ok heres the deal guys, i have no way to change the dampening on my shocks , i only have one type of piston and one type of shock oil... the suspension at the front is kinda saggy , i dont know how to put it , imagine the springs are too soft and the shock oil is too thick and when im running my truck the suspension feels like it hardly ever moves, just stays at the uppermost travel and doesnt have time to come back down...

i have 1. a couple of sway bars of varying stiffness 2. a pair of stiffer springs , plus some spare pistons to stack on the shaft inside the shock to limit suspension travel

my reasoning is that , if i put only the sway bars, my suspension will be unchanged except the swaybar will make it as if my springs were stiffer when im going over rough ground or when im cornering, so it will fight against the dampening abit more, and it also helps me stop rolling over in corners
or if i use stiffer springs , it will also push against the dampening , but it pushes my truck too far up so i limit the suspension travel to stop it doing that, normally this method is meant to prevent rollovers and improve handling

what do you guys, who are more experienced than me, think?

drill the shock pistons, enlargen the hole a little at a time. until the damping is soft enough for you.

Put on softer srpings, drill the pistons, thinner oil, etc. Sway bars reduce traction so will make the front more responsive.

he says that he doesnt have anything but stiffer springs and no oil. so i say just drill them.

like in an ideal world i would have money to buy different springs and oils and whatnot, but i dont... thanks for your suggestions

what do you mean 'sway bars reduce traction so will make the front more responsive' ? the only meaning of the word 'traction' that i know is between the wheels and the ground and is the same meaning as 'grip' ....

::edit:: my pistons are 1/18 scale and the holes are tiiiiny , so im abit uncomfortable with trying to tune my suspension by drilling them bigger...if only there was an easy way of doing it, hmmm...


i think i can buy an assortment of screws with slightly different diameters and carve out the hole , im so tempted to try that tomorrow at the hardware shop

but is there a way i can 'take advantage' of this excess dampening instead of trying to get rid of it? like, when people add sway bars do they also use thicker oil or something

In my opinion you should change the shock position (change to different mounting hole), or you should get thiner shock oil... It doesn't coast much at all... http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...oil&FVPCODE=RF

but even if he changes position, he will still have the exact same damping to spring ratio. so yeah, drill them

Oil is just a few bucks, just go pick some up and save yourself the trouble of messing up a set of pistons.

^^^ Thats why is suggested getting the oil...

heh, the trip to the lhs to buy the oil would cost more than the bottle of oil itself, and if i order online the shipping price makes it pointless, and im really broke right now ... money problems, just buying replacement chassis parts so i could run my truck again at all is stretching it already
im not planning to drill my pistons cuz its almost impossible to get both sides exactly the same that way , i would rather them be exactly the same and be abit too soft or too hard, than the other way round
instead, i am going to buy or find a few different screws which are just abit larger than the holes themselves and 'tap' them thru the piston, when i get money again this means that i'll simply have more pistons to choose from... maybe i'll do it tomorrow when i get time

so like, getting rid of the excess dampening is the only way to go

a related question... all you guys who run swaybars, you put them in the front or rear? if both, which is stiffer?

front is usually stiffer in offroad, by memory. correct me if im wrong peoples.

so.... what would be the effect of a stiff swaybar combined with softer springs? im all up for trying out new things with my truck but im still waiting for my chassis bits to arrive... and any less time spent on trial and error is more time spent running a great handling truck, i guess

Yep, stiffer up front (thats what I run anyway).

carmatic1, I really suggest that you save for some oil... In your first post you said that the "springs are too soft and the shock oil is too thick", so I would get thiner oil...

After reading this it would be very good if we all knew what type of vehicle it was used on and especially what type of surface. If you are not racing it the sway bars are not needed. At the top you mentioned rolling over in the corners and also referred to rough surfaces and truck. So like I said more info is needed as to lead you in the correct direction.

its a brushless mini lst... granted the suspension wasnt really designed for what i was trying to do, which is running at 30mph on cracky asphalt and pavement, twice the top speed of a stock mlst
the soft springs at the front causes it to lean at corners too much, while the excess dampening makes it slow to right itself...needs alot of countersteer, turn hard enough and it doesnt want to stop turning until you let go of the throttle

Not entirely sure, but you'd get no body roll, and be able to put the power down to the ground better?

what im thinking is the sway bars will act like stiffer springs but only when the wheels are at different heights... the ride height will still stay the same , but the wheels will return to the ground faster thanks to the swaybar, so i think it can be used to improve performance on rough ground....

i still cant run my truck yet cuz my replacement chassis part hasnt arrived, i'll want to see if it can stop the spinning out...