XRAY - Model racing cars

Well they went on perfect with some time spent on fitting and dremel work. Not too much had to be done and as a matter of fact I removed more then needed on the arms since I did it before I test fit the shocks.

About all that is needed in addition to the shock kit are the short version of the stand offs and some .3mm thick shims behind them to clear the spring adjuster collar off the shock tower.

I do feel that it is very necessary to use the short stand offs to make this all fit correctly even though there has been some talk about it not being needed. I found that even with the short stand offs there had to be a bit of dremel work to the rear arms to shorten them 1mm for proper shock fitment. If you use the long stand offs it would be impossible to fit the shocks with out making the piston bind in the shock body.

Basically the name of the game is to get the top of the shock mounted and let the bottom hang unmounted. When you do this you will see where it wants to fall into place and that should be directly into the space in the arms to mount them. If you find that you have to push the shock shaft forward or backward for it to fall into the arms then you arent aligning them properly.

With the short stand offs it was a tight fit to make this possible so there is no way the long stand offs would work and not require forcing the shock shafts into the arms. Its possible and you can easily push them into place but that means you create pressure on the shock shaft which binds the piston inside the shock body.

The front arms required very minimal dremel work since most came done already on the EC arms. All that was needed was a .3mm thick shim behind the short stand offs to push them out .3mm to clear the adjusting spring collar since it very slightly made contact with the shock tower with out them.

For the rear arms more work has to be done since unlike the truggy arms or the front EC arms there are no cut outs made to clear a spring retainer. In addition to those cuts I had to shave the rear of the arm right where the hinge pins inserts taking off about 1mm of plastic. This was necessary so that as previously mentioned the shock shaft was very close to falling into the arm slot but not perfect. That extra 1mm material gone on the arm was needed to move the arms back a hair so that the shock shaft didnt need to be pushed into place thus preventing any binding of the piston in the shock body.

For hardware I used 3x25mm screws inplace of the provided screws since those were intended to be used with the long stand offs. Also the stock metal ball inserts for the shock rod ends had to be used for a perfect fit in the arm slots.

Well as far as the dispute of performance gain or not I can tell you even if no gain in performance was made I would still buy them purely do to the quality and assembly far surpassing the EC shocks. The quality comes right down to materials used on the piston and the shock bodies along with the O-rings ect.

In addition to that its not hard to "feel" the gain of quality over the EC shocks when simply cycling the shock shafts up and down or pushing on the car at a stand still. It was such a relief ditching any sort of G-clip retaining pin and having a threaded O-ring retainer along with a threaded preload adjuster.

I was finding myself rebuilding the EC shocks constantly and always finding dead spots in them. By dead spots I can describe them as with the springs off and moving the shock shaft up and down you can feel gaps in the fluid from the air let in. I had several issues with the shims popping past the thin wire G-clip and I can guess this as being the culprit of leaks and air in the shock in such a short time.

For setup on these I am starting with 1.3mmx6 hole pistons using the chrome med springs front and rear. The oil is 35wt front and 30wt rear AE brand and with higher temps I will go up to 40/35 in summer time.

The kit has both long and short rod ends for tunning and fitting options. I liked the long rod ends for a few reasons. First they clear the arms much better, they actually raise the spring retianer which give more preload with out having to thread the preload collar down much, and most importantly they limit some shaft movement upward resulting in doubling as limiters for uptravel. This is important since with my setup the chassis hits and bottoms out before the shocks and also if one wheel were to travel up to its limits the rod end would act as the limiting factor not the piston into the bladder.

I took pics with and with out the shock socks that my wife and I made. These will really save the boots from tears caused by flying debris hitting them. The two together should be solid in preventing any sort of dirt getting to the O-rings and from what I hear these shocks can go along time with out changing oil since they dont leak or get dead spots in them.

I will continue to report how they perform and hold up at the track as time goes on but with the time and care I took in fitting them along with the apparent quality I dont foresee any short comings.

Tips:

I found the arms to be hollow and not solid plastic so if you remove too much material you will find this out the hard way. Luckily I saw a small pin hole begin to form so I stopped in time to save them. If I snap any arms I will know next time that not much material has to be taken off.

The hardest part of all this was threading new rod ends onto the shafts and my bright red fingers will prove that. You can use a allen through the ball ends to get leverage to turn them but its very hard to tell where to stop so that you dont strip them. This took some time to get them all equal so some calipers are necessary.

ON WITH THE PICS!!!!!!!!

Haters and questions welcome, lol.

The long standoffs are fine on the Truggy and work great, I have lots of fuel on them.

If you look here you see vertical is the red line, green is where you can see the angle showing how much its tilted, and blue representing where the top of the shock should be in relation to the bottom.

A short stand off would nearly put it perfectly into place along the blue line so while they may work they arent correct in my opinion. I saw this as an issue prior to my purchase and it was easy to identify if you look for it.

Squat ect doesnt change the realtionship of the top and bottom of the shock. It would simply tilt the steel ball in the rod end one direction ro the other but the shock would still be mounted in the same angle.

I've physically ran my shocks quite abit in lots of practice and in actual races, it has not presented a issue. I stand behind my statements regarding the standoffs that come with the shocks.

I've posted several videos of me running my shocks mounted as they are in my pictures, they work very well.

Thats cool but working and working properly are 2 different questions. I am not sure how you cant see the angle made in your shocks and not understand that something has to give in those situations. Since the shock shaft and piston are not attached to the shock body the 2 have to be in perfect alignment or they will bind for sure. Ofcourse the smooth inner shock body and piston will slide and it may be hard to feel but I bet with time you are going to see wear on one half of the inside shock body.

No they do not have to be in perfect alignment, that's why they have pivot points on each end. I've ran mine on a couple of R/C tracks quite a bit, I feel qualified to comment on how they work, I've posted video and what not.

I see your point but the tops of these shocks dotn pivot like the typical ball end style. They use some sort of bushing over the stand offs and have limited movement. After that force must be applied to the shock shaft for it to tilt further and mount to the arms.

If they work then so be it but when I do things, especially mods, I wont accept anything less then perfection or I dont mod it. I could have very quicky thrown these on the car and not payed any attention to detail but for those of us with OCD its hard to do.

Trust me, I'm not the type to do things half arse, ask around.

Here is my Xray right now, in preparation for practice this weekend.

Well I suppose if you consider the green line I posted there is a straight line from the rod end to the cap but its the angle in relation to the shock tower that is off. According to your statements it should then still work but as the arm moves vertically up and down the shock actually is moving at an angle tilted back. I suppose nothing more then performance would be affected and even then that would be hard to notice based on how the car drives.

Its obvious in the pics that they are off but if they work for you and you dont want to do the short stand offs to make them better for argument sake then so be it.

This may not actually hurt anything or create binding but I just dont see it as the best performing mounted position.

Either way the heck with it and lets talk about how killer these shocks feel!

I cant tell you in words how much nicer they feel compared to stock EC shocks and now I can do a drop test with out the chassis slapping the ground.

I am very happy with them and they were well worth the upgrade cost.

Check out how close I was able to get my shocks. The red line is the top cap in direct line with the bottom rod end and the green line is a perfect vertical line.

I run a plastic rear brace, I would worry about chassis flex causing interference if mine were that close!!

Yours look good, and these shocks make me excited about my XT8!!