Tamiya Hornet front end mods

The Hornet rides very high with a narrow stance, which makes it a bit unstable at speed, especially compared to modern buggies.

The 35g front end weight helped keep the nose more planted and less bouncy, but I also worked on reducing ride height.  I put in a 3x5x4mm spacer above the shocks to limit downtravel, and this keeps the front of the car lower to the ground.  I’m also looking at ways to lower the rear of the car – the rear suspension is so weird, I may need to just bolt the rear end in which would eliminate all roll, so we’ll see.  Here’s a pic of what I did to limit the front end ride height.

I also clipped 3 coils off the springs so I wasn’t adding any additional preload.

Overall the front end is quite a bit more stable and less likely to tip over.

Lastly, the stock tierods were overly long and had a lot of built-in toe-in.  I’m not sure why they’re so long, but I dremel’d off about 3 threads, which was enough so that I could screw the tierod ballcups down and get it close to 0 degrees of toe-in.  I think I still have a tiny bit of toe-in, but it’s much better than before.

This frees up the front end for better turn-in and reduces some of the front end push the stock geometry has.  Overall, it makes for a more balanced, neutral-handling buggy.