To shim, or not to shim, that is the question...

[Mrowka 212]

I built a re re Kyosho Ultima. All well and good and built according to instructions, but there is a lot of side-to-side play, an un-Kyosholike amount of play in both front and rear A-arms and bearing hubs.

Definitely more play than either in of my re re Javelins or my OG Javelin. 

Dunno what is up with that, but the question remains, whether to do anything about it? If this were an on-road car, I'd break out the shims, but it isn't. 

So how tight does everything have to be for an offroad buggy?

[mud4fun 1686]

There is a little side to side play in my Thundershot A arm to gearbox mounts, maybe 0.5mm but near zero on my other buggies.

I don't have any side to side on any of my hubs but I did need to shim my Avante2001 and Vanquish after fitting Yeah Racing alloy hubs as they were 1mm too narrow so I used washers which just happened to be perfect width to remove slop.

I don't like alot of slop because the faster you go there more erratic the car behaves. If I'm doing a 40mph+ speed run I want the car to sit arrow straight so I spent alot of time removing slop in suspension, steering rods, camber links and servo horns etc. However for bashing about at low speeds you probably wouldn't notice a bit of slop.