Up until now I haven't been very happy with the suspension tune on this. I figured in time I'd get it dialed in, and it's getting there.
The stock shocks come coil sprung with no oil. Any suspension input results in like 5 cycles (compression with rebound again and again). Even small bumps sent the truck bouncing around repeatedly.
The stock shocks also will not hold oil. They leaked a lot once I added some oil to them. Typical RC4WD shocks, no surprise there. I drained the oil back out of those.
So I added the LX bypass shocks. Those hold oil nicely and have working bypass tubes. I put 10WT oil in those. My hope was to keep the suspension motion fast enough to look realistic, but damped enough to perform decently over rough terrain.
I put 10WT (motorcycle fork oil) in those and it was too much damping. The truck could handle big hits, but that was all. Even big hits only had one suspension cycle; compression then rebounds immediately into ride height and stays put. And the suspension lacked small bump compliance. Not very realistic looking.
So I found some 5WT (also fork oil) and tried that. Now I'm getting into the sweet spot. The small bump compliance is there. And when the suspension takes a hit it compresses, rebounds a bit too far, then compresses again slightly as it settles into ride height and stays put. Pretty realistic looking.
I knew I would need some fairly light shock oil for this truck but I didn't think I would need to go down to 5WT. I could probably even go down to 2.5WT and remove some preload from the springs.
I had this old programming box that worked on those Axial ESC / RX 2 in 1 units. It also works on the stock ESC for this truck. So I turned the drag brake way down and increased the punch slightly.