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The drive shafts front and rear are Universal Joint style, and unlike most, including those from previous yokomo buggys, these are rebuildable similar to a CVD from MIP.
Both UJ’s build up to identical lengths but the front main shafts are longer with corresponding shorter axles, and vice versa on the rear of the car. |
The two halves of the drive shafts pivot on pins which are secured with a grub screw into a blue alloy cube.
To grease these up I used a scalpel with black grease and gave both the axel and main drive shaft a thin spread of grease where they meet the cube, and also lightly greased both pins when inserting, finally spinning the assembled UJ in a paper towel to clean off the excess.
The completed drive shafts look and feel like quality items and should take plenty of abuse.
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Apply grease to all mating surfaces. |
Steel pin ties it all together. |
Assembled UJ |

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The hubs on all four corners are assembled next and the UJ drive shafts inserted. The front steering knuckles look a little like those on the XX4, the drive shafts are inserted and then the unit is screwed onto the hub carrier and pivots on alloy bushings, not blue!.

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The rear hubs are blue anodised alloy with vertical ball studs and look a lot like the ray speed ones that were used on the prototype cars, the hubs are marked L1 and R1, left and right with 1 degree of toe per side. I have used alloy hubs like these before but the bearings were either too loose or too tight in the hub, thankfully the yokomo is, again, perfect in the fit of parts. |
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Assembled hub / hub carrier. |
Optional King-Pin camber pickup on Masamis car. |
Drive to wheels on all four corners is with identical hex adaptors with pins secured by O-rings. The hex is the same size as LOSI front wheel Hex, smaller than the common tamiya / kyosho / touring car hex.
Losi front wheels will fit directly on the front, whilst on the rear the hex can be removed and the pin re-inserted to provide Associated / Losi style drive adaptor on the rear, so you have a choice of wheels. I can’t really see why Yokomo have gone with a hex in the first place on the rear but the hex will retro fit on the rear of the B4 and possibly other cars, so you can also run the Yokomo rears on your 2wd.
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Losi / AE Drive |
Kit standard rear HEX drive |
B4 vs BX - Yokomo pin is short |
The pin is fine for the Yokomo HEX adaptor, it is captured by a rubber O-Ring around the hex. For Losi / Proline rear wheel use however the pin is quite short and also falls out of the shaft very easily so its not ideal, possibly fitting a longer roll pin from the AE / Losi cars would be a better option if those are the wheels you'll be using. |
The suspension arms are beefy looking front and rear, the material doesn’t look like its graphite composite and the arms whilst stiff seem to have a slight amount of give which should see them absorb impacts well, we shall see.
The rear arms are clearly based on the rc10B4 arms, the lengths are identical as are the lower shock holes and anti roll bar mounts are similar too. The arms on the Yokomo, however, are not sided and will work on either side of the car, as will the fronts.
The front arms are slightly shorter than the rears but equally beefy looking. They are swept forward similar to the B4, so there is less chance of digging-in on front end landings.
Hubs front and rear pivot on identical 2.5mm diameter steel pins captured by small screws which overlap the pins slightly stopping them backing out.

The rear suspension arms mount similar to those on the Kyosho ZX-5, with a large plastic ball on either end of the hinge pin which mounts into alloy cup shaped pivot blocks front and rear, this enables a wide range of anti squat angles and different toe-in angles using different rear braces (not supplied), all without binding up the rear arms.
The rear pivot block has three horizontal white lines across it, I can only imagine this indicates the item is a 3 degree toe-in block, so combined with the 1 degree hubs this gives 4 degrees toe which sounds a lot to me.
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The front arms mount up much like any others with the wishbones interweaving with the alloy bulkhead and a pin securing the pair together. A 3mm carbon fibre front brace strengthens the assembly and is screwed to the bulkhead along with a simple bent piece of plastic (kydex?) for the bumper.
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Rear 3 degree hinge pin brace |
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Front arm assembly |
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Rear arm right, B4 arm left |
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