Mugen Seiki Sting restoration from 1998

[nerius]

I found this on eBay about a month ago. The guy said he found it in an estate sale but had no idea what it was. I started looking at the ad only a few minutes after it was posted. The Buy It Now price was kind of high - $250. It looked like a vintage 4wd 2spd tranny car, on-road, from the eighties or nineties, but it definitely wasn't an Associated RC500. I had been dreaming of owning an Associated RC500. I come from a 1/10 electric off-road background and couldn't determine what this car for sale was. By that point only minutes later there were dozens of people browsing this ad, as reported by eBay. I knew I could not wait to buy this - either it was now or never. So I bought it without knowing what it was. It came with engine and electronics but no transmitter.

That night I could not sleep and woke up and did some research, trying to identify from eBay photos what car that was. I determined that it was a Mugen Seiki Sting, which was the immediate predecessor to the MRX-2 which won the IFMAR world championship in 1999. I think the Sting was made only for one year - 1998. I also read somewhere that the Sting was Mugen's first 4wd car of that type (1/8 onroad nitro). This car arrived in the mail a week later. In the meantime I located a manual PDF and printed it like a nice original booklet at Staples. The car was dirty as heck! The Duracell batteries that were in the car (4-pack instead of the usual 5-pack NiCd 2/3A rechargeable size) said "best used before 2000" and "best used before 2002". The car had not been driven much, I determined as I started working on it. Also it was configured all wrong. The suspension was totally off. It barely even moved due to misconfiguration. One of the shock piston shafts up front was 4mm shorter than the other. One of the king pins in the rear had broken and an M5 socket cap screw was used to replace the shiny and round king pin! Wow. Several other things on the car were just totally off, but wear in most places was minimal.

So I spent a lot of days and a lot of money getting to know this genre - the 1/8 scale on-road nitro with foam tires. I'm completely new to this. The mechanicals are done and I'm in the process of cleaning the fuel tank and unfreezing the RB engine. I do plan on driving this soon! Enjoy the photos!

[Ross]

Looks great, thanks for showing it

[nerius]

I've been busting balls for this car. Both literally and figuratively.

That's a titanium grade 5 stud going through a homemade ball made of 7075-T651 aluminum. The combo is at least as strong as the original ball (steel) and only half the mass.

I couldn't bear to think of 26 grams bouncing up and down with the front wheels. Therefore an optimization has been made. It's been a worthwhile learning process as well.