I will write up more later, but a couple things after spending some time building up a good portion of my SP-1 this evening:
- For the football (plastic for center pivot) use a dremel cut-off wheel to take off the plastic portion that is intended to keep the two nuts in place, making the plastic flush. Then you can use an actual 5.5mm wrench to hold the nut in place while you tighten down the pivot. Hebert actually started doing this on his 12th scale, which is how I found out about it. Seems to work pretty well, although it makes it more difficult to set the center pivot without binding.
- when you assemble the pod, I would recommend attaching the motor mounts to the bottom plate with the rear brace loose, and then tighten the motor mounts to the bottom plate before you tighten the brace. I would also recommend doing this before you have attached the pod to the main chassis plate so you can actually check whether you have tweaked the pod. The lower pod plate is thinner than the main chassis plate, which makes it difficult to check tweak when the car is fully assembled, since the pod will rock no matter what due to that thickness difference.
- Don't bother with the SP side links, use AE ones. The plastic for the SP ones seems pretty horrible for the side links. AE ones fit perfectly, and you can use the same screws. You could also use the AE pivot balls if you are concerned about the SP ones, although I had no issues with mine (contrary to previous comments about flashing, etc).
- Don't bother trying to attach the lower arms before you have attached that carbon plate (don't remember what the actual name is) to the main chassis. It was mentioned before in this thread, but it is nigh-impossible to attach the 3mm nuts when the lower arms are in place.
- Don't even bother trying to use the SP upper pivot ball retainers without either dremeling a cut in the plastic or trying to use the CRC part. I underestimated how soft that plastic is...you really won't be able to get it out if you even barely screw the retainer in...don't tempt fate.
- SP needs to release a lower arm pivot ball (where the kingping goes through the lower arm) that is made out of metal (and preferably teflon-coated). I am going to see whether the CRC brass ones fit, but these plastic ones are horrible. Trying to get a bind-free front end is futile.
- SP (or someone else) should make better ride-height spacers to use underneath that front carbon plate. When using the advised stack of 2mm spacers you can actually see how tweaked the arms get when you tighten down the screws from below...it took me a couple tries before I was satisfied with the way the arms were sitting on that carbon piece. It would be nice if someone could make an aluminum chunk that wrapped around the whole front end to serve as a ride-height spacer.
Overall I am impressed with the quality of the kit, but there are a couple plastic pieces that really should be aluminum (or even just better plastic in the case of those retainers) and there are some questionable design choices (I didn't know you could copy the CRC front end and actually make it worse?). I will try and reserve further judgment until I get the chance to drive it, though. Hoping for the best!