Hey Doug,
There's always been pressure to run AE shocks - it's what family members naturally have after converting over, and obviously what comes in the K021 entire car. The new V2 shocks, in my opinion, have addressed the two major issues the older AE shocks had - inconsistent seals and a difficult bleeding process. I agree with you that they're not inherently better than Losi or Kyosho shocks. They're about equal though, and combined with the "pressure" I mention in my first point it was enough me to try out the V2's.
As team manager, I haven't told anyone what shocks they need to run. Once we had the V2's in stock though both BK and Ellis approached me separately about giving them a shot. Neither has said they'll run them next season for sure, but due to the reasons I mention above they both want to try them out. The fall is kind of the off-season for electric off-road - very few important meetings - so it's a opportune time to try something like this.
I see at least one definite gain, even if we do go back to running our Losi and Kyosho shocks: In the end we'll have much better information for our kit set-up sheets and for those Family members who are running AE shocks. And it's not like we're 'throwing away' the old data; I would say it's more that we're adding to it.
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