Sorry, I had been off the forums for a short bit due to a sciatic like issue (google piriformis syndrome) that had me out of commission for over a week, but I have started the healing with a new medical approach now that we diagnosed it correctly.
As Reggie mentioned, Composite Craft used to make and package everything for Mike Houge here in Orlando, Florida. One of the suspected reasons the Houge trailing arm system began to fall into obscurity was that the design of the trailing arm cars are more for the rough type of tracks that were around in the early years of 1/10th RC car racing. Back then nearly all the cars that worked very well were trailing arm cars (ex. Cox/Kyosho Scorpion, AYK cars, etc...). Therefore when the RC10 came out with the A-arm suspension, it was natural for many people that found they had excessive bouncing around on mogul type tracks to move to designing a trailing arm conversion for the RC10.
As tracks slowly but steadily progressed to a more groomed track environment from a natural surface-dragged type of track (this happened as clubs began to acquire the funds to buy track equipment), racers found that they did not necessarily have any advantage to using a trailing arm car and in fact as tracks got smoother (hard packed) found they were even at a slight disadvantage to an A-arm suspension car at putting down the power and maintaing that solid foot print for traction and acceleration, both of which are key to successful racing. They lacked the fine tune adjustment for camber angles to the rear tires to do this as well. This is what turned the tide from trailing arm cars to a-arm cars.
-Chris Allec designed a fixed trailing arm system (not adjustable for camber) for the RC10 sold under their "A&L Products" line (Allec and Lane) that was adaptable to the RC10 stock chassis, and was also sold in a kit that included a new chassis and rear shock tower to improve the rear suspension geometry for his system. Chris used to race a car he dubbed "The Allec" but he never came out with a production vehicle for sale.
-Eustace Moore of MIP (Moore's Ideal Products) designed his own version of a trailing arm system for the RC10 that had a camber adjustment for the rear tires and this too was adaptable to the stock RC10 chassis.
-Mike Houge designed his own version of a trailing arm suspension for the RC10 under the name "Houge Enterprises", but Houge's design was not designed to be used with the stock RC10 chassis. Houge's design required the use of his own chassis design to work correctly, and although it did not have a designed in camber adjustment, many found that by adding shim washers under one of the two mounting screws on his arm mounts provided any adjustment you might need to fine tune the back of the RC10.
- Gil Losi Jr (or Jr as we called him) then formed the Team Losi company with his father Gil and they came out with their JRX2 car that had both systems integrated in a single package design. They created the 5-Link suspension system which was an a-arm link style (2 links) suspension that also incorporated a trailing link-arm (2 links) suspension that was designed to be the best of both worlds with the 5th link being the upper link for camber adjustment to the hub. But again, as tracks changed and time now shows, the Losi crews design updates turned the 5-link suspension into an a-arm suspension which is what they finally ended up with, similar to the RC10's stock suspension.
I hope this helps.
In my quest to help a few members here, I myself designed a replacement arm that is machined from billet aluminum that was stronger than the injection molded Houge arm, and made to work with the standard Houge chassis, but without the need of the standard shim washer everyone had used to correct for the sharp camber angle. My design was different enough that I had to give it my own name of Ruf-Trailing Arms, and also so-as to not incur in any legal problems with Houge. You can see the progress in this thread
HERE and the final resulting model images.
Only two sets of these have ever been made to my prints; Jeff Harris here has one set and maybe he can post a picture of his mounted to his car after he had them black anodized, and I still have the second set with me as I lack a Houge Chassis to mount them to.
My arms are designed to be run hard without the fear of breaking, twisting or bending under the harshest track jumps we find today, even when landing on the edge of a tire. You would find that you would snap the 8-32 aluminum screw holding the arm mounts to the chassis before you did any damage to the arms themselves.
