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So what have I done with it this time? Well during the last modifications I did notice that the grey plastic “angle iron” sections that I used to form the front shock towers were exhibiting signs of plastic fatigue and had suffered a number of structural cracks that if left unchecked would lead to the front shock towers failing and breaking off, so I had to do something about this, also I would use this opportunity to fix a design flaw that I had made when I first fitted the new towers, that is mounting this at a backwards canted angle, I originally did this as I thought it would be required to match the backward cant of the lower suspension wishbones, however I made the back cant on the shock tower more severe than it needed to bo and this caused problem when it came to attaching the shocks, the angles for the upper shock mountings were all wrong and at such strange angles that I needed to physically bend the mounting screws to alight the upper shocks mounts and overcome the problem, but it looked unsightly and even the angle still was not quite right and put undue strain on the shock towers contributing to the fatigue cracking.

First order on business for repairing this fault would be to find some more raw modelling materials, namely the plastic angle section, now I knew that some of the model shops in the area should have stocked such items so I went on a craw around the local shops to try and find what I required, Leamington Hobby Centre was my first port of call, now this shop is not in the centre of Leamington Spa as one would expect, instead it is on a farm just off the A422 between Pillerton Priors & Oxhill, now it is a Farm shop that mostly caters for Planes, Helicopters and boats but they used to do a few things for cars, but as I have not been to this place for while I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but first I had to find out when it would be open as last time I tried to visit the place it had been closed, so I rang up one Friday morning and found they would be open during the afternoon, so upon leaving work at 12:30 I drove down the few miles to the site, when I got in there I found that the place had almost exclusively turned over to Planes & Helicopters with little in the way of RC car stuff, I checked their display of model building materials but sadly they were all out of Angle section strips, so I had to try the next place…

Next day I went over to Coventry and to Kits & Bits, I was searching for other things as well as the Angle section at the time but was only able to find the angle there, so I bought some and headed home, now the new Angle that I had bought was slightly different for the stuff I had used previously, it was made of white plastic that was quite soft and pliable not unlike the old stuff which was grey and fairly stiff, also the edges of the flat section of the angle were tapered off instead of square, still beggars can’t be choosers so I had to make the best of it I use what I had bought, so the first order of business was to strip down the front end of the car and start again.

To begin with I removed the shocks, this exposed the bent upper mounting screws, also the extent of the cracking became apparent, next task was to unbolt the nose cone, a number of screws needed to be removed from each side before the nose cone with the shock towers attached would part company from the chassis, Next I removed the old shock towers from the nose cone then looked at the many holes I had drilled into the side of the nose cone and had to figure out which ones I would utilise to attach the new tower sections, as the new angle was so flexible I decided that I would reinforce them by overlaying some FRP plates over the top of the forward facing angle plains, the reason for this was two fold, first it would apply additional strength and rigidity to the towers and reduce their tendency to flex, also I would improve the aesthetic look of the front end of the car as it would appear that the front shock towers were made of FRP instead of some flimsy looking plastic angle section, so after I’d sussed out the where the FRP plates were go and how long the angle sections needed to be it was time to start attaching the parts to the nose cone of the car, it did take some faffing about to get all the hole aligned and parts screwed on, the fact that the sides of the nose cone taper inwards slightly caused some minor issues that were address with the use of some discreet packing washers but eventually I was able to create the new nose cone with slightly more solid and impressive looking shock towers.

Refitting the nose cone was reasonably straight forward and soon the shocks were reattached, this time they fitted much better than before and the upper mounting screws did not require any bending to better align then, there was still some minor angle issues due to the slight inward taper of the front nose cone but these were addressed by turning the shock bodies slightly before fitting them to the upper mounting screws, when the suspension was tried to make sure that the damping action was smooth and uninterrupted it was noted that the shock towers were flexing a little bit, so in order to address this issue I mounted an additional brace rod across the top of the towers by extending the screws out the back and fitting small spacer collars, this would brace the tops of the towers against one another so they would better share any shock loadings between them.

The end result it something that looks a lot more pleasing to the eye, from the side profile the alignment of the shock tower matches that of the shocks and there are no clearance issues to speak of, the only thing that looks a little out of place now is the fact that the pieces of angle are bright white and stick out like a sore thumb, so it was just a simple matter of going around with the black touch up paint to paint in all the parts that stood out, now that’s done the car does look a lot more business like the front end seems to ride better and damp more effectively so I think that the work on this car is done for now, as I said there are a few little things that I feel could use some more work? Chiefly amongst these is the fitting of a larger rear wing as the original one looks a little on the small side for a modern 2WD racing buggy but that’s a easy fix for another time, Now for anyone who is interested, I will be bringing this car along to the 2012 TamiyaClub event in Nottingham in August so if you want a close look at it then you will be able to see it then