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A few months ago I bought a Kyosho Ford RS500 based on the Raider chassis. In the future (next year) I want to complete this project, as I've finally obtained some electronics that look suitable for this car (even though they're about a decade too young...) - if they work.

Here's the pic from the sale: The body has been mostly stripped by now; the paint used was dissolvable in alcohol, but getting it all off is difficult. Some of the stickers are damaged, with paint having gone under the stickers (GRRR ).
There's some things I want to change. The craptactular shocks will have to go, as will the plastic dogbones (there's so much play in the rear axles the wheels can move around way too much...). I'll give it a full set of ball bearings. The front shock mount is so flexible the shocks can move half a centimeter to the back just be compressing the shocks. I'm seriously thinking of making CAD drawings of all of the flat parts and sending those off to Fibrelyte for reproduction in carbon fibre (so that would be front shock mount, those two small L-shaped bits reinforcing the front of the chassis, the chassis lengthening parts, MSC mount, and possibly the rear shock tower).

Questions:
- What are the small rectangular areas with two screw holes on the front arms for?
- Is it possible to replace the upper arms by adjustable links? What about the steering linkage?
- Besides the shocks, ball bearings and rear axles/dogbones, what are sensible upgrades? I understand the diff has a tendency to self-destruct. The front axles also do not seem like a nice design.

The objective is not to make this a brushless racing monster; it'll get a brushed ESC with reverse and at most a 23 turns motor, standard servo and 27 AM receiver.

The square areas with holes are for the mono shock mounts that were used on the Rocky
Adjustable upper arms would be very straightforward but kyosho didn't make a special kit, you would just piece it together.
The weakest part were the gear diff and joints, as well as the dogbones. The car was pretty durable otherwise, the plastics were intentionally flexible. Metal dogbones from optima/ultima work, as well as the Rocky gold universals if you can find them. Rocky also had a nicer metal gearbox cover, not necessary at all but a nice cherry on top of you like that kind of thing. The turbo tocky rear shock tower would be an easy copy.

If your new to the Raider check out the old Kyosho "car companion" video in the "my garage" link below (under multimedia) ....fun old school video

Coolest car EVER!

The diff itself is fairly strong, but the outdrives can split. Luckily, splined Tamiya gear diff outdrives (touring cars, etc) have the same spline count, drop right in, and are much stronger. Just omit the little spring, which you won't need with universals anyway.