RS4- Exhaust gasket and handling issues

Last time I took the RS4 out the exhaust gasket disintegrated!

Luckily HPI supply a spare in the box (common fault maybe?!) and it was a quick and simple job to swap it over.

So... on to the handling. Now I have never been a fan of the handling on the RS4. It is too skittish on even the slightest of rough or dirty tarmac and seems to bottom out constantly.

I rescued my old threaded upgrade (well, they are cheap ebay jobbies so probably not much of an upgrade!) shocks from my TT-01D which I have broken for parts. I had hoped that these would be slightly longer than the original HPI items but a quick comparison showed the opposite to be true.

Oh well... maybe the slightly more compliant ride will help with things anyway!

I swapped the springs over for the stiffer blue ones supplied with the shocks to account for the extra weight of the nitro then fitted them on the car. It was only then that it occurred to me, the RS4 has alternative mounting points for the shocks!

Whilst the rear was only going to give me more caster angle the front gave the opportunity for a small amount of extra ground clearance that the car so desperately needed. So it was off with the front shocks again and a quick change of the top and bottom mount positions.

After putting everything back together I noticed just how far out the rear was!

Not only was this giving crazy wheel alignment it was even effecting the ride height with one side sitting much higher than the other!

So after stripping the rear end off and struggling with the rear prop shaft for ages (I resorted to bending a paper clip into a hook to hold it in place in the end!) the back was back as it was meant to be. Maybe I bumped it on the last run, maybe I didn't put it back together properly when I swapped over the rear wishbone, who knows.

Here it is back in one piece and with a noticeable increase to the ride height. Now you probably noticed the wheels... well... I thought I would trial fit my old Tamiya wheels (from my old TL-01 (RIP)) and in doing so the hexs fused to the inside of the wheels! I was going to damage the wheels, hexs or most likely both if I tried to force them out so I decided to leave them in place and will order up some replacements to use with my original wheels.