Originally Posted by Artificial-I

Cool, thanks for the responses and keep em coming.

Another question is with raising the collar on the shock body which lowers the ride height , the compression on the spring also lowers which im guessing reduces the spring rate as well. Is this correct?
OPTIMALLY you want the spring to have slack on the shock body so that it is not compressed when the car is on blocks or off the ground. if it is compressed slightly i would not worry but if it's very tense somethings off somewhere else on the car. you're basically forcing the arm against the droop screw in this case when you crank on that collar

Is there anyway to go about changing ride height while not adjusting the shock collar? While also on the subject of shocks. What effect does increasing/decreasing the shock length do?
if you want more ride height you will want to decrease droop. this is because the droop screws are limiting the down travel of the arms and thus you cannot go beyond a certain ride height without loading the spring up.
however, you are not to adjust ride height with the droop screws. the droop is ONLY for limiting the down travel of the arm. you can prevent bottoming out by raising the bump screws (which limit the up travel of the arm). measuring this is up travel is not too reliable so i would recommend no bump screw.
shock length is related to droop. if the shock can't extend to support the arm with a certain droop, then you're gonna end up with more droop then you set. likewise if the shock extends further you'll be safe when you decrease droop. i would go with the stock length i believe its 67mm or so.. a little longer doesn't hurt but you don't want the threads exposed on the bottom where the shaft screws to the ball end or dirt can get pushed inside the bottom of the shock because the threads are smaller then the shaft guide hole. with a caliper make sure ALL shocks are the same length. if you don't do this it will show in other areas of setup.
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It seems to me with raising or lowering the car the shock collar method there is basically a certain amount the R40 can go up or down. Where as at certain points it can move with slight adjustments.....towards the end of the spectrums. When trying to get that extra ride height it seems to just make the suspension overly stiff. When im looking at more height, not stiffness. Same goes with trying to get it low. When I want the car quite a bit lower the suspension becomes so soft that a slight touch makes it bottom out.
lets say you're borrowing hara's 04 nats setup. with 3.5 rear droop you won't have much room to increase ride height.
in terms of getting the ride height low and bottoming out.. go through the setup again and recheck. if you go too low you will obviously bottom out. even at 4mm. sometimes 5mm if its a bumpy track!
also if you're using red proceed springs they tend to bind on touring car shocks so get the gold rears instead. they're the exact same spring rate and the spring will sit nicely.


Which kinda irritates me. It seems as though the car is just begging for more uptravel....or rideheight or something so the ranges arent so extreme. It seems like on all my other cars....kinwald edition buggy , adam drake truck , even the racer2. The shock collar adjustment method is effective and you can get it higher or lower a good amount while it doesnt seem to effect spring rate as bad.

Maybe all pro level nitro cars are like this , or maybe its the R40?? Has anyone else noticed this?