Cool
its great seeing these old buggies being used again in anger.... would love to see some pics of your Cobra Gatmix
Unless you are planning on driving your Cobra flat-out into a brick wall you shouldn't ever have any problems with the Dural Ali chassis bending (unless it has been already bent by the previous owner) I have seen them bend - but these were cars that had been really abused.
Similarly - we would regularly run 12turn motors without any bother.... though not sure how they would stand up to something like a 6.5 brushless? The Diffs did need re-building regularly to keep them smooth/ish but the complete units were so cheap - I quite often brought one rather than the individual diff parts.
I also ran the standard shocks - with carefull assembly they can be made to work rather well with minimal leakage
Yes Kyosho Option House or AE RC10 shocks were better but I couldn't afford those back then.
Set-up wise - 30wt oil all round with Schumacher long Blue springs on the rear & Schumacher med Yellow springs on the front, ride height with wishbones level & a couple of degrees of neg camber all round was always a good starting point
I managed some decent results with my old Cobra - especially indoors, the main weakness I felt with with the car was that the gears inside the gearbox were too course & limited the stop speed.... which is why I adapted a Losi XX gearbox to fit
My Cobra
http://www.tamiyaclub.com/showroom_m...9648&sid=28990