A few more changes / upgrades:
I swapped the front Axial Yeti Universals for Incision's Yeti VDI axle shafts. These appear to be very well made and definitely have more girth over the uni's. For those that are "weight conscious", the Axial uni's are 21 grams each vs. the VDI's wieght of 23.5 grams each. The thicker shafts would impede with the shocks if I was using the wider P-L SC shocks....luckily I am very happy with the Axial Icon shocks.
I put the Axial 14x54mm 3.85 lbs/in (Medium Green) springs on the front shocks; they definitely feel better and will allow the front to articulate better. I moved the front shocks to more of an upright position to keep the ground clearance with softer spring rates.
The bolt that goes though the A-Arm and knuckle simply threaded into the rear portion of the A-Arm. I felt this wasn't going to be strong enough; I ordered Axial M3x40mm Cap Head bolts (AXA0093) so that I could add a narrow Axial Nyloc nut on the end to keep the bolt from backing out...good to go now.
I went with KBess Mfg. Bomber limit straps (4" Front and 3.5" Rear) so that I had two different lengths to play with in order to get the front suspension from fully extending. Earlier I mentioned I was hearing a bit of gear crunching under heavy acceleration, upon inspection of all gears, I couldn't find anything out of the ordinary, and everything spun freely. Then I thought to myself, this noise I was hearing was only under hard acceleration.....the front end gets unloaded with acceleration and the front suspension goes to full droop, which is likely causing the Axial universals to spin at an angle that they didn't like. This is my theory and hopefully the between the VDI axles and the limit straps, this crunching will be a thing of the past. Also, at full droop the knuckles/castor rings were very tight when the steering was at full turn (left or right); with the A-Arms even a couple mm higher, they have full unrestricted travel from lock to lock. I'll report back on the next test session. Getting back to the limit straps, the 3.5" straps were a little too short and the 4" straps were a little too long if they were used in the same shock mount locations. I ended up finding a suitable location for the 3.5" strap that fully tensioned prior to the suspension going to full droop, although it doesn't look as good, it will be very functional. Both upper and lower mount points are very strong. I used the 4" straps on the rear and they fully tension prior to the shocks bottoming out.
Next is the wheels....since SSD replicate the perfect Bomber wheel with their Rock Racer wheels, I decided to get another set for this Bomber too. Front hubs are Vanquish .450 with LURC scale lugs and the rear hubs are .850. Same P-L Flat Iron XL tires, but this time they are stuffed with Crawler Innovations Double Deuce 5.5” Comp Cut Inner / Soft Outer foams. The tires feel great now, not too stiff.
Lastly, I ordered RPM Jato length blue link ends, I needed two to complete the blue link theme for the inner rear upper links.
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I love how easy this rig is to break down, all the electronics go with the chassis.
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