Bud I know your a fan of the cars, as is 99% of those who have driven them!
Firstly there is the exchange rate issues with Japan and as Kyosho use Japanesse suppliers your paying for a premium quality product rather than something of lesser quality knocked out on the cheap in a less quality concious economy.
It's the same as paying the extra for a SONY or Panasonic TV compared to a cheapy Tesco special.
Springs, now whilst I agree that £14 a pair is significantly more than most springs I can not agree with what you say about quality. I am currently putting together a big bore spring chart using a £50k spring tester I have access to at work.
The X-gear / Kyosho springs are amazingly good quality with the spring-to-spring and test-to-test (meaning position in the fixture as I rotate and invert between runs) is brilliant and the other manufactures you mention springs are (politically correct wording) less so to the point I'm taking mine out of my spares box.
If your looking for good quality big bore springs at a good price then I can recomend the Losi springs. spring-to-spring and test-to-test although not as good as the X-gear springs are prefectly acceptable (I use them myself on my own cars sometimes) and about £3.30 a pair from JE Spares.
Shock tower mounts are a slightly different tale as yes you do have to by the whole transmission case tree but I can honestly say that I never broke the revised strengthened FS plastic mounts in any crash that was mild enough to not damage something else at the front of the car (I'm talking about the sort of thing that would have seen a XX4 go home in a hoover bag)
The aluminium tower mounts are available and totally solve that issue (remember they are 1.25mm lower so need spacing up) and you can increase the length of the screws holding the transcase together to about 18-20mm (depending on amount of under tower spacers you use) which makes the front end bullet proof when used with the LA216B front tower.
As I always say to people, spares prices are only an issue if you break a lot of stuff. I'd rather drive strong reliable cars with slightly higher spares prices like the Kyoshos where I might have to replace 1 part a couple of times a year (if that ... so far I haven't put a part on the FS2) than a car with cheaper spares that needs stuff every other meeting.
Stick with the cars mate, remember the quote, "there is high quality, fast supply of updates/improvement and cheap prices ... pick 2 as you can't have all 3"
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