Man, people sure weren't kidding when they said this truck is a pain in the butt maintenance-wise. Took me probably a good two hours to detach the gearboxes for diff maintenance. I've never done diff maintenance on any of my cars with no ill effects, though I suppose I should at least on the B5M since it's been driven the most. But for this one since it needs setup tuning anyway and I'm trying to familiarize myself with it more I figured I'd give them a once over since it'll rain for the next couple of days and thus no track time. Regretted it not too far in the process. Leaving the actual cleaning&re-oiling&re-assembly for tomorrow.

On the brighter side blasted through four batteries on the track prior to the maintenance, and the car does handle better. I could actually drive from the driver stand and not have to climb down constantly to rescue the car. The main problem now is... well, with my 2WD cars I often go into corners with neutral throttle at least part of the way instead of braking (to achieve a tighter turn), and it works ok. But with this one I can't, because neutral throttle + turn causes the rear end to spin around. I thought the 4WD was drag braking with the front too much, but the clicker should've fixed that, and actually looking at the manual the Novak ESC probably doesn't even have drag brake. But I noticed the car rolls quite poorly, it decelerates quickly even when not powered on and you push it. So, I guess that's where the braking is coming from, not sure there's anything to help with that? In the meanwhile just gotta keep at least some throttle applied at times.

Oh, and ended up keeping the aftermarket shocks for now, actually because I couldn't get the damn things off. Haha. But loosening the spring preload achieved what I was looking for: less tendency to cause bounce landing the car on its roof when hitting a bump such as the track edge (traction roll hasn't been an issue at all with either preload setting).