This is a shock tower question masquerading as a post about my racer, so I've added an AE coming-of-age story to give you something to read before leeching info
Let me preface this by saying I have always wanted to be different to everyone else. In real life, I owned rotaries when everyone else had V8s. The same applied to RC cars. Nearly everyone ran Associated and Losi, so I ran Schumacher. I have never had any real desire to run the same AE cars as everyone else.
Around 11 years ago my first child was born so I had a hiatus from racing and instead did all my "racing" on Ebay. I picked up a dusty Team car which after cleaning turned out to be almost brand new. Shortly after, the 30th re-res dropped and I picked up some spare parts with the idea of one-day running the Team car. After bolting it all together, I had spent a fortune on the car, it was probably too good to run when I could just pick up a worlds car (remember them being $114 at RCMart?) and I had a fleet of other Vintage cars to run that would actually win me races. It never hit the track. I pulled it apart, put it back to stock Team spec and it has sat on the shelf next to my new built JRX Pro ever since.
Whilst I was buying RC10 stuff back then, I came across a NIB 30th Classic on Ebay. An impulse buy that cost way more than they originally sold for. Again, with a fleet of other cars to race at Vintage events, I had no use for the car and I just displayed the sealed kit on the shelf because it looked cool.
Fast forward 10 years and people are selling the 30th re-res for silly money and then bam, the 40th drops. So with my 30th now worthless and wanting a new project I decided I should build it up. I would race it in this year's Vintage festival in the "purist" class which requires short arms and a 6 gear. This will be the first AE car that I have ever raced and an opportunity to have a laugh instead of taking Vintage racing so seriously all the time.
Before I started the build, I did a lot of reading about the 6 gear. The overwhelming vibe being they are heavy, slow, fragile and should be replaced with a stealth. Add to that the problematic worlds re-re stealth and I expected the worst from the Chinese 6 gear. I ordered a set of bearings to give me a chance of hopefully finishing a race.
As I started bolting the gold pan together, a lot of things were bugging me. The steering assembly was junk compared to the worlds version, those stupid lower shock pins on the short arms, the short arms themselves, the upper shock bushings not being tapered, just little trivial things and I hadn't even started on that 6 gear garbage yet. I still wasn't feeling it.
So I started reading through the 25 years of AE thread to find out what things had changed over time and the RC10 Graphite caught my eye. What a good looking car! All the white plastics and FRP, the gold bits and the contrasting graphite chassis. Man, they look so good. About the same time the FanRC Worlds car was released which also looked great, but not nearly as good as the OG Graphite. Epiphany. I have an old graphite chassis and all those parts from the failed Team build; I should turn this gold pan into a Graphite car and the purist short arm race be damned.
I ordered some .71 Fan shocks, front arms and 4-hole tower then got to work on the 6 gear. I added the bearings and spent some time shimming out the play on the shafts. After assembly I was shocked. This thing spins freer and has the smoothest diff action of any RC tranny I have ever touched, vintage or modern. Still waiting for my parts to arrive, I spent the next week using the 6 gear as a fidget spinner, still blown away at how nice it felt to spin around by hand. By now, I was actually quite excited by the build and looking forward to seeing how the 6 gear would run in the club's 21.5T Vintage class.
So I pieced the car together with the following...
Front:
FanRC .71 Shocks
FanRC Front Arms
30 degree blocks (sorry Team car)
GT Axles
Bezerk RC 4-Hole FRP tower
RC10 Worlds bellcranks + bearings (spaced up 4mm for zero bump steer)
Tecnacraft Ti Turnbuckes
3mm shims under rear bulkhead screws to reduce kick-up and add clearance between camber and steering links
Rear:
B44 CVAs
Outdrives slotted deeper for pin clearance
RC10T hubs
Shaved rear arm mounts moving arms rearward 3mm
RPM Gear cover
Sway bar
Slotted shock tower mounts to raise the tower
Added 2nd and 3rd shock mount holes (Team car spacing)
On the car's first outing I was immediately shocked by how quiet it was. And I mean whisper quiet! The other thing I have not experienced in a long time is diff tuning and the difference it makes to handling. With modern power and high grip carpet, I am so used to setting up a vintage ball diff to simply survive without slipping that any tuning is secondary. The 6 gear was taking the 21.5T power without any problems and I was able to really change the handling of the car by just twiddling that diff nut. I am keen to try a CRC 16-ball pan car spur to see how loose the diff can be run.
The car far exceeded my expectations on carpet. With just a few setup tweaks during the day, the finals saw the RC10 averaging 24.8sec laps vs the 23.6 of the race winning B44. In flowing sections, the RC10 was just as fast as the 4wd cars (B44,BJ4,502,XX4) but was losing time lifting the front wheels out of tight corners. The B3 and XX were also losing time here, so this is likely just rear motor life on carpet. I'm hoping that reducing front droop will help and possibly adding some shims under the rear arm mounts might help too. I also need some zero toe arm mounts in the rear to loosen it up.
With the divisive Detonator body on the car (paint scheme stolen from Y'ernat Al), it really stood out and had everyone's attention. The more I look at the car, the more I like it. I had a brilliant time seeing the RC10 get faster and faster during the day and racing it was probably one of the most enjoyable days racing I have had in a long time. It could just be "new car syndrome" but I reckon it looks fast just sitting there and it's now (ironically) the most unique car on track. I think this is now my favourite car and I can't wait to get it back out to try some new setups.
Aaaaand, that leads me to my actual question...
Does the RC10 worlds car use a different height shock tower to the earlier cars? I see mention of new upper mounting holes, but I can't find anything about the height of those holes. I have slotted the bulkhead holes on my tower to raise it up for more shock travel, but with the chassis on the ground I still have almost zero wheel up travel and I would like the option to have more.
If there are any other tricks or interchangeable after market parts to get more rear wheel up travel, I would love to hear about them.
Thanks for your time!