Adjustments and improvements are necessary operations if you want to get the best performance possible out of your RC car. In this article, we will talk a bit about camber and how camber can improve your car’s handling and performance on the race track. Don’t worry! Getting it adjusted is one of the easiest tuning operations you can perform on your RC car.
So, what is camber then? It is the vertical angle of your tires. You can notice it easily, by looking at the wheels straight from the front or rear when the RC car is sitting on a flat surface. If the tops of your tires are directly above the bottom of the tires, then you have zero camber, which is not really what you would want. If the top of your tires is leaning towards the chassis, then you gave negative camber. If it leans away, you have positive camber. Adjusting camber can increase or decrease traction and change the way your steering.
Negative camber on the front wheels with approximately one or two degrees can help increase steering. Negative camber on your rear tires will also improve your traction on corners. However, it is not recommended to have positive camber because it decreases your car’s stability and has less traction on corners.
Before getting to adjustments on angling, you should take into consideration the fact that camber should be adapted to your driving style and track conditions. That is why you should form a style of driving before and maybe perform a few test runs before choosing the best possible solution for adjustments. Adjusting camber is a matter of trial and error. So be patient and take a close look at your car’s handling before making any changes. Camber is adjusted by lengthening or shortening the top wishbone. You should start with 2 degrees negative on the rear and .5 to 1 degree negative in the front.
Now, let’s look at how you should adjust your RC car’s camber. Most RC cars use turnbuckles to adjust cambers, which are threaded in opposite directions with hex nusta mounted in the center. They make adjusting camber much easier and faster to perform. You will need a camber gauge or a setup station and a wrench or pliers.
Rear cambers are easiest to adjust. Use the camber gauge to adjust the angle somewhere between -.2 degrees and -.5 degrees. This will counteract chassis roll.
Front camber settings are a bit more difficult to change because front caster also comes into play, which is the angle of the kingpins or steering block when you look from one side. The relationship between it and camber is inversely proportional: when high degrees of the caster are used, less angle is needed. As a result, you should also take a look at caster degrees when you adjust camber. Another important item, which plays an important role in adjusting camber, is the camber link angle. You can change this angle by moving the links to different holes on the shock towers. The higher the camber link is mounted, the more on-power steering you should have. But a shorter camber link length causes more camber gain, thus more traction, but less steering. In order to see which settings fit your car best, you should also check your car’s instruction manual.
When you make such changes, you should do them one at a time in order to see how your car will be affected.
