When you use the term "Rock Racing", are you truly "racing" against other people or just bashing around by yourself?

I currently club race the SCT410 which shares similar geometry with your truck. I remove both the center and rear chassis braces in order to maximize chassis flex to improve traction/handling. The trade off is that if I take a hard nose dive then I am more likely to bend the center drive shaft. To me, it's definitely worth the risk in order to have an advantage against my competition, but if I was bashing around all by myself, then I wouldn't take the risk and I would re-install the chassis braces... only time I would upgrade the braces to aluminum is if I was damaging the braces often enough.

Just because there are upgrades out there, doesn't necessarily mean they are necessary. It all depends on your specific needs.