Thanks Mike; lots of good advice and I think you're absolutely right about putting the car back to stock carpet. I'll check out those bodies, maybe also the HPI BMW M3 GT body #7352, which seems to fit your criteria.
Will definitely check all of the hinge pins. I've got the ultrasonic parts cleaner and will cleaner everything up before reassembling. While I've got it apart, right?
And I'll also try your way of checking for tweak ... much easier than filing all of the screws down.
Just a few more questions:
I'm running white wheels ... and my LHS only had +3 offset, essentially making the car 196mm wide, so I have to make extra large wheel wells, but I can get past that. I can also always go to a 200mm body, but from a handling perspective, any thoughts on wheel offset? Should I try to find 0 offset, and if so, do you have any that you recommend? I'm having a hard time finding wheels that list their offset. I prefer white wheels for the visibility.
I also have a big heavy wing on my body, because the original wing cracked off and I couldn't reattach it, and well, this is allowed me to run the body I brought. I didn't even think about the implications of the extra weight ... I was just going for downforce. So I should definitely order up a new body.
I was surprised that you suggested moving weight back to calm the rear of the car. I run high performance DE events in 1:1 cars (another hobby) and Porsche 911s (especially the older ones with less sophisticated suspensions) can be very tricky to drive specifically because of all of the weight in the back, which can induce oversteer very easily. The example that is always given is that if you slide a hammer across some ice, the head of the hammer (the heaviest part) will usually wind up leading the way. Mid-engined cars with more weight in the middle tend to be very neutral but can wind up spinning like tops and front engined cars are usually more biased to understeer (forgetting everything a manufacturer can do to tune this out). Again, this is in the 1:1 world, so maybe things are a little different here.
I really appreciate your time and thoughts.
John