Astute Vintage Racer

This is my Vintage Runner for Vintage 2wd stock class. I have modified the buggy so that it is similar to the Jamie Booth Astute, that is, it runs madcap rear arms and hubs, and the chassis has been altered so that the battery can be mounted down the centre of the chassis. I have installed hi-cap dampers all round and have replaced the infamously fragile 'D1' parts with aftermarket alloy parts. There are unversals in the rear, and the buggy runs on modern 3racing wheels with modern rubber. The BM3 bearings have been replaced by 730 ball bearings. :-) All 'traditional' screws have been replaced by hex head screws just to make life easier during rebuilding / tuning. Currently it has an alloy plate running the full length of the chassis, that came with the buggy when I originally bought it a few years ago. Obviously the buggy had some racing history given the work that had gone into constructing the custom alloy chassis plate. The plate does add some extra weight to the chassis (it weighs in at 1642 grams with a 5500 amp battery pack installed), but I find the extra weight suits my driving style and it provides a little extra stability.....although this extra stability is no doubt traded off by a marginal loss of speed due to the weight. As with all my runners, it has a Novak GTX esc and runs spektrum technology. I still consider this runner a little bit of a 'work in progress' as I continue to refine its performance by ongoing tuning. It has come a long way from the first time I ran it where it was 'pushing' all the way through corners, now it steers like a 4WD thanks to the extra weight from the lower alloy chassis plate and some weights I have installed around the front of the chassis. I feel confident that the traditional reliability issues that have tended to plague Astutes have been ironed out, and I look forward to getting even more out of this beautiful classic in future vintage race meets.