All the tweaks and settings of your RC car’s suspension are necessary to create a balance, so you can make the best of your RC car on the race track.
It doesn’t matter if you have the fastest motor, your car’s suspension will actually make it fast and easy to handle on the track. That’s why your suspension is so important. We are presenting today a new type of setting, which will help with performance. So, before you take over the race track, you should check to see if your suspension is working freely.
Checking your suspension for a couple of hours is indeed time well spent. This can be a bit tricky, but if you are careful and follow all these steps, you will improve your car’s performance significantly!
First of all, you need to check all the control arms. In order to do that, you should remove all the wheels, shocks, bars and place your vehicle on a car stand. The control arms will be hanging freely and they should not enter in contact with the work stand. Next, lift one the control arm up until the top of its range of action and then let if fall. This is the key! If it falls to the bottom of its range of action, then your suspension arms are working freely. Otherwise, your suspension arm is binding.
Fixing this binding is an easy task to perform! But it’s a matter of elimination, meaning that either the hinge pin is binding in the control arm, or the area where your control arm touches the suspension mount is faulty.
In order to fix the hinge pin, use a hinge pin reamer or a drill bit, a 3mm one for 1/10 scaled RC cars and 4mm for 1/8 RC cars. Before making any changes, make sure that you have the correct size reamer or drill bit! Now, take the drill bit or the reamer and run it through the hinge pinhole in the control arm a few times.
Binding can also be caused by the control arm if it is a bit larger than the area between the suspension mounts. Use a piece of fine sandpaper to sand down the edges of the hinge pin holes on the control arm. It is best if you sand down a small part and then check to see if the control arms fit better. Take your time with this step, because you don’t want to remove too much material, causing the control arm to slide front and back in the suspension mount.
Several other things can prevent your suspension from working freely. The pillow bar clamps of your suspension could be too tight. To fix this, use a wrench to loosen the screws a bit. Don’t loosen them too much, otherwise, they will cause your suspension to be sloppy.
Maybe the hub carrier has fit too tightly in the control arm. This is valid only if you are running a C-hub or a front suspension which features the steering block. If the hub carrier fits too tightly, it causes binding. Again, use some sandpaper to remove a small amount of material from the mounting point of the hub carrier. You should work progressively, by removing a small portion and then checking to see if it fits well.
There’s another component which can also cause suspension binding. The ball joints area is very common for binding, but you can’t do much to correct this. You can pop on and off the ball for a few times until it starts to free up. You can also remove the ball joint and polish it in your power drill, using a rag and some metal polish. This is also a matter of trial and error, so take your time to try to fix it.
All these tips and tricks help your suspension perform better on the race track, so it’s important to make sure that it works at its full potential in order to take that first prize!
