>>Are we missing something?
Yes. I hadn't looked at this for a very long time... which only goes to show how much I've forgotten. Anyway, after a couple hours playing around, I've come to the conclusion all over again that the game is messed. The classic example is
Weeeee's Bigfoot 5.
You cannot have over-sized tires that work properly. You can manage to get them to either look right in the driver check in screen, for example
Which will neither look right nor drive right in the game. Or you can get it to drive properly in the game but it still won't look right in the garage or in the game since the tires will sink into the ground. It seems the ride-height for tires is hard coded into the game and cannot be adjusted.
I know you weren't asking about tire sizes but this is related. It seems the axlebars are also hard coded but only in one direction. There is no problem getting them to sink miles into the ground (which makes the truck skip and dance all over the place). I had thought maybe they were relative to the driveshaft or tire height or scrape points, but no go. They'll sink but not fly.
Now the shocks are more flexible, but only to a certain degree. You can get the shocks to stick up a long way if you want, but the consequence is that the axle bars jab into the ground making the truck impossible to drive (for serious racing). I think it was Lord Cap who recommended to leave the stock -3.800000 on the y-tire height alone since everything else detracts from drivability.
For evo, tri fixed this problem ... but broke everything else.