Why are axial pivot balls garbage?

[Ninomaniac]

SSD rod ends that are nice and beefy and BACKWARDS.
Designed so that the end slides off the ball!

[fyrstormer]

Putting an O-ring over the lip of the pivot ball helps with that problem too.

After scrolling through over 1100 RC photographs I've taken, apparently I never took a photo of what I'm talking about. Here's what I mean:



If you have trouble with the eyelet popping off the pivot-ball, put the O-ring on the side that the eyelet tends to pop off, and the O-ring will take up slack and prevent the eyelet from popping off. Otherwise, put the O-ring on the side of the pivot-ball that has more room for the O-ring to fit.

You might think this will introduce too much resistance to suspension flex, but it doesn't. You can put an O-ring on every single pivot-ball in the suspension and it will still flex properly. The only place you have to be careful is in the steering links, where you may need to only put O-rings on the loosest pivots to take up a reasonable amount of slack without causing the steering links to bind. A drop of oil on each pivot gets rid of most binding that does occur.

[WHITE-TRASH]

Originally Posted by Ninomaniac

SSD rod ends that are nice and beefy and BACKWARDS.
Designed so that the end slides off the ball!

Glad I'm not the only one to notice that!

[Ninomaniac]

Thanks, fyrstormer, I didn't think of that (or never cared enough to solve the issue ). I'll be replacing the stock rear upper bendy-links soon so I'll stick some orings around all of the rod ends while it's on the bench.

[sherbs]

The RC I do the most is carpet oval, with that said I have a Axial Wraith. The ball ends are a bit floppy. Now my oval car is not loose at all. My wraith was under $400 RTR, my oval was $550 and is just the chassis. From that point the Wraith is a bargain. There is room for some improvement that would not raise the price but a couple dollars, that I would like to see them do.