52mm

New to onroad and just picked up a used 16 T4. Hope nobody minds posting here as it is a more active thread. Had a few questions:

Good upgrades for the 16 for medium traction asphalt (Tracks are in Socal - Cal Raceway and Camarillo?
Good starting setup for med traction asphalt?
Good spring selection to have on hand? And - how does one distinguish what types of springs are currently on the buggy (my offroad xray has stripes etched into the spring, but i cant distinguish what this one came with)


thx much all in advance. any tips for a newb onroad driver much appreciated!

Upgrades? Hmm.

Alloy steering to get more lock.
Most everything else is convenient or bling related!

Springs have etching on the bottom. Kit is 2.5. You probably want to have 2.5-2.8 progressive and 2.7 as a minimum as options.

Good starting point for asphalt is kit - pending what class you might want to play with rear toe - 3.0-3.5 for Mod. 2.5-3.0 for stock is typical as a starter.

For me, when it comes to asphalt, I always upgrade or have the following hop up parts for the T4, in this order:

1. anti roll bars, 1.3 front, 1.2 rear
2. steel spool cups (don't try aluminum or steel coated, either get Xray or the Spec-R, these are the only 2 options for me)
3. variety of progressive and linear springs (depending on traction)

some other items that you may need:
1. lots of drive shaft replacement caps (3.5mm) especially if you will be using steel spool cups at the front
2. shims, 4mm, 2mm, 1mm, 0.5mm for fine tuning (raising the top deck, roll centers, etc).
3. hard bumper

items you might want in the future:
1. even for low traction, I use the graphite arms (front and rear)
2. low friction belts (white ones, front and rear)
3. if you could convert your 16 to the 17 especially with the carbon stiffener

that's just my 2 cents, not claiming to be an expert but these are based on my experience (I run indoor and outdoor asphalt, 17.5 T blinky outlaw)

A list of good option parts to consider is posted in the wikipost at the top of this thread. You will also want to have various oils for your shocks and diff. A lot of what has been suggested so far is good, I would agree that those parts will help. I also prefer PSS personally, but that seems to be a personal preference thing. For me, I like how the car feels with PSS on asphalt compared to standard shocks and it seems to add another fine-tuning adjustment. By altering the length of the shock shaft, you can affect the damping of the shock due to how high or low the piston sits in relation to the triangle.

Also - I updated the wikipost this morning to include the parts to convert a '16 to a '17. Late, I know but I guess better late than never. Thanks to RussF for doing the hard work, digging that up and sharing again.

Robbie, Can you explain further the fine tuning for the PSS? Assume it's more a case of making the initial damping more or less hard by lengthening or shortening the shock shaft.

Exactly. The higher the piston travels through the shock, the thicker the damping gets. If you make the shock shaft longer, the piston starts from a higher initial position. This provides thicker damping through the entire range of compression because it also reaches a higher/tighter point on the triangle. I tend to think of this as fine tuning the oil without needing to take the shock apart. I think a good starting point for PSS shaft length is 9.6mm.

I don't recall who exactly told me about this, but I recall a teammate sharing this with me. Something they'd learned from talking to JJ Wang and/or his dad.

All great tips. Thx fellas. I'll pick up some of these items.

Coming from off-road and spending a small fortune replacing 4wd outdrives these drive shaft replacement bushings look great.

....edit - picked up most this stuff. PSS looks interesting. Look forward to all this thx

Hi Robbie,
How do you measure the 9.6mm shaft? Apicture would be great to better understand you.
Thanks man.

It's the amount of exposed shaft when the shock is at full extension.

You make it shorter or longer by screwing in the eyelet on the bottom of the shaft.

cplus is correct. I can still take a pic when I get home from work later.

I have the alu steering arms but they have a lot more slop than the standard plastic ones. How to get rid of it? The slop is most noticeable at the small bearings and between the screw and the bearings.

Most people just ignore it. The slop is vertical so isn't really effecting the geometry much.

I don't like it either though! So, you can thread-lock the bearings into the arms to take out play there, and add a 5x0.1mm shim to the posts to take out the vertical play. Just make sure they are still free.

Everyone out of stock in US? Because new model coming or just short supply?

I have one I'll give you a great deal on. Last one I have in inventory. US Kit with alumn chassis.

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