OK guys... It's been 6 months since I looked at this project. The past 6 months have been challenging for me but i'm slowing getting my life back together. After reading a couple of posts about people wanting tamiyas I decided to pull this guy out and do the next round of mods. For those of you that have read the entire thread you'll know that this car was built 100% stock, tested and then modded with bearings. It's also had the steering setup modded to get rid of a ridiculous amount for steering slop.
The next area that needed attention was the shocks. The kit comes with assembled plastic units that are simply springs on plastic. Can't really call them shocks or dampers as they aren't really either one. When I first built this car my intention was to get a set of Fire Dragon shocks as they are a direct fit but those proved very hard find used. Digging through my pile of parts I pulled out a set of Traxxas Slash front shocks and springs and found they are a perfect fit for the rear of this car. Measured end to end they are 1mm longer that the stockers. A quick rebuild with 40wt oil and on they went. I feel the progressive rate springs will help soak up some of the small bumps and allow the rear suspension to work a little better than it did stock. The odd angle of these shock make them less effective. We'll see how this works out.
Now on to the front. I looked through the parts box for a while until I found a set of the old black CVA's that came stock on one of my old tamiya touring cars. A quick check of the length showed these where appox 5 mm too short and would lower the front of the car if used as is.. I decided to build myself a hybrid shock using the black CVA uppers and the stock Mad Bull shock lower mount. If you look you'll notice that the lower mount is longer than normal. I'm guessing this is due to the exceptional thick arms. I first assembled these shocks with 40WT oil and the stock Mad bull springs but a quick bounce test told me the springs where way too soft. Looking in box again turned up a set of springs off the TA01 F150. Perfect fit. I swapped springs and this felt better but now the shocks felt just a little under damped. A quick refill with 50wt oil made things "feel" better. Here's a couple of pics of the front.
Even though today is turning out to be beautiful here in chicagoland I'm way too sick to be out playing with cars so I didn't put too much time on these. A couple of quick runs up and do the street showed me that "just" having shocks with oil in them greatly increased control. The rear of the car seems pretty glued. The car still turns well but the rear stays planted. The front no longer bounces and the tires stay glued to the ground. The spring rates in the front might still be a little too stiff for the shock oil as the car rebounds very fast. I'll have to get more time on it before I make any changes.
I'm going to get to the track for some more wheel time to see how much better these shocks really are. After that I'm thinking it's time for an S-600 and a 19T pinion to pick up a little more speed. That change will most likely require a switch to a different ESC so I have an XL5 sitting here as well... Well that's it for me today.... I'm going back to my Mancave so I continue to be sick... Enjoy the pics. I'm done for the day...