Wow, thanks for the incredibly detailed info! You surely know a lot more than me ;) This has been on ebig voyage of expensive discovery. If you read back a few posts you'll see that I'd made the 2001 discovery (to my horror) a while ago. Rather annoying based on the price I paid for what is essentially a very beaten up 2001! But, you live and learn, and boy has it been fun making this car up. Thanks again for the info though, I certainly learnt a few things! Mike.

looking at these original photos you actaully bought an Avante 2001 with Hicap shocks and egress body. a few dead give aways. 1) the S shaped rear suspension supports and Thick rear suspension front Pivot ball plastic with a small laterial cut in them. this was unique to the avante 2001 only. it was tamiya's attempt at a final revision to beef up the arms in side impacts and also flex. 2) the FRP chassis, also unique to the 2001, its a clone of the Graphite chassis used on the egress. 3) black suspension links: the egress are blue and 6mm, the 2001 are black and 5mm tamiya did this for 2 reasons: 1) it was cheaper 2) because the 2001 used a variant shock mount design taken from the Vanquish the FRP shock plate took up the lower front gear box shock mount, this extra thickness did not leave room for the alumium cross member nor was there enough room for the 6mm links because of it. This was actaully a big screw up by tamiya because when you used official hopups such was the front Mini Shocks and used the FRP front shock tower given to you with the mini shocks(different design then the Egress) you lost the front body mount. which leads to 4 4) no aluminum front gear box cross member, which leads to 5 5) if the Frp front shock tower is shorter on one side then the other and the holes Equidistant then its the hop up tower not the Egress. The egress tower is the same lenth on both sides but the shock mounts are slightly further out and the mount can only be installed one way because the lower mounts fit the upper front gear box shock mount, if you flip it around it won't fit, because the tops of the egress tower is actaully pushed out about 2-4mm making the egress shocks stand even more upright, then if you just used BF9 parts alone. 6) color of the shock springs, another dead give away that the hi-caps are not original to the car, the egress shock springs are Grey anodized, they are also unique and were never sold outside of the kit, they also have a special spring rate so if you bought the 530* short or mini shock spring sets with the square wire the egress spring was nowhere to be found. 7) another big giveaway to this chassis being a Avante 2001 the front steering system. While L parts were shared with the egress and even the hardware was reused(minus the titanium screws) the FRP steering bar is in fact a completely different shape then the Carbon egress set. the bar is longer and that required different steering links that were shorter then the avante 2001 these tierod parts were available in the Avante carbon fiber upgrade kit. the carbon cross bar was also available in the Avante Carbon fiber steering kit as a hopup. the ackerman angles are very different on the egress due to this bar being longer. the good news is the avante 2001 had the same starting length as the egress. another dead giveaway with these cars occurs when its in your hands, turning the diffs, egress ball , avante 2001 gear. if the car has a one way or not is not very telling because the egress came with option parts to lock out the oneway and run 4wd instead of Awd. if the car comes with a torque splitter in the rear box then you know its got gears in the diffs. that was also an optional hopup the ball diff and torque splitter hopup. Well just from the pics i can see it started life as a Avante 2001. i hope this post helps others when buying something online, we all get burned :)