I told u zach, buying new shocks isnt gonna do nothing.. All its gonna do is make your truck look bling. You just need stiffer springs and heavier shock oil.
And i just gotta prove to you that buying threaded shocks, and adjusting them so it would be inposible for the truck to bottem out will only **** your truck up.. Your just gonna put all the strain on your shock towers and a-arms and your gonna break them.. Even if u upgrade to all aluminum ull just bend them.
well actually getting thicker shock oil is the thing that will make it harder on your shock tower, and buying stiffer springs will almost give the same affect as adjusting the preload of the spings, even if they arent on threaded shocks. stiffer sping and adjusting the preload on the springs doesnt make your shocks harder, it adjusts the rate at which the shocks will expand after being compressed... but alluminum shock are alot stronger, and are smoother when being compressed and expanding, the threaded shock bodies are mainly for fine tuning your suspension, but you could adjust the preload on the stock plastic shock by putting some preload spacers on the shock bodies which come stock with the rusty
And sense all you care about is how fast it goes. I bet if you put a 2.5 in a MT-2 it would go just as fast as a rustler.. You even said you plan on putting a new engine in it anyways..
well i think it would take a little more than just putting a new motor in it to make it go 50, since it is 4wd, half the power of the motor is going to the front 2 weels and the back 2, while on a 2wd vehicle all the power is going to 2 weels allowing them to spin faster than they would if it was going to all 4 weels.. but if you stuck a powerful motor in, and changed the gears for alot more speed, you might be able to reach speeds of 50mph, but then your acceleration would suffer..
The MT2 would be a better basher cause it's got more ground clearance and 4wd etc.
the stock a arms on the rustler allow you to adjust how much ground clearance you have, you could easily get as much ground clearance as the mt2, my rustler has almost as much ground clearance as my uncles mt2 while on the stock setting(which is about medium), and you can also put some masher 2ks on, but then handleing would suffer horribly.
but 4wd is nice to have if you are going to be doing some steep hills, but other than that and rock climbing, i dont see any jumping advantage of 4wd, also it makes it harder to work on your car...