SOVIET: I thought that was you Sean! Yeah there was some serious discussion about 1/12th this weekend. Justin wasnt there, but Tim was, and the discussion with Larry was the second entry fee could be a bit cheaper, and it would encourage multiclass racing per driver. I refuse to buy another car i wont use... and i wont use a 1/12 there if there is a 30$ charge to run two classes, and there are no entrants. I wish i hadnt sold the one i had, but oh well. The general consensus from race command is no reduction in the second entry fee. We will have to wait and see. I wont be there this Saturday, but as far as i know, there will still be racing. Im glad to see you decided to wheel the TC4 on the rug... im sure you will have a blast!
LOTUS1: I do know of some guys not running any shims, whatever it took to make sure there was some movement in the layshaft. But you are right, that was mostly in the TC3 days. I have been through four sets of TC4 cases w/o trimming, and all have shimmed out the same as mentioned earlier. There is a definite raised area, a little lip that is added to the area where the bearing sits to remove some of the play, so you dont have something out of the ordinary. If you can get it to work right, w/o shims, with no rubbing, or either layshaft gear being shoved into the diff gear (too tight), then i say it wouldnt be bad. But "snapping" into place would be bad. Have you assembled everything on the chassis, bottom half of the gear cases, F/R layshafts AND the mainshaft in place? Try grabbing the cups of each layshaft and see if they move any (in towards and away from) with the mainshaft in place. You can also remove the gearcase tops and shim the diffs properly this way... visually seeing the play between each layshaft gear and the diff gear. Let us know... and good luck.
- DaveW