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The steering assembly is a twin bell crank style, with the centre link passing through a tunnel in the sealed front gearbox, the front drive belt passes above and below the centre link. Like you would expect on a car of this level, the steering is ballraced, like everything else.
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| The front belt cover does the job of front gearbox top and securing the top of the bellcranks. The link back to the steering servo is extremely long since the servo is in the middle of the car stood upright to reach over the motor and layshafts. |
The front bulkhead is a contrasting off-white colour to the rest of the chassis, the material is more pliable than on earlier cars so in the event of a crash has some “give” instead of breaking. It also acts as the last quarter of the front gearbox housing, the smell of “retro” fills the air when you realise the hinge pins are secured via E-clips, thankfully there are only 4 hingepins on the car which are secured in this way, I find a dab or threadlock over the assembled E-clip helps to keep them on in a crash. |
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| Front Bulkhead. |
Front Gearbox waiting for the bulkhead. |
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The front shock tower sits over the front assembly and 4 long screws finally clamp the last parts of the transmission closed. Its all very cleverly done, there is so much in such a small space on this car, but you cant help thinking it could be a little less complex, either way it doesn’t look like fun if you had to take this car apart to work on the transmission.
The screws into the bulkhead and front bumper are easy to overtighten and strip, with their soft plastic, so best to take care in those areas. |
| The front drive shafts are a Universal Joint style, they come half-built already with the only task being to snap them into the plastic yoke, a tool is supplied to help bend the yoke and push the UJ into place, you can do it without a tool quite easily though. |
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| Installing front UJ |
Yoke attached to axel. |
Losi Ball cups L-R: Kit, Super Duty, Extra Rigid. |
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The front Axel is a weird one, the outer threads and hex are one piece, machined from aluminium, this is inserted from the outside of the spindle arm whilst from the other side the plastic yoke from the UJ is inserted, and the pair are screwed together. Only then can the UJ be snapped together.
One UJ was tight when assembled, I took it apart, greased it and reassembled and it was much better, I don’t think it was the grease but just taking it apart and putting it back together seemed to sort it.
The front hubs are in 2 pieces, the spindle (steering knuckle) and spindle carrier. Kingpins secure the two together, neither side would rotate freely when assembled on the spindle carrier, I checked the moulding and there was no friction between the two parts, I finally tracked the problem down to the kingpins, they basically go too deep into the spindle carrier and foul on the bottom of the hole causing friction, I had to back all the kingpins off a little (1-2 turns or more) to free it all up, you could just run a drill down the hole to make it a little deeper but I left it like this.
The same kingpin screws are used as hinge pins to attach the hub assemblies to the front suspension arms but these have no issues. |
| I decided to replace the Kit ball cups with some newer white ones, they are stronger and give it a neat “Team driver” look, they are also stronger than the kit items. |
The front suspension consists of a long lower graphite arm and upper camber link with a vertical ball stud on the hub carrier. The front suspension arms have 3 mounting points for the shock, they are the same both sides but the 'graphite' text IS sided! be carefull here as you could get the wording upside down and look a fool.
Beefy looking Titanium turnbuckles are used on the car and LOOK like Lunsford ones, but definately are not. A lot of people change these kit items as they are prone to bending. |
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| Front Suspension arm. They are graphite ! ! ! |
Front axle assembled. |
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