Back in '85 or '86 there was the Optima Gold that had the gold chassis, they made a limited run of 10,000 I think, it was to celebrate the sales of 100,000 Optima's. The standard Optima, Javelin, Turbo Optima, Salute and Optima Pro all had the silver chassis but the gold chassis and other parts were available as options from Option House. FYI (incase you didn't know), the rear motor guard was also an optional upgrade that only came in gold.
The Turbo Optima is looking fantastic. One of the best looking buggies ever. 🤩 I've yet to put mine together, hopefully soon. Great video and loving the new hobby room set up! 👍
Brings back memories. I had a Turbo Optima in the mid-1980's. I found it about 10-years ago in my garage and sold it on eBay as it was missing a few pieces.
It looks lovely. Love those Kyosho builds. Don't worry we all have dumbarse moments during a build. From memory I had a missing screw or two in a RE-RE Ultima I built recently.
Way back in the day probably 1988-87 I had an RC10 graphite kit missing parts. I think it was something simple like a body mount post. But having a fleet of RC10 cars was an easy part scoured at my local hobby shop. Have had great luck otherwise since then.
I agree that it’s one of the best, if not, the best looking chassis ever. Not the easiest to work on tho.. It also has a great looking body shell too. Too bad you had missing parts in yours, I’ve been lucky with all my Kyosho kits so far.
What a fantastic build so far bud. The new desk surface looks great during the shoot. Obviously the new background scenery during the facetime camera just blows the doors off of everything now. Lighting looks spot as well.
That's one beautiful chassis, damn....The build quality, looks exceptional and that packaging, was on another level. Too bad about those missing parts, though. New subscriber, here. Good video, man.
Great video as always 👍 in june 2019 kyosho did email me this regarding turbo optima kit no 30619 "There was a high percentage of kits that might have been missing a part, so we had to add some supplementary parts to all of the kits as a precaution."
It looks fantastic! I have only had one kit I had to wait for parts on and the was my Nova Fox build. The gear set with improperly cast and it stopped the build dead in its tracks as the whole gear box was delayed for a week while I waited for another bag of gears to show up from eBay. Tamiya did send a replacement set to me but that took more than a month! I knew it would so I had already ordered a set!
Hands down the best RC build I've ever done. Quite a privilege to have had the chance to build fresh from the box. But it is a bream to drive also...it just glides along effortlessly.... really wish I hadn't sold it on. 🙄
Hi Glenn, you are correct, the turbo optima in the 80s had a silver chassis. There was a option house chassis conversion in gold. After Kyosho had sold 100k optimas they released a celebration gold edition optima. These included the gold chassis kit, sliver OT67 wheels from the Stinger along with OT66 tyres. The rest of the kit was all standard optima including body decals and red shocks. Did I spot that you had the chassis rails on upside down at first 🤔
Correct, the original gold chassis was an option house upgrade kit you could buy. The main difference of the original Turbo Optima from the Optima/Javelin was the body, Kyosho gold shocks, full ball bearings instead of nylon bushings, low profile wheels and the anti sway bar kit. My Javelin also didn't have the wrap-around motor guard but my Turbo Optima did.
i had a original turbo optima, raced it 2 seasons first season with a mechanical speed control. the originals had plain aluminum parts and the shocks were gold, i believe the springs were black. this was my first hobby grade rc car.
Glenn! Brother. Why'd you shell out 17 bucks for Kyosho's error? I wasn't going to mention this but I had a manufacturing error with my turbo optima rere kit I built a few months ago... One of the rails was about 3mm shorter than the other and consequently the holes in the top were off by 3mm. I contacted Kyosho and they sent me out a new rail for free. They asked for the mistake rail back so they could figure out what happened. I wasnt going to mention this because other than this issue the build was beautiful and I was blown away by the quality of the kit. The plastics are far and above better than Tamiya. This was the first Kyosho kit I ever built and was humbled by its quality. I always thought they were over priced but now I get it. You definitely get what you pay for... I wish that error hadn't happened though.
Awesome build glen, Kyosho cars are just awesome fun to build. Love the gold on that rc, also your new hobby room looks really cool. Oh and I did watch your move video too👍thanks for sharing.
Bummer about missing parts! My Optima mid had a few wrong bearings. Luckily I had the right size in my shop but it was step two. If I didn't have them I'd been really upset!
Shame about the missing parts, as you say these things happen. Kyosho are usually pretty good at responding. Something about sitting down and building a legendary Kyosho, it's very therapeutic - the engineering quality is superb.
Just to add: I've had a couple of issues with my Kyosho Legendary Series buggies. Missing parts, or the wrong part included in the kit, or the wrong screws. 😣 Nothing major, but worth mentioning. Still awesome kits though! 😁
Missing parts are always disappointing. I remember many years ago my Tamiya Boomerang had a whole parts bag missing, and a duplicate of one of the other ones. Anyway, if you have anything missing, surely wherever you got the kit from should sort it? At least in the UK that;s how it works. Awesome looking chassis, a bit more interesting than the TT01E that I'm currently building ;)
Stunning kit what a beautiful thing but shocked about the missing parts! That has never happen to me but l imagine it does happen from time to time. This buggy almost deserves a clear shell Glenn with just decals so all that lovely gold shows! But looking forward to what you do with it mate😉👍
I lost a cpl major races with my kyosho cars due to those ball holders and turnbuckle rods failing . I ended up making my own in the machine shop I worked at , because even the aftermarket replacement parts didn't hold up well . Not too bad in dirt but forget it on carpet .
What you refer to "gold" and "silver" here is really just different anodizing of the same aluminium parts right? I really want one of these................ The Optima was the hot thing a couple of years before I had the economy to get into "real" RC cars myself so this is something I've only looked at in the Kyosho catalogue.
Hey there, I have a question... I really want a javelin (I like to bars look) but they're sold out and won't be another production run till next year (I emailed kyosho). I know the optima and the javelin have identical chassis; is the turbo optima convertible to a javelin?
The old kits didn't come with anti roll bars. I wonder if it would have made a big difference in competition for me. Honestly , these are amazing kits but my Eazy peazy losi kits did much better on the race track .
I keep Hearing that these kyosho kits are amazing quality. Nice cars bjt They don’t look that special to me . Are they that good? Maybe it because I don’t have the nostalgia for it like Tamiya .
Yeah I think that’s definitely a good point Mark, I was mainly around Tamiya cars bitd but was also lucky enough through friends to see the Kyosho cars too 😅👊🏻
