Hey guys.
Trips try any of the following Hobby Shops:
1. RC Madnes at 8607416501
2. The Track at 3014179630
3. R&L Raceway at 6163233686
4. Aero-Tech Hobbies at 3304991300
5. G+C Hobbies at 5615473812
6. The Mushroom Bowl at 6104441850
These are all "Trinity Spotlight Dealers" and one of them should have the part for you. If not them then call Wind Tunnel Racing at 8775692403 and he should be able to get you one. Windtunnel makes a graphite kit of spare parts for the 12L3 and is in the process of doing one for our Trinity 02 car.
Petenis- Hey guy how's the drag car and your brother doing? First make sure the pivot ball setup is properly spaced up from the chassis plate and every thing is tight (I think there are two metal cone like washers per side plus some washers per the instructions).
Now make sure the pivot ball caps are snugly secure (check the pivot cap screws), you should be able to move the pivot ball freely without much free play. Now make sure that the screw that goes through the pivot ball comes all of the way up and through the pivot ball and that you have enough thread to put a front wheel nut on top to secure it (4-40).
Next take the rear axle, center shock and front tires off of your car. Lay the car on a flat surface and loosen the two 4-40 nuts (one on each side of the footbal) on the mini graphite plate. Press down on the chassis plate and rear pod to make sure everything is square and then tighten the two 4-40 nuts. You should now have a non binding rear suspension. The links limit the travel so that you shouldn't bottom out. With the Knife you should check the football/link alignment in this manner and reset it after every race day or whenever the car feels weird.
Stevie- It sounds like your car is "tweaked" which means that it turns more one way than the other. It would seem that either your tweak screws are touching the T-bar or that they are in but only come into contact with the t-bar when the pod is moved some. These would readily explain your problem and you can do the following tweak check method if either of these issues exist.
Take an X-Acto blade and on a flat table find the centerline of the car and at the back pod lower plate lift the car with the X-acto. If one side raises before the other than you have a tweak problem and you must tighten one of the screws on the t-bar (whichever side it is, play with it) to get both rear tires to lift at the same time.
Stika- I think Avink1 is steering you right. You should be letting the Zip Free sit on your tires for at least 20min (at club races) before you wipe it off with a rag. It also sounds like you may not be getting all of the Zip wiped off before you start your race and this could cause your tires to be a little "wet" which would sharpen handling. Once the tires "dried" off from then you would see what the real traction is like. If after you try the above you still don't have the steering you need but you notice that the car is more "tame" when you start the race then try treating 3/4 of the fronts working from the inside towards the outside of the tire. Paragon Ground Effects is probably the best stuff you can use and a non-wintergreen alternative to Zip is Racer's Choice TQ 8+ (red label). Zip is good stuff I hear so don't throw it away, just saying that you may want to try one of these other two with the same procedures and compare performance and then go from there.