Good point on the direction of the car with which the tower may 'dig' into the ground. The bodyshell shouldn't be a protecting feature for the rest of the car though, and it isn't: It's lower than the front tower (ok, I admit it, only by 5mm
)
Anyway, I've updated a few things on the design. First of all, the shock tower:
I got rid of the sharp corners in the tower, as well as adding more material to the tower towards the center to reinforce the construction. Keen eyes may also spot I added two mounting holes in between the existing 3 holes I had. I also moved the holes slightly further to the center of the car - this means that the inside hole is only accessible when using small bore shocks, but with small bore shocks the damper can be placed that bit more diagonally.
I had a look at the Xray XB4 CVDs, however, they are actually shorter than the Tamiyas (strange being that they actually say '68mm'), and the head that goes in the outdrive has too big a diameter to fit. So, TRF201 Driveshafts it is!
This meant I could could go to the job of tweaking the front suspension arms a bit. First of all, the suspension arm is 0.5mm longer for extra width and a bit of extra clearance that's needed between diff nut and driveshaft. Another 0.5mm was added to this length so the driveshaft can be shimmed 0.5mm inward, reducing wheel offset just a tiny bit
Lastly, the lower suspension mounts on the front end have been moved 2.5mm to the inside. This is to solve a small binding issue between the tires (especially ones with fat walls, like Proline caliber tires) and (big bore) shocks on the extreme steering angles. The 2.5mm to the inside, plus 1mm extra length of the arm, should solve this with a bit of a safety margin.
There is some important detailing work left to go, but this is another step in the direction of a working prototype
