stripped the car down today and the large inner wheel bearins where all gritty,just put them in the sonic cleaner now so should come out ok.
forgot to mention yesterday,the innner wishbone hingepins got so full of dirt/mud that after about 2-3 mins into each race the car would get lower and lower because it was making the hingepins very tight,going to ream them out a tad or try to mill a small 1mm groove down each pin to stop that happening again.
even when i cleaned them out they would repeat the problem after a few mins...had same problem on tq model so no biggie
one thing i thought i would mention regards shimming the diffs.
i know some of you have used 2 shims to take the slack up but be careful that your not actually 'crushing' the diff bearings,what i mean is that by adding 1 shim for us it took the side float up in the diff casing but left some play in the meshing,adding 2 shim took the meshing play out,but this then put a lot of load on the 2 diff bearings as your effectively pushing them closer to each other putting them under a constant high load.
take the pinion gear out and try the diff on its own with 2 shims with both halves of the gearbox casing screwed together,the diff should spin freely,if it doesnt then you need to take a shim out of there and add a different shim behind the pinion gear and move that forward instead to adjust the meshing.
just something we used to have to do with the electric pred buggies,maybe this is why a couple of people have had diff bearings fail?
dave