Thanks for the details guys
It's good to hear that the 210 gearbox is as durable as it is adjustable (as long as I keep that spacer in check). And I'll switch to AE pads then when the Durango ones are worn down... Do they fit the Durango spurs?
Anyway, I've got some progress to share with you...
A mockup of the front end!
I made this mainly to find out if there are any issues around the driveshafts+outdrives - after all the outdrives are pretty short, so there's not much room to play with.
The current setup is a tad narrow (just under 240mm) - and I need to find a way to get the Tamiya 1.5mm outdrive pins to work in the 2.5mm Durango outdrives. However, it does work fine otherwise, and these particular Tamiya CVDs have an impressive operating angle that's much smoother at extreme angles than the CVDs the current proto uses.
I am going to look at the Xray XB4 driveshafts, as these may add a nice 8mm to the width of the car (if the axles are the same length as the Tamiya ones) - plus, they seem to have the 2.5mm outdrive pins.
As for the rest of the geometry, it seems to function very nicely and seems accurate with the CAD model. It has comparable suspension travel to my TRF201's rear end, the ackermann angle is nice, the camber gain is comparable to other 2WDs and can be adjusted nicely.
The only problem I found was that on full steering the outside tire is awfully close to the damper, and the inside tire is too close to the chassis. The XB4 driveshafts may solve this, and if it doesn't I think I can get away with carving the front piece of the chassis in a slightly different shape and putting the damper mounting holes on the suspension arm just slightly to the inside.
So all in all, with small tweaks I could use this front end
But before I do I'm taking a peek at those XB4 driveshafts!