Super hotshot front suspension

[slimleeroy 241]

Me and my lad have just built a super hotshot. Brilliant build and one of tamiyas best looking kits ever.  However, when building the front CVA dampers, the length of the damper shaft was about 0.5 cm longer than the picture in the manual.  When assembled the damper was so long that due to it being under compression at full droop, left little room for any suspension travel. Is the manual incorrect or the size of the shaft supplied? We remidied the problem by removing the knurled nut on the bottom of the suspension shaft, allowing the spring retainer to screw further on this making the shock shorter.  This made it fit perfectly and allows enough travel for the chassis to bottom out before the damper.  Has anyone else had this issue and is it just a design quirk?  Thanks guys

[MadInventor 3884]

I've just put my re-re hotshot back together after giving it its first stripdown in 14 years :). It's fitted with a vintage HP suspension kit, and when re-assembling the front suspension I didn't have to compress the front shocks in order to fit them. My shocks were fitted with the knurled nuts. At full compression the front suspension leaves about 8mm of clearance between the bumper plate and the ground (I've got the supershot underguard fitted which reduces ground clearance slightly more).

It sounds wrong that there is barely any suspension travel if the shaft is only 5mm longer than the manual. My front shocks look like they've got at least 10-12mm of travel fitted to the car, a longer shaft should in theory just result in more shock travel(when not fitted to the car), as the shock bodies are designed to work with longer damper shafts (such as on the rear of the thundershot). Where the shafts are longer, is the threaded portion longer, or the smooth part?

[slimleeroy 241]

The problem is the shock cannot extend fully as the wishbones are at full droop. The smooth part of the shaft is longer.  Removing the nut allowed for further compression of the shock.  These are things tamiya should of looked at for the re releases, it's extremely lazy