McSmooth

As a mechanical design engineer myself, I can tell you that no amount of analysis, or computer simulation will ever duplicate the real-world dynamics that act on anything you design.

It will get you close, but there always conditions that cannot be accounted for. It's why civil engineers design bridges to be a whole lot stronger than what they need to be....a safety factor. It's why these teams do so much testing. Most of what happens in real-life flies in the face of what's expected.

I can tell you here where I work, we have brilliant PhDs that come up with all kids of models and calculations. However, when we do real-world testing, the numbers are ALWAYS different.

So because an engineer can't get an arm design to work on his car layout, doesn't mean it won't work on another. Since the Losi is so radically different than the others, you almost have to throw all previous conventions out the window.

The fact is, the car works...no matter what anyone tells you with regards to the arm length. And it works on the asphalt too....I saw 2 Losi cars make everyone look silly at a big asphalt race last month. To me, that was more important than seeing what the Hired Factory Guns do with it...since they could drive a shoebox with wheels and look good.