Front bumpers?

[Ashlandchris]

After a 25 year absence from buggy racing I have just come back to it and noticed that most cars now do not have a front bumper (or only a little one to protect front under tray)
I also note lots of threads about breaking front arms and shocks?

Can anyone explain why bumpers are not used to protect these parts any longer?

[Col]

Honest answer? Because they look rubbish. Simple as that.
We are an increasingly vain sport, with the exception of cab forward shells (they are uglier than the Devils arse but alot still run them)

[wookieewonder]

A big bumper can dig in to the ground, flipping the car after a nose-dive landing. Seems off road nowadays almost requries a pilots licence with some of the bigger jumps (which I love!).

[Ashlandchris]

Thanks for both answers - I had a suspicion it was going to be to do with landing big jumps, but the comment about visual effect also makes a lot of sense.

[Pacman]

Do big bumpers really work? From my experience when I started out in the early 90's, having a large front bumper didn't really make a difference. You generally break arms, shocks or bend upper arms by clipping a wheel against a track marker.

Even my Dad's Schumacher Bosscat with crash-back front arm system used to break arms if you hit something hard enough. And running a 1/8th bumper on my Kyosho Lazer ZX-R did not prevent you breaking stuff on the front end. But I think most cars these days have stronger front ends than the old Lazer and some thought has been put into the design of the cars to enable a speedy change out of parts in case of of collision damage.

These days there is the added risk of larger jumps, but you would need an unimaginable all over bumper to protect against damage from a miscalculated landing.

Perhaps the only solution would be to race something like this:

[mattr]

Originally Posted by wookieewonder

A big bumper can dig in to the ground, flipping the car after a nose-dive landing. Seems off road nowadays almost requries a pilots licence with some of the bigger jumps (which I love!).

Quite, i can't imagine taking some of the jumps on current courses with any of my old cars. In fact, some of the doubles/triples are probably too long to clear without a 20m run up and suitable gearing (i.e. completely unsuitable for anything else!)

[Ashlandchris]

Originally Posted by Pacman

Perhaps the only solution would be to race something like this:
http://www.bigmacmodels.co.uk/ekmps/...tock-614-p.jpg

And then it would probably get trodden on...

[Tony Price]

I run a RPM front bumper on my B44. from ebay
but found this recently http://t-bone-racing.net . They have many types. also rears too.

[Ashlandchris]

Originally Posted by Tony Price

I run a RPM front bumper on my B44. from ebay
but found this recently http://t-bone-racing.net . They have many types. also rears too.

I too ran an rpm on my B44, but my current Yokomo cars don't have bumpers. I still run the big bumper on my old Optima