Tamiya F-350 Highlift Project

Page 3: Upgrades!

Given what this truck is and what it does, it doesn't necessarily benefit from a lot of upgrades. But there are a couple of things that can really boost the off road performance so that's what I went for.

I had read that the suspension was too hard, so during the initial build I replaced the first (and largest) leaf spring with a softer red version from RC4WD which worked really well. I found that later after the springs broke in they were actually bottoming out under the weight of the truck, so I took the first intermediate spring and moved it from above the red spring to below (which looks better anyway). This made it just right. In the image above the leaves on the top (right side of truck) have been arranged in the new way and those on the bottom in the old way so you can see the difference.

The next thing I did was upgrade the shocks. The stock shocks are nice aluminum units, but they are just friction dampers with no oil. At slow crawling speed they probably don't make much difference to performance, but it bothered me not to have oil shocks so I got some scale versions from RC4WD which look really nice. Before and after are shown above. Can you tell which is which?

The final and most important upgrade is the tires. Although I like the look of the stock tires with raised white letters, the compound is quite hard and doesn't grip very well. I chose some Dick Cepek beadlocks from RC4WD along with a set of scale Goodyear Wranglers. You can see how nice they look and the traction is infinitely better. In the final photo you can also see the rubber fender flares and mirrors that I added during the initial build.

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