Setting up a car for the first time

The last couple of kits I've bought have had remarkably good kit setups, so there wasn't a lot I had to do to get the car working pretty good in very short order.

But the Hyper TT out of the box is not quite at that finished level of setup, and requires a fair bit more work.  I'm not done with tuning, but I thought I'd share my thoughts on what I'm focusing on initially to get a base setup.

1. Setting up the steering.  Your goal here is for the car to track straight, have equal steering links front and right, and equal throw left and right.  Steering should be maxed out on each side so that you are getting full steering.  Your servo should be centered, and EPAs set with nothing hitting at max steering lock.
2. Tires.  The proper tires mounted for your surface need to be on the car, else the rest of the tuning process is not going to go well.  For me at my local track, this means Pro-line Primes in the winter, and Pro-line Electrons in the summer.
3. Gearing.  You want to have the right gearing (and motor timing) so that your motor is running at the right RPM for the track you're on and not overheating.

Ok, now you have a car that at least works and is not going to break on its own.  Next up is some basic tuning to get the car in the ballpark.

1. Ride height.  You're going to have just start with some number, and refine it over time.  For buggies on dirt, something in the 21-24mm range is typical.  For trucks, somewhere in the 28-30mm range.  Just pick something off a setup sheet or start with one of the above numbers and do your tuning with that.
2. Shocks.  The goal here is just to get some reasonable springs and shock oil wt in the car.  The springs need to suspend the car decently and have some forward/backward pitch under acceleration/braking, but not too much.  It should also not slap when landing jumps.  The shock oil will need to match the springs -- the stiffer the springs, the thicker the oil you will need and vice-versa.  The oil needs to be thick enough to land jumps and not slap too much, yet light enough so the car is still supple on the bumps and ripples of the straightaways.
3. Swaybars.  With the shocks working decently for the surface, you need to consider the swaybars, if they came with the car.  The only time you should need swaybars are generally either on super-high grip (carpet/astroturf), or if you're running a short course truck or bigger vehicle.  I pretty much never use front swaybars on my local, small, indoor clay track, and only sometimes use rear swaybars.  Buggies and stadium trucks on dirt shouldn't generally need them unless something is really unusual.

These things may take a couple of tries to get it close; it doesn't have to be perfect, you just want stuff in the ballpark so that you aren't trying to do the setup with something completely out of whack.

After that, you'll be messing with roll centers, and shock positions and Ackermann and such.  But in my opinion, this is the stuff you need to do first before you worry about more advanced tuning.