One of the best upgrades you can do to your Mini-Z Formula 1 car is installing the Atomic Damper Plate System on it. Unfortunately, the damper hits on the inside of the majority of the bodies out there. The damper hitting the inside of the body causes the suspension to bind up, which in turn, leads to erratic behavior.

The fix for this is very simple though. All you need is a couple of easy-to-use hobby tools, a steady hand, and a little bit of patience. The following tutorial will instruct you on how to trim your body to clear the suspension perfectly. The result? A car that will not only drive 100% better, but also remain looking pretty good at the same time.

• Hobby Drill
• Hobby Knife
• Needle File Set
• Paint Marker
• Black Marker
• Safety Glasses

Make sure you wear your Safety Glasses. Like Rob says: "Eyeballs are EXPENSIVE!"

Start by removing the body on your F1.

The part that usually hits is the ball end on the top damper and spring set-up. Mark both sides of the ball end with a heavy coat of paint marker.

Install the body on the car and move the suspension side to side on your car before the paint dries on the ball end. If done correctly, the paint should mark the spots where the ball ends hit on the inside of the body.

Take your hobby drill with a good, sharp, carbide tip and cut through the marks that you made. Make the holes small initially, you might find that they need to be a lot smaller than you actually think.

This is about what it needs to look like.

First try! Install the body again and see how much range of movement you are getting. In this case, we still needed more clearance towards the bottom of the hole and a little more side-to-side movement.

Trim a little bit of the lower part of the hole to get that extra clearance you needed.

Do it on the other side.

Check everything! Notice how in this case the rear, lower side of the body hits the motor pod. Mark that spot on the body.

Time to do some trimming! In this case we use a sanding wheel to grind down the area that hit the motor pod.

Not much trimming is required, only enough to get clearance from that sneaky motor pod.

Re-install the body again. This time it looks just about perfect! Clearance on the sides and on the top damper shock.

Time to clean the body up. Use a nail file to round off the edges and remove big burrs.

Do it on the sides of the body as well.

Using a Hobby knife will remove those last pesky plastic shavings.

Now to the sides.

Using a Black Permanent marker really helps visually on the damper clearance holes. Just try it and see!

You are done! Now go practice with your new Damper Plate System shod F1. Your car will run better than ever so quit making up excuses and go win some races.

Different cars require different amounts of trimming. Check out the MP4-20

This is a Jordan F1.

If you want to remove the paint from the ball end on your damper, a little bit of denatured alcohol on a paper towel works great!