There's no going back now! I figured if I was willing to ditch the Wraith chassis, I had nothing to lose experimenting with the tummy tuck first. I removed the interior completely for now, if I end up liking this setup, I'll order up a Bomber interior down the road. I've read about many people's rails breaking after the mod, so I chose to go the route of drilling through the outer rail of the chassis, and the inner, with spacers in between. I made the spacers out of 1/4" aluminum tube, cut to 22mm, then notched on each end (leaving ~20mm between) to fit nicely around each longitudinal rail of the chassis. I used the cut off skidplate mount portion of the chassis as my drill guide, ensuring things would actually line up. I then used m3x45 stainless BHCS's to draw it all together. I positioned the chassis so that the spur gear cover was touching the back of my Wertymade battery plate, but ended up needing to give the plate a little buzz with a sanding drum since there was a bit of pressure on it with things tightened down. I ended up gaining 3/4" under the skid, now at a whopping 3 5/8"!
With it all back together, I took it for a brief test run on my backyard course. I can see that I'll have my work cut out for me getting this car dialed in again... I just couldn't leave well enough alone! Here's what I've noticed so far:
First off, there is binding at the trans side of the front driveshaft. I swapped the long hub/yoke from that shaft with the shorter/standard one off the diff side of the rear shaft. That made the shaft longer from pivot to pivot, which took off just enough angle to alleviate the binding, but the shaft now rubs the spur cover. I'll clearance that later. Worst case here, Supershafty/MIP sells a really stubby hub that I could run on the diff side, which would flatten out the angle another couple of degrees.
The added height really jacked up my front suspension's geometry. I've now got a few rod ends binding, the upper links hit the bottom of the chassis long before the shocks bottom out, and I lost almost all of my caster. I can get away with straight upper links now, which would help with the chassis/link interference, so I just rolled them on their sides for now (that is the reason for two of the rod ends binding.) I'll make new upper links soon. I also need to make slightly longer lower links to get my caster back, which will help roll my shock mounts back down a smidge at the same time, and get back some of the ~3/16" of wheelbase I lost in this process.
The center of gravity is too high for me now. I've got a few sketchy descents (about 70° plus) in my backyard that I usually will wiggle my steering to shimmy the car down and just ease into the throttle as it gets near the bottom, but as soon as I dropped the front wheels over and the belly touched, it was ass over tea kettle. On the flip side, it climbed right up a few spots that usually require multiple attempts, a bit of wheel speed, and steering side to side to get the belly up and over. That being said, I'd like to split the difference here and try to further lower the suspension to get down to ~3 1/4"ish under the skid and see if that's more manageable. I know it sounds counterproductive, but that would net me 3/8" more belly clearance, and 3/8" lower roof height than what I started with.
I may try mounting the lower ends of my rear shocks next to the lower links, using a single longer bolt... ala scx10. That will probably be real close, but my other option for the rear is to make a simple plate to move the upper mounts up/forward similar to the commercially available shock keys/"droop" brackets (I do not think that means what you think it means!) The front may be a bit more of a challenge simply because I'd prefer that the shocks bottom before/at the same time that the upper links hit the chassis, but I'm sure I'll figure something out.
If you've actually been able to read through this whole thread, you have a better attention span than me! Maybe, just maybe one day I'll setup a new photo hosting account.
