I bolted up my tires and rims, charged a battery pack, and headed out to the front yard. I have lots of medium sized river rock and gravel, and decided that this was as good of a stomping ground as any.
Man, did this thing ever fly! It would bound up and over just about anything. However, my steering started to go out, and I realized a couple of major flaws.
First off, I used a very aggressive tire. I didn't go for no half-assed street/mini pin combo. I went balls out with the spiked tires. These things will grab hold of anything. I even got the truck to climb a wall, until it flipped over. So it wasn't really that big of a surprise when I noticed that one of my dog bones had broken. Right where I had modified it. Ten dollars later, I was installing my red steering blocks, and putting new dog bones in.
Second, I had too much height in the front suspension. The dog bones would pop out if I hit a large bump in a hard turn. No problem, I eliminated the servo saver, and placed the mount closer to the pivot point, reducing the amount of steering I had.
Excuse me? Did I hear that you removed the servo saver? With those tires? Well, I had to. With the extra weight of the large tires, I was getting 10 to 15 degrees of slop, making tracking a straight line almost impossible.
Next, I installed Associated body mounts in the front, to give me that much needed body clearance. This was fairly straight forward, but I had to put a slight bend in the mount (by using heat) to compensate for the angle of the shock tower.
