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I am sure it will work fine.

These are the cool ideas I enjoy seeing. Nicely done sir.

Thanks, Harry. And I appreciate your using my car as an example of scratchbuilding. High praise indeed considering all the outstanding examples you had to choose from.

I'd advise watching the performance carefully. The HO guys have been using independent front end kits for 30 years I know of. There has to be something to it.

I had indie front axles on my Sportsman Studebaker last year. Mine had half shafts held in the middle with regular wheel collars. Enough of the axle tube was cut out in the middle to clear the collars, and the whole thing worked quite well. Unfortunately the car was heavy and geared too high, so any advantage I might have seen was cancelled out.

My Ford GT in the F/F Proxy has a solid front axle, but there is a sliver of brass tubing soldered onto the end of the axle to collar the wheel. That wheel has no set screw so it free wheels, and the other wheel turns with the axle. Unfortunately again too heavy and wrong gearing to produce good results.

Cheers,

Keith

Not just HO guys. Independent fronts are much better but the Fly version was not engineered well enough. Sleeves help, but we all pretty much took the easy way out using a solid axle. The Fly cars don't improve enough to make the sleeve work worthwhile.
When engineered correctly independent fronts do certainly help.

I use the 3/32 stainless steel rivets

I then bore out the plastic to .094 with a reamer. The hard part is chucking the rivet in a drill and then filling the diameter down to fit the CB wheels.

Most of my 1/32nd cars have independent rotating front wheels. The easy way to do that when you are using set screw wheels is to have a hollow front axle. I press in an eyelet act as a keeper and I do not use a set screw on that side. The other side has a set screw, so that wheel and the axle will rotate together while the wheel on the other side turns independently.

This is far too much planning for us in NASTE land.

Our approach is very similar to what RichD describes but we use a solid front axle where one wheel is tightened down using the grub screw while the other is left loose with a small washer or small piece of tubing soldered on the outside to keep it in place.

Very simple and works great.