Slash front shock issues

There are a few things I don’t like about the design of the Slash, the main one that bugs me is the front shocks.
The Slash 4x4 uses the same shocks as the Slash 2WD, which uses the same shocks as the Rustler and Bandit.  Those vehicles are a lot lighter than the Slash 4x4 and have typical, short, buggy-length front shocks.
Well, that just doesn’t cut it on a 4x4 short course truck.  Traxxas maintained the short shocks for obvious manufacturing and parts reasons, but also to keep a short shock tower to fit under the hood of a short course body and not look ridiculous.
This has compromises in performance.  Let’s talk about them more:
1. Limited spring selection.  The GTR shocks are 13mm bore, and pretty much the only decent spring selection is Losi SCTE shock springs.  These fit the rear shocks pretty well, but are too long for the front.  There are GTR springs, but I have some issues (described below) with them.
2. Minimal droop.  This bothers me the most.  The LCG chassis is very low to the ground, only 23mm off the ground with arms level, which is overly short for a heavy short course truck.  Standard buggies are about 24mm of ride height, and they have smaller wheels!  So clearly 23mm of clearance is not going to cut it.  In addition to this, the front shocks barely extend far enough to give any droop, which means you have very limited shock extension in the air to absorb landings.  As a compromise, you have to use fairly stiff springs and pretty heavy oil to avoid chassis slap on pretty much any sort of jump.
3. Weak GTR springs.  I find the GTR springs wear out pretty fast and sag quickly.  I’m not sure if it’s spring quality or what, but they don’t last very long in my experience.  Being able to use longer springs that still fit should provide more consistency.
4. This is just a theory at this point, but I believe this also exacerbates the nose-dive situation of the truck.  The Slash 4x4 nosedives a LOT, partly because the front shocks cannot extend very far when jumping off a ramp.
I tried to fix 2. by shortening the rear shocks to have roughly equal droop front and rear, but that was more of a band-aid solution.  It kept the front and rear balanced at least and the car drove very flat, but the chassis slapped way too easily with the limited droop. I just recently found out about 3., and 1. was an issue, but I was getting by with using GTR blue springs.
The next post will detail how I am going about addressing these issues.