Product Showcase: Usukani Front Bulkhead for Sakura D4

Usukani has released several great upgrade parts for the Sakura D4 in the past several months. One great part that seems to have gone unnoticed by many is the Front Bulkhead. It is a great mod, and provides multiple benefits to the the D4 chassis.

It is manufactured with the good quality that has become standard for Usukani parts. In the kit you will get the two bulkhead halves, two spacers, two suspension pins, and the metric hardware required to assemble it.

The unit goes together easily and fits perfectly in the D4 chassis. Once installed, the benefit of increased chassis rigidity becomes clear. The front of the chassis will be noticeably stiffer, which means the suspension can do its job without the interruption that comes from a flexing chassis.

The front bulkhead will also provide two areas of adjustment that were not available with the stock D4 parts. The first is roll center; six different locations are provided for adjustment. I have been doing a lot of tuning with roll centers lately and this is certainly welcome. The other is caster adjustment, but you will need to provide the spacers for the upper arms. If you are using Usukani upper arms, you will need spacers for 2.5mm diameter pins, and a total of 6.5mm of spacers per each side. I am using (3) 2mm thick spacers and (2) 0.5mm thick spacers on each side.

Another thing you will notice is that the front suspension pin mounting blocks take up a lot of room and limit the upper shock mounting positions. The shocks can be spaced out from the towers if needed, but I have found that I don't use the inner holes for my setups anyway. You could also switch to a mono shock setup using either the upper arms or adding some parts to the lower arms. Overall the Usukani D4 Front Bulkhead is a good mod to have, and for the price of $26 USD, it is hard to beat.