I would ditch the pinion/spur cover and get one of the aftermarket carbon fiber hold downs. Then get an adjustable motor mount and set your gear mesh like any other car.

Thats the plan! This is a carpet car so not worried about boulders getting in my gears.

I currently have a Robinson Racing 60t 48p spur gear in my TT-02 VTA car. I think 48 pitch gears are a bit more forgiving when setting mesh than 64p gear. Unfortunately I think Robinson is out of business.

I ran some fairly small 64p gears in my TC3/TC4 (2.5 internal gear ratio) when I was running in it VTA. I will dig through my stuff and see how small I went with those spurs. I'm pretty sure I ran some 64p spurs in the 70's range.

There are issues when running small diameter spurs (regardless of pitch) in shaft drive touring cars.
1) The motor/wires can come close/interfere with the drive shaft - especially if running a snap on heat sink
2) May not be enough motor mount adjustability to get desired gearing/gear mesh
3) Large pinions may interfere with the chassis or gear cover

It can be challenging to set perfect gear mesh on small spur gears. I've stripped many spurs when I've not had good mesh, the motor shifted during an accident, or I didn't properly secure the motor. With small spur gears I always erred on the side of tight mesh. Better to finish the race with less than ideal mesh than strip the spur the first time you use the brakes.

A trick I've used in the past with 64p gears is to choose a pinion size 1 tooth larger than what I am going to run. With the larger pinion installed, set the mesh VERY tight. Remove the larger pinion then install the 1 tooth smaller pinion instead. Usually the mesh will be pretty good when doing this. However this isn't foolproof. While I like the Yeah Racing adjustable motor mount, I still prefer using 48 pitch gears in my TT-02 as I've had less issues with stripping spur gears.

Wait, what about Robinson going out of business? They're my go to whenever I need pinion gears in Tamiyas screwy 0.6 mod.

I gotta admit, the TJRparts.com gear cover replacement is dialed!! He even has a channel milled for the bearing. https://tjrparts.com/products/tt-02-gear-cover-delete

I may be mistaken about the status of Robinson Racing Products based on the fact their website shows that it was last updated in 2015 (Robinson Racing Products - THE LEADER IN RC GEARS !!!!). However it looks like their Facebook is more updated (https://www.facebook.com/RobinsonRacingProducts/)

I might contact them directly as I'm down to my last 48p 60t spur.

I am currently running 64p gears and have a 74T spur with a 52T pinion. That gets you a 3.7 FDR and ha been good for 76mph for me...

Just ordered 56T and 60T pinions to try and help me get to my 100mph goal. The 60T should get me to a 3.21 FDR and a theoretical top speed of just over 100mph. Fingers crossed!

Question, sorry if I am beating a dead horse. Our local track is starting a tto2 box stock class. Box stock so far. Our issue is the stock dog bones are popping out with a slight hit. What can we do to fix this issue . This will be a 100% beginner low budget class.

Quit hitting things while turning.

Thank you for the dumd answer. This is a box stock class for beginners, looking for answers.

The steel universals seem like $50 well spent to replace the front dogbones.
TAM53792 + TAM54477
or just start with a TT02R. The metal dogbones don’t seem to pop at our track.

He asked for some simple trick or workarounds, like maybe a piece of foam or an o-ring, etc. for a box-stock class. Not $50 hop-up parts or a different chassis version (which is also more expensive - not just by kit price, but on top of that the R comes without motor, ESC and body).

For the original question: there's not all that much you can do without spending some serious money (in relation to the normal standard kit price) to move away from strict box stock. Dog bones just suck, and are usually not part of any racing kits any more - for good reason. All I can think of (short of replacing them with universals or even DCJs) is to limit the steering angle on the radio and/or insert some (more) foam or O-rings in the outdrives (make sure it doesn't bind), if that doesn't help, I'm afraid, you only can heed the advice to no longer hit the walls or get everyone to invest in some hop-up parts and leave the strict box-stock idea behind for a strictly limited-tuning class (which is a good idea anyway, since true box stock would not even allow ball bearings on these cheap Tamiya kits - and these are a must IMO).

Yeah there isn't much you can do if you ONLY run dog bones. Limiting steering angle might help. But to loose one during a race is heartbreaking.
We run a class called Production TT02 here. Almost box stock builds.
Only allowed ball bearings, USGT tires, universal joints and some mods that do not improve performance but improves reliability.
My original club allowed esc up to $80. The new club I run allows Hobbywing 1080, LiHV and the high torque servo saver.
I use the Yeah Racing universal joints and cups, as chasing dog bones was SO annoying.

If your rules allow parts other than Tamiya you can buy universals or cvd's from other companies. But, you have to buy the outdrives to match. Someone else gave you the Tamiya part numbers.