I understand completely where the OP is coming from. There are a couple of points that I am just going to throw my two cents in at and be done.

1. A lot of people on here have this illusion as to what the battle weekends at Danville are about. It is not a competition. It is no more a competition than any other battle weekend or event that is hosted in other areas throughout the world. It is just a group of men, women and kids having fun messing around with their tanks. With that being said I haven't seen anyone intentionally try to bash one tank into another. Actually everyone takes care to not ram into each others tanks. Yes the occasional bump or scape does happen, but it is usually a misread drive line or trying to squeeze past a dead tank. I have seen the OP drive in Danville. He is a good tanker. He hasn't done anything out of the ordinary that anyone else on here would have done with their tank.

2. This is a part that i think that most people might have missed or ignored. The OP's tank has only been through three battle weekends. 9 days or 87 hrs total. With that being said that is going on the idea that it was the only tank that he used during those weekends. He did not. Like most of the people that were at Danville he had multiple tanks and used them all. So basiclly the tank only really had about 60hrs of drive and battle time on it. Plus I'm sure there were some test drives at home in between battle weekends. So I'll call it about 72 hours. 3 days and the tank hull isn't usable without modification. Now yes I am guessing on how much time he drove it in between and the 60hrs of battle weekend time is actually on the high side. Any one that has been to Danville during a battle weekend then you know that there can be a descent amount of down time in between battles or once you have been destroyed.

3. He did actually modify the tank to what he thought would have resolved the issues with the lower hull. He replaced the metal tracks and roadwheels to take the strain off of the hull. Even with lightening the weight places on the sides of the lower hull it still bowed after relatively low hours.

4. I like Taigen I think that they are a good company. I don't think that they should replace the lower hull. At the end of the day it has been 6 months since purchase, and I don't remember seeing anything about a warranty on the hull. But at the same time I think that they should take an interest in failures like this, so that they can identify ways to correct it during the manufacturing process. I would hope that if Taigen wants to be a main player on the IR battle field as a real contender with Tamiya that they try to address these issues that pop up or worse are known and try to correct it.

Well thats just my two cents take it for what you think it worth.

Bill