Hmm a Tower 40 doomed on takeoff just because it has stock landing gear. Sounds more like a severe lack of maintenance and/or the gear is truly doing what it is suppose to do.
skyflier you can use the tower trainer and it will work just fine and no you certainly do not have to make modifications of the gear.
Now here is a severe case of irrational and absurd modification of the landing gear and I can say absurd simply because it is my own airplane and I did it because this airplane had quite a different mission than the typical trainer
John