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So I saw a "Vintage Truck" for cheap on the Bay, and even though it had no body, I knew immediately from the picture that it was a Hilux Monster Racer/King Cab l and I had to jump on it.

When the package arrived, it was dirty, had Clodbuster shocks, Hilux body mounts and tires with King Cab rims, and the most random assortment of screws, nut, bolts, turnbuckles, etc., but everything that was included seemed to be in working order. I threw a receiver and battery in it an hit the driveway for a test, and could tell immediately that there was a significant amount of slippage in the diff. So it went on the basement shelf with the rest of the projects that I "will get around to any day now" and sat. I already had a running King Cab so the itch to get it going wasn't too bad, and honestly I originally purchased it to flip.

Fast forward a month and while on a conference call in my new basement "office" where Covid has forced me, I was reading about the Stealth tranny conversion kits that people used to use. Now, these kits are near impossible to find unless you really want to drop some coin, I don't have an extra Stealth laying around, and I'm super cheap so I wasn't about to buy either piece. However, what I do have is a Kyosho Outrage "project" that I'm never realistically going to tackle and an idle mind from being stuck in the house for so long. For those who don't know, from comparisons against my Ultima Turbo and Ultima II, the Outrage seems to have the exact same transmission, so parts should be plentiful and it should be able to handle a little extra power.

After pulling the gearboxes out, I realized that the Tamiya has a little more sweep and is used to support the back half of the chassis. The motorplate on the Kyosho also came down a little lower. Since I will still potentially offload this truck one day (I won't, but still), I didn't want to modify any of the Tamiya parts.

Back to the Bay for a piece of fiberglass to make a new mounting plate. Since the transmission won't be used to support the chassis, I went for a 3mm piece which is a little thicker than the original. I also added an inch to the length so the less aggressive sweep of the Kyosho parts would fit under the Tamiya chassis.

First, if you are going to cut this stuff, make sure you have a way to control the dust because it is everywhere and probably as damaging to lungs as viruses in the coronona family. Also, learn from my mistakes and don't tap into the fermentation of corn and cereal grain until after you are done cutting. Anyway, a few hours and glasses of Kentucky's best export and I hit the driveway for another test. Sure enough, the Outrage transmission did and excellent job!

Now that I have a working concept, I'll throw a little more power in it for a real test. Once we get on the backside of this craziness, I'll probably grab a re-po body, some decent shocks, and make a real runner out of it.

Stay tuned and I'll update this thread with some better pics when I tear this experiment down for a good cleaning and rebuild.

Blasphemy...

Joking aside..good job. The King cab stock tranny didn't hold up well. If you can find them you could use thorp dirtburners hop-ups which upgraded the tranny to something more reliable and adjustable too.

The guy doing the stealth conversion unfortunately isn't doing anymore kits.

Here's the topic on the Stealth conversion kit: https://www.rc10talk.com/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=40671

I emailed durb69 last March as seen in that topic, and he said he had a list of guys waiting for him to produce more kits, and that he'd let me know. I never heard anything back as I don't think he's made any more yet. Hopefully he still intends to but when is the question.

I figured out back in 2009 that a Stealth trans fits in this chassis like it was made for it. Unfortunately though I had no means to produce a kit. Anyone who does should make a killing on them as I think it would be a hot item.

Since we made the conversion for using the lethal weapon, I already have the plate drawn up and I did some work on one for mounting a stealth but I never liked the idea of narrowing the rear track. Our lethal weapon had long outdrives so the stock width was retained. That is hard to do with a stealth. Now that the AE parts are discontinued it’s getting tougher to find them anyway. Fitting a rere ultima diff is perfect since they are built tough, they are wide so the track can stay stock width, and will be available for a while.

I remember the Stealth was a little narrower than the stock trans but felt it would work fine if you shimmed the stock dogbones with o-rings in the outdrives. I didn't get the feeling that the rear would have to be narrowed at all. Then again, I never got passed mocking it up.

Going further with this, the Stealth's motor mount plate could still even be retained! All that had to be done was to trim a portion of it off which I did, and it fit perfectly. It seemed to me like a pretty simple conversion. Mount the trans to a custom plate, o-rings in the outdrives, trim the motor mount plate, and figure out a way to attach the top of the trans to the underside of the rear chassis overhang. It's been over a decade but I still have the King Cab and Stealth trans I used for the mockup. After I figured out it could be done, I never touched it again. Everything ended up in boxes somewhere.

Mounting a rere Ultima trans is cool too although sacrilegious.

The conversion that Derrick made narrowed the rear up a little.

Ah, I didn't know he did that. Now I'm curious if it actually needs to be done or not. I think you can get away with not doing it but the only way to know for sure is to just run it with the o-rings and see if the dogbones fall out or not. I mean worst case scenario is you'd have to use some longer ones. If I wasn't so busy with other things I'd revisit this.