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Old 21-06-2015
andys andys is offline
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Default 210 (V1) Rear shock towers breaking?

My two boys are running Durango 210's and I have now lost count of how many rear shock towers they have broke. They broke 3 at one meeting last week, I watch the cars (which are slow as they are learning) and they broke even during low speed rolls, when the car just tips over mid corner.

I'm concerned and have bought the remaining stock from MB (7 towers) but we broke another one today. Cars are running well and not breaking anything else - Just Rear towers. Its getting silly, are they all floored?

I've crashed my 210 when I ran it - at far greater speed than my boys are running, and can never recall breaking one.
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Old 21-06-2015
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It'll be the tip of the shock tower digging in, then flexing/breaking against the spur gear cover mounting lug. I broke ~half a dozen plastic towers, then about 3 or 4 carbon ones.

Spacing the tower out from the gear box with 1 or 2mm shims helps, makes the failures far less frequent. But you can see witness marks after big crashes...... i think it is a design flaw with the car TBH

The RDRP aluminium tower is unbreakable. Buy one and never swap again. It doesn't seem to cause any problems down the line either.

(There is a fairly sizeable thread on this i started about 2 years ago.......)

Last edited by mattr; 21-06-2015 at 07:24 PM.
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Old 21-06-2015
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Old 21-06-2015
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I've heard the rdrc ones after handling due to there weight and rigidity. I would be buying the new v2 towers, the rear is much beefier, otherwise get the exotek 5mm carbon one
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Old 21-06-2015
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I've never had a problem with the Cream carbon tower. Mind you I also run the shocks behind the tower which seems to help too.
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Old 21-06-2015
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V1 rear towers were always prone to breaking,

Fairly sure the V2 rear tower is lower for the revised geometry of the newer backend so using that may give you epic droop unless you put the 410 shorter shock shafts on as well. I heard of people spacing the tower from the motor plate but mine always stood clear anyway, I only ever had the cream and exotec carbon rear towers and there both excellent, never broke either but changed from one to the other for differing applications.
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  #7  
Old 21-06-2015
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The problem is probably the tower hitting your motor plate (mounting lug of spur gear cover).

The solution is simple: Use 1mm shims between the tower and the gearbox and dremel a vertical flat spot on the mounting lug on your motor plate. It gives you a 2-3lmm clearance and will help a lot for durability.

In addition, arrange some 4mm thick Carbon Fibre towers (for example from Cream or Exotek). More recent batches of Durango's plastics should be avoided if possible: the factory that does the production of their parts seems to be cutting costs everywhere and it's affecting part quality - I've found numerous times parts are warped (poor fit) and/or retain internal stresses (=weaker).

Also, some DEX210V2 parts have weak areas from poor mould engineering (such as the V2 rear shock tower) - please carefully watch the quality of the parts you buy and in case the parts break suspiciously easily, don't throw away the evidence, instead contact the customer support. They can only improve the quality if they are faced with the issues, plus you have the right to receive replacement parts for ones where issues with quality are evident.
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Old 22-06-2015
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@ AndyS
Are you breaking v1 or v2 shock towers? (Just re-read the heading...... Doh!)

The RTR car was out of the box with v1 towers. The towers were modified for more clearance around the tower and also the geometry was altered for improved handling. It also had a material change for the v2 version.

As also suggested below putting a flat spot on the tower can also help with durability as the tower breakage is normally from when a car 'Donkey flips' and the tower digs into the ground (car orientation 180 degrees to the motion of the car).

On the below quote.
I'm not sure where you (Origineelreclamebord) get your information from about 'cutting costs'.
I'm guessing it's here-say?
But it simply isn't true.
We've use the same trusted supplier and their QC is very good.

However, you do make a good point in contacting customer services if you have had repeated issues with a part. Parts are made in batches and like any industry there can be issues with a batch. The only way we deal with issues is by direct contact on a person to person basis, not through forums.




Quote:
Originally Posted by Origineelreclamebord View Post
The problem is probably the tower hitting your motor plate (mounting lug of spur gear cover).

The solution is simple: Use 1mm shims between the tower and the gearbox and dremel a vertical flat spot on the mounting lug on your motor plate. It gives you a 2-3lmm clearance and will help a lot for durability.

In addition, arrange some 4mm thick Carbon Fibre towers (for example from Cream or Exotek). More recent batches of Durango's plastics should be avoided if possible: the factory that does the production of their parts seems to be cutting costs everywhere and it's affecting part quality - I've found numerous times parts are warped (poor fit) and/or retain internal stresses (=weaker).

Also, some DEX210V2 parts have weak areas from poor mould engineering (such as the V2 rear shock tower) - please carefully watch the quality of the parts you buy and in case the parts break suspiciously easily, don't throw away the evidence, instead contact the customer support. They can only improve the quality if they are faced with the issues, plus you have the right to receive replacement parts for ones where issues with quality are evident.
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Last edited by Adam Skelding; 22-06-2015 at 08:52 AM.
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Old 22-06-2015
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Hi Adam,

Please understand: I don't mean to just rant about quality problems. I've enthusiasticly supported Durango as a brand because there is a lot to like about these cars. And to be fair, all parts that were faulty I had replaced by their customer support.

I would love to see Durango's part quality and reputation turn around, However I will not filter out my public opinion to only the good things.

I've driven a DEX210 buggy for a year or so. In that time I've had very frequent contact with your customer support for various reasons:

1. High wear
I've had this on numerous occasions - particularly the outdrives. They should last longer than three to five race events before they are so far worn that the sliding surface are so uneven it affects suspension movement and grip under power. Enough said there I think.

2. Breakage due to manufacturing flaws
I've had this with various plastic parts. The best example I think is the 210V2 rear shock tower: It's injection location on the tower causes a weld line in the area that (probably) carries the highest load in the entire part. Particularly when using fibre-reinforced plastics, weld lines result in weak spots (a sort of break lines if you will). I broke one of these shock towers within 10 minutes of driving in a relatively mild roll and the breakage screams signs that it has broke on the weld line.

3. Damaged parts out of the package.
I've had many driveshafts replaced under warranty - I think about 10 of them, if not more. About a third of all driveshafts that went through my hands - from kits, spares and parts under warranty - had a cracked head on the outdrive side of the driveshaft whilst it was still in the package.

4. Tolerances that deem the part unusable.
With plastics I've found on several occasions that they were so warped that they affected the usability of the part - such as the gear casings and the gears, and in fact even rims that were warped out of the package. With the outdrives I've found on several occasions that bearings did not fit, or driveshaft heads that did not fit into the outdrives.

Like I said, to be fair, all faulty parts were replaced. However, what's so frustrating is that the replacement parts I got had the same issues as the parts I had before. In fact with the driveshafts I just stopped trying at some point: I received replacement parts for faulty replacement parts I was sent two weeks before!

Regardless of the quality itself, if a customer comes back to the customer support several times with new parts showing the same problems as the ones he had before, it would have been tactical to manually check the replacement parts for the issues that are described.

It is this sort of problems that push people's frustration over the edge. I've tried to adress is with patience for over a year and instead of improvements, I experienced the part quality actually became worse.

So to come back to your comment on how I think costs are being cut by your supplier... It is indeed a guess, but as you can read above, that guess doesn't just fall from the sky. On the actual QC and what's considered sufficient quality in that process I can't comment, but by the amount of negative feedback by customers I would say the customer values a higher level of quality than is currently present.

I'd like to ask you to take my comments to heart - If you want we can privately discuss the problems I've encountered - I've got pictures of it and shared these and my experience with the customer support. I would like nothing more than my problems to be of positive use to your company to improve the consistency of your product quality, not just a cause of frustration on my part!
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  #10  
Old 22-06-2015
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I'll go through your points one by one.

1. We did have an issue where out-drives were not manufactured correctly. Incorrectly manufactured ones were taken out of circulation as soon as we could and the warehouse stock was replaced with correct items after they were approved by drivers and metrology.

2. The tower. We changed the design and material around the area where certain types of impact cause a breakage by levering the tower against the motor plate.
We can have a look to see if mould improvements can be made to improve material flow. It's certainly not impossible.

3. Cracked driveshafts. This was again found to be a issue and there was a process change. We have replaced any driveshafts (unused) that have had this issue and some with little use FOC.

4. Wheels. Yes, we have seen warped wheels out of the package and a solution was implemented a while ago. However, gears and gearboxes I've not heard or had issues with.

A lot of the solutions are tested in house by 'normal' drivers at club meetings before the solution is released to the public.

If faulty parts are replaced with further faulty parts this can be frustrating. But the Customer service department is not the distribution point and the picker / packer may not be looking for an issue when sending out a replacement part. Sometimes there is some overlap of 'old' stock and 'new' stock when a part is replaced in the distribution cycle. This is hard to avoid but we try to cut it down as much as possible.


In a perfect world we would get perfect parts every-time, but we can't the cost and logistics would make every part made $$$$$$ extra. We don't deliberately design parts to fail easily. We spend a lot of time checking parts are suitable for use.

Our factory doesn't change materials for lower quality ones, they know we have the means to test at any time and we keep reference parts to test against.

If an issue is raised to us via the correct channels then it can be dealt with correctly. We have stressed this right from the start with Team Durango, but it's surprising how few people do this, but would turn to this forum to make their first comment about an issue rather than the company directly.


Quote:
So to come back to your comment on how I think costs are being cut by your supplier... It doesn't just fall from the sky: I've had parts replaced under warranty until I came across parts that happened to stay in one piece for acceptable amounts of mileage.
[U]

To reply to this comment:
How you think cost are being cut by our supplier. Is not correct.

Costs are not being cut. Issues happen, which lead to a solution being implemented.
This can't happen overnight it's not a software fix that can be uploaded to your phone. We'd love to be able to do it this fast, but we can't.

At Team Durango we mainly come from a racing background and we know the frustrations that people go through. We don't like to see someone not finish a race and we are all approachable at race meetings to help customers out if possible. Even handing out parts from our spares boxes if need be.

If there is a part with a problem, we can then report back on a Monday morning when we chat about the weekends racing.




Quote:
Originally Posted by Origineelreclamebord View Post
Hi Adam,

Please understandI don't mean to just rant about quality problems. I've enthusiasticly supported Durango as a brand because there is a lot to like about these cars. And to be fair, all parts that were faulty I had replaced by their customer support.

I would love to see Durango's part quality and reputation turn around, However I will not filter out my public opinion to only the good things.

I've driven a DEX210 buggy for a year or so, and the FWD Buggy based on your DEX210 for over 2 years now. In that time I've had very frequent contact with your customer support for various reasons:

1. High wear
I've had this on numerous occasions - particularly the outdrives. They should last longer than three to five race events before they are so far worn that the sliding surface are so uneven it affects suspension movement and grip under power. Enough said there I think.

2. Breakage due to manufacturing flaws
I've had this with various plastic parts. The best example I think is the 210V2 rear shock tower: It's injection location on the tower causes a weld line in the area that (probably) carries the highest load in the entire part. Particularly when using fibre-reinforced plastics, weld lines result in weak spots (a sort of break lines if you will). I broke one of these shock towers within 10 minutes of driving in a relatively mild roll and the breakage screams signs that it has broke on the weld line.





3. Damaged parts out of the package.
I've had many driveshafts replaced under warranty - I think about 10 of them, if not more. About a third of all driveshafts that went through my hands - from kits, spares and parts under warranty - had a cracked head on the outdrive side of the driveshaft whilst it was still in the package.



4. Tolerances that deem the part unusable.
With plastics I've found on several occasions that they were so warped that they affected the usability of the part - such as the gear casings and the gears, and in fact even rims that were warped out of the package:



With the outdrives I've again found on several occasions that bearings did not fit, or driveshaft heads that did not fit into the outdrives.



Like I said, to be fair, all faulty parts were replaced. However, what's so frustrating is that the replacement parts I got had the same issues as the parts I had before. In fact with the driveshafts I just stopped trying at some point: I received replacement parts for faulty replacement parts I was sent two weeks before!

Regardless of the quality itself, if a customer comes back to the customer support several times with new parts showing the same problems as the ones he had before, it would have been tactical to manually check the replacement parts for the issues that are described.

It is this sort of problems that push people's frustration over the edge. I've tried to adress is with patience for over a year and instead of improvements, I experienced the part quality actually became worse.

So to come back to your comment on how I think costs are being cut by your supplier... It doesn't just fall from the sky: I've had parts replaced under warranty until I came across parts that happened to stay in one piece for acceptable amounts of mileage.

I'd like to ask you to take my comments to heart - If you want we can privately discuss the problems I've encountered - I would like nothing more than my problems to be of positive use to your company to improve the consistency of your product quality, not just a cause of high blood pressure on my part!
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Old 22-06-2015
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If batches are being called back, could you please elaborate the definition of quality control handled at Team Durango? So far it sounds to me like the customer is doing that. My experience was that I paid money only to sort out what parts work from the ones that don't, and that doesn't sound like a very beneficial proposition to me.

Please note that I have experienced the part quality over the entire length of existence of the DEX210 platform: I built a DEX210 from the very first batch, built several in between, did over a full year of racing with my DEX210 (halfway 2013 up to August 2014), have used a FWD buggy over two years using the DEX210 as a basis and my most recent experience with your cars is the build of a DEX210V2 in April 2015, in which the eccentric/oval gears and warped gear casings, amongst other things.

Every new part I started using had a shorter lifetime, if at all due to manufacturing problems.

I will stop cluttering this topic from here on before I get too far off-topic. I would like to ask you to PM me if you'd like to continue this conversation further.
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Old 05-07-2015
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Another meeting today and another broken rear shock tower.
We are breaking at least one at each meeting (running two cars for my twin boys)
Not ideal!
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Old 05-07-2015
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Have you spaced the tower out from the housing?
Or modified the slipper cover lug?

Or bought an rdrp rear tower . (Or a carbon one, that'll need spacing out as Well.......)

If you haven't, you will continue to break towers.
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Old 05-07-2015
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Quote:
Originally Posted by andys View Post
Another meeting today and another broken rear shock tower.
We are breaking at least one at each meeting (running two cars for my twin boys)
Not ideal!
Time for a pair of Yokomo Bmax 2's Andy. They will take the beating.
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Old 06-07-2015
andys andys is offline
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Mattr - no - not done any of those things - how do you modify the metal gearbox lug - I can't see what i can do other then remove it - but I need it to hold the gear cover on?

Also - If i space the tower away from the casing with spacers, then I need to space out the shock so they are not at a silly angle - surely this will put more strain on the tower where the docks mount at the top?

Neal - I have one spare Bmax2 - if I see another come along cheap I may switch - but we still have another 6 towers to get through first......
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Old 06-07-2015
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What is the condition of the rear wings on these cars?

It sounds like the rear wing is not absorbing any crash impact and the shock tower. I've heard a lot of people that now use the now popular 'thick' rear wings (the LMR wing for example) suffer from less shock tower breakages.

Does it always break motor plate side?

As pointed out a few times above, this was an area of weakness for the v1 car, and why the v2 tower was designed and used.

Its been pointed out above how to improve the reliability of the v1 tower. I've not used any of these tricks as I use the v2 tower as standard, but to expand on the points above your options are;
- Dremel a small flat on the side of the gear cover lug that faces the tower
- space the shock tower away from the gearbox by 1-2mm. to maintain exact geometry you would need to then space the shocks back out again, but to be honest its not going to make much difference to driveability. if you wanted to look in detail at performance then possibly look at mounting the shocks on the rear of the arms using the v2 rear arms as this has often been much more consistent to drive on most tracks.

Essentially you want to be seperating the gear cover mounting lug and the rear shock tower. anything you can do to gain some distance between them will help (and probably remove) the breakage point.
A thicker rear wing will also shield the corners of the shock tower from load/flex/force.
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Old 06-07-2015
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Thanks Chris.

I'll try all of the above. If MB get some V2 rear wishbones and towers I will try those also.

It's a shame as the cars are really standing up well to my 2 young lads driving them and we have had limited breakages apart from the tower - and as I said - sometimes they just seem to 'let go' for no significant reason - and yes - this time the tower did break near the lug - I suspect the other did also but I never really took much notice as I was more concerned with swopping it to keep them going.
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  #18  
Old 06-07-2015
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Mike Parker number 5 racing has/had some v2 rear arms in stock this weekend if your after changing
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Old 09-07-2015
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i never broke a v1 shock tower in a year of racing, but broke x2 v2's in the same night...wont bother with v2 towers.
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Old 09-07-2015
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Chaps.

So - this evening I begin repairing / prepping the boy's 210's and guess what. The car with the tower still intact is actually broken - but it's only snapped at the base - no doubt it will let go at the next opportunity.

So - that's another 2 dead towers at one meeting - not happy.

Chris - Yes - the tower (on this one at least) has snapped where it hits the lug. I cannot see how I can space back the tower as it fouls on the camber links?

I reckon i'll soon have spent as much as buying a new car - in towers...
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