vaz9764

My new shocks arrived, they felt rubbish and were a different colour to my GPM ones so I didn't fancy trying them. They did however come with much thinner spring perches and shorter ball-cups so I stripped them off and put them on my GPM ones...MUCH BETTER!! My ride height is now 10mm all round the car. I think I will leave it as this. A big thanks to all who helped me. Any more suggestions are welcome.

I will measure the springs when I get home from work. The dampers on my car in the photos are 55mm GPM ones. I will also re-locate the rear dampers to their stock positions.

The rear is still the same as in my first post. I did try the stock dampers but they don't seem to have the power any more to hold the car up (they're antique!) It just sinks right down... It lowers the ride height but there is no room left for any damping or bounce. I've got some new 55mm dampers on the way so I'll try them when they arrive.

Here are new pics of how I think I will leave it. I have abandoned the 'Hop-Up' upper links and replaced them with the stock ones. The camber is much better but the ride height is still different to the back.

I'm happy with the ride height on the rear of mine, yours looks a bit low for my tastes. My car will be used on bumpy ground (I only put slicks on for photos) and 5.5mm ride height would just mash the bottom chassis. I notice that the shocks are mounted in different holes on the lower arms on yours - how did you do that?

I'm definitely using TA01 lower arms. My shocks are 55mm already. My temporary solution is to mount the shocks to the same hole as the body mounting posts, a few mm further up the shock tower. This seems to help but it isn't perfect.

The upper arms are shorter than the original solid plastic ones and mounted in the bottom hole on the damper (as per instructions - if they were mounted in the next hole up the camber would increase). Also I am using TA01 lower arms. They may be shorter than the TA02's (I'm not sure) but hop-up 53192 covers both TA01 & TA02 touring cars. It is not chassis specific. Also, longer lower arms would only help camber. It would only make a tiny difference as to why the rear of the car is greatly lower than the front.

The front upper links won't go any tighter. I've tightened it up further than this but the suspension assembly just locks up so this is the limit they will go. I don't get it as they are official tamiya hop-ups (53192) for the 4wd touring car!

The upper turnbuckles are tamiya hop ups. They won't go any closer together. The instructions say to leave 6.5mm gap in between but this made the camber far too extreme! I checked the gpm carbon front stay against the original red plastic part and all the holes line up perfectly.

I agree but the stock shocks that came with the TA01 are all the same length, so by using the gpm shocks that are also all the same length I didn't see this coming...

I have been upgrading my trusty old TA01 with lots of hop-ups. This is how it has turned out so far. All the dampers are GPM ones. The turnbuckles (upper and lower) are adjustable 4wd touring car tamiya hop-ups. The front damper stay is GPM carbon and the rear is FRP hop-up. The rear of the car is sitting lower than the front and I think the camber on the front wheels is a bit extreme. I can't figure out why.

I just missed out on a vintage near mint 1984 Grasshopper (no radio gear) by 50p! Up until I bid on it, it was resting at £21 with an hour to go. I couldn't see it going for that!!! So I put a max bid on for £37.50... it went for £38 but at least I played my part in getting the seller a bit more money...

I've got all the parts for the Top Force steering on it's way in the post. Including 5x8mm bearings. The whole setup has cost just short of £20 for all the parts. So it had better be good!!

The centre drag link on a TA01 is 54mm and is a non adjustable steel shaft.

I'll try that! I've drilled out my original TA01 steering parts and added four metal bearings (two per column) and the slop has been reduced from 8mm to about 2mm so a little home-made job has made quite a difference!