Originally Posted by
Fred Hubbard
So that you are aware, for any car that uses a spool and standard drive shafts there will be chatter. It's only after you use DCJ's with a spool that this chatter goes away. I've heard that it's less pronouced when running standard drive shafts with a gear diff as well but I don't have 1st hand knowledge of this since I always run DCJ's but I assume it to be true based upon what you reported. Our spool is designed to be loose to dissipate some of the energy that causes chatter when running it with standard drive shafts.
Yup, I got ya. I wasn't a fan of the looser front spool, but I understand why it was done. My real issue is with the aluminum front dog bones - I think I twisted the ball-ends off 3-4 of them. I did have a bunch of the older steel drive shafts, but I had to (as I originally mentioned) widen the slot on the outdrives so the pin would fit.
My initial attempts at widening the slot were poor at best - I used a dremmel, and it was very difficult to keep the edges flat. What ended up happening was that the drive shafts worked great for the first few race days, but because the drive shaft pins were resting on a smaller (curved) surface area, they would wear into the outdrives, which would cause all sorts of issues.
Grinding the outdrives on a flat surface has resulted in a practically flat surface for the pins to ride on, so I expect this modification to last much longer.
This really has nothing to do with running a diff up front :-)
I unfortunately can't afford to run the HB DCJ's, especially considering that they *look* to be non-maintainable. I would cringe and probably cry if I hit a board, bending the drive shaft. Not to mention, I would have to shell out close to $200 for the two cars, and I just can't justify that. There is at least one brand of DCJ's that are more affordable (Arrowmax), but I'm not sure of the quality.
I'll try the diff with my modifications - we'll see how it goes.