Sticky Suspension - Initial movement stiction

[TroySmith80]

I recently bought a (used) TRX-4, it's in pretty great shape and doesn't appear to have been used much. It works really well for the most part, but there's one thing about it that bothers me, the suspension seems to have a lot of stiction.

If it's been sitting for more than a long moment, if i try to move the suspension, it takes quite a bit of force until it breaks free. Once it's free, it moves more easily but doesn't take long before it "takes a set" again.

Even when broken free, it's still not very fluid. If i lift it to the top of it's travel, and let it go, it doesn't settle back down any. If i press it to bottomed out, it barely rebounds. Seems like there's a lot of drag.

Any suggestions?

[Youngblood00]

Could be heavy oil in the suspension. I'd say just disassemble things and inspect it

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[mass-hole]

Get some oring lube. Then, if its still an issue, i have heard of people loosening the bottom cap slightly to released compression on the orings.

[DRTMI]

It's the black spacer between the two blue o-rings. They are too long and make the o-rings squeeze the shafts too tight. You can sand the spacers down about .1mm or you can get Traxxas 2362 shock rebuild kit and use the white spacer.

[hibbs]

I just picked up a used trx sport myself. I had the same problem. Check YouTube there are quite a few videos about rebuilding the shocks. For me I greased the lower o ring and tightened the lower shock body cap till snug but not super tight. As the poster above said it’s from squeezing too much and the o rings grab the shock shaft too snug. I didn’t know about sanding the spacer or using a thinner one. That sounds like a much better solution that loosening the lower cap as it will probably leak at some point.

[dr frankenstyle]

I unscrewed the lower caps and put a little pipe-thread tape (teflon?) on the threads. That way it seals the caps and lets me just snug them against the o-ring pack, and keeps them from loosening any further.
That eliminated the stiction problem for mine and it was a cheap fix. I'm also running 10-wt oil in the shocks .... without leaks.


jim

[TroySmith80]

Great, thanks for the help! Ill get into those shocks soon. The difference in supple articulation was clear when seeing the trx running side by side with my well worn wraith.

[Voodoobrew]

Could be they just filled them with the wronk type of oil. I would just disassemble, soak and clean the internals, the reassemble with silicone shock oil. Before I tried sanding stuff I can't easily undo

My trx-4 shocks never stick.all I did was pull them out of the box...

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[meatmonkey]

The whole shock stiction issue is a well documented problem since the release of the GTS shocks with the TRX4. The best long term solution id using a thinner spacer between the seals, but there are other ways, such as loosening the lower cap, to reduce the stiction.

[TroySmith80]

Took dthings apart, some funny stuff going on in there like different o rings. I guess that's the risk of buying used. The ball-ends on the bottom of the shock shafts are siezed up and very difficult to swivel, probably contributing to the problem. Can i buy those without getting unneeded parts like caps and spring seats?