermarket C-hubs by Paranoia for the GP-10 seemed to fix most of the issues, except that I misinstalled the included plastic bushings and then couldn't get them out anymore without cutting them up. So some flanged bearings that fit had to be found, which took me some time. Once I installed the ball bearings, I can only conclude that these C-hubs are a wonderful design. Normally, flanged bearings are installed with the flange to the outside of the C-hub. Here the flange goes to the inside, serving as a ring for the front upright to run on and keeping the upright perfectly in position. Nigh zero play.

Also drilled all the holes in the Skyline body and test-fitted it. The body fits a bit badly at the front, unlike what is shown on the box - seems the production version is lower and narrower at the front. I also have a Toyota Celica body for a Lazer Sport Rally that fits better, but then I'll have the change the body posts.

Some pics:

First I installed the bearing wrong, and there was a lot of play: Then I installed them correctly, and the play was gone: Completed front end: And chassis overview: The chassis with the unpainted body attached:

Very cool! Nice carbon bits.

Were these ever available in the U.S.? The Slingshot and Lumina look to be the closest thing we got.

interesting project, hope to see the end result soon

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Post above updated with pics.

I've also started work on the body, which I want to get as close to box art as possible. Unfortunately, I am missing the sticker sheet, so I need to improvise a little bit.

First masked the whole body and painted it with some Tamiya blue and silver (here you can see the silver): Front end revealed, looks quite good, some small issues with the masking: Missed a corner here: Some overspray, despite my thorough masking: ...and some bleeding, sigh: Here you can also see I masked off the lights.

Close enough the box art, I guess: Removed the masking from the windows and lights, which all turned out great:

The next step was to get the body mounted up.

A white plastic body mount is included for the front, but that doesn't fit to the front body bracket on the chassis. In the background you can see the rear view mirrors (unpainted): The alternative was a black body mount, but this proved to be too low to correctly fit the body to the chassis. So I used some spare body mount spacers cut to the right size, thus: Also visible is the turning indicators being painted (upper right corner).

With the foam spacer that will keep the body in place without damage installed: Then I finished painted the front and rear lights, painted the rear view mirrors and rear wing silver, added chrome stickers to the rear view mirrors for some more realism, and used some Kyosho Micron Line Tape to add some detail. I'm really pleased with the result: Now I have to find some self-adhesive vinyl sheet in black, white, red, and blue to reproduce the decoration shown on the box art.

That body turned out quite nice, considering. I had to totally scrap my ideas when I tried masking off and painting the Optima body originally intended for the Barney car. I got so annoyed with paint-bleed even though I did everything I could to properly prep the body and used the best 3M vinyl fine line masking tape I could buy, none of it really helped. Paint bleed, paint peeling up with the tape removal, a few overspray areas, you name it.

I tried liquid mask (FasMask) for the first time on the body I was about ready to throw away, I'll probably never rely on masking tape again. Liquid mask works so much better, with the exception of making straight lines being a bigger challenge as with tape.

I used Tamiya masking tape. Any other tape I've tried has been awful, including 3M tape that was recommended by others. Problems encountered with other tapes were rough edges, no stick, too much stick and residue once removed, spray bleeds through the tape (also happens with Tamiya's widest (4cm or so) tape).

The body turned out better than I had expected, since it was full of scratches and dull areas from being stored in less than ideal conditions.

A lil' update: A lot I received some days ago included a lot more stickers than expected, including some Tamiya stickers that had the proper car numbers and some Skyline detail bits. It seems the production body of this car has somewhat different lines than what is shown on the box (doors are placed differently), so the stickers, despite apparently being the correct size, don't fit entirely right. The Nissan stickers I stuck to the doors are dark blue, not black, but close enough. Then today I found something I didn't know I had: blue Micron Line tape. Which is great, since all the light blue and red lines shown in the box art are Micron Line tape.
So now I am still missing only a few stickers: "Skyline" and "Nismo" stickers on doors, "Skyline" sticker on trunk, "Kyosho Racing Team" on the trunk, "GT-R" stickers above the rear wheels, and the Nissan Skyline logo on the hood, as well as all the red Micron Line tape. I've also finally found a place that sells waterproof vinyl DIY stickers at retail, so I hope to be able to make those remaining stickers myself.

So the body is turning out really great, as the pictures below show:
I hope to be able to finish it using some nice Autographics sticker sheets I found on Ebay, which are currently in the mail.

Another picture of the body, now with red stripes and text on the rear:
Which just leaves the text on the sides to do.

The chassis received its first electronics: Futaba S3050 digital servo...
...and second-hand Futaba 40MHz FM receiver:
I also painted the lettering on the tires.

Next step: EZRun.

Nice work, that looks real good. When using masking tape always scrape your fingernail along the edges of the tape to keep the paint from bleeding. You can check the body from the outside to ensure a tight seal.