Radio Control (RC) Tips, Great Products and Help

Here is a list of tips we have found from experience to be useful (more will be added as we go along) in the Radio Control Racing scene. If you have any tips you would like to add, please comment and we will review and add them.

Racers always ask us why we use solid color bodies and not custom paint jobs when we race. The answer is visibility. Depending on the surface we run on, we always use a solid contrasting color which really helps the car or truck stand out against the surface. Also, we always paint the wing a contrasting color to the body color so we always know the direction the car is pointed which is especially useful during a crash when the turn marshal may have put the car down in the wrong direction.

Every Radio Control Nitro racer knows to apply Loctite on screws so they don’t loosen from vibration. But many times they apply too much so screws are very difficult to remove. We have found that using Loctite Quickstix 248 is much easier to apply sparingly. You can
purchase it at Amazon.

When mounting radio control bodies, there is a little bit of play on the body posts and most racers will use foam pads or spacers to get the body tight to the body posts so the body has no wiggle. We have found that leaving the body a little loose actually helps in close quarter racing. If someone “rubs” you, the body can absorb the impact rather then upsetting the stability of the car.

We always remove the tires (rubber) and wheels after each race, clean them with Simple Green “lemon” variety, and store them in Zip-Loc bags (take the air out as much as possible) until the next race. You would be surprised how much traction they offer mid season when they are not exposed to air while storing. Foam tires used on Touring cars should be removed and stored in a container and put in a place where they will not be subjected to light, and that includes newly purchased tires.

Every racer has their own idea on how to clean a car after a race, from Nitro Cleaning Spray (which has a tendency to weaken plastic and at the very least discolor it) to just blowing the car off with a compressor. Here is what we do. We brush the car off with a stiff bristled paint brush (nylon bristles work well) and then use a compressor to blow it off. But instead of using Nitro spray, we use WD 40. We spray it liberally on the vehicle, let it soak in and loosen the dirt or grime using the brush to help it along, and then blow it off with the compressor. It leaves a nice shine on the chassis, does not dry out the bearings, and won’t harm the electronics. It also works its way in all the suspension shafts and keeps those moving freely.

One of the best tuning guides available is the Main Chassis Setup Guide handbook. It is well written and tends to stick to basics but it has enough tuning information so even an expert tuner will want a copy in his pitbox.

And speaking of chassis tuning here is the biggest thing we have learned. No matter how the car is set-up, conditions always change. If you are running heats during the day by the time the mains are run the track temp has changed, there is more fuel on the track, and conditions for driving are very different. So the best thing we have ever learned is to learn to drive your car under any condition and circumstance. We try to stay with a neutral handling chassis and just learn to drive it. The best practice is setting up cones in a parking lot and running figure eights. But don’t stay in one spot. Move around the track and learn to drive the car from every visibility angle. Learn what the car is doing and become one with the car.

The most important thing in racing ANY cars is to know you or the car will never be fastest EVERYWHERE on the track. Learn the parts or corners where you are the fastest and tune your car to be even faster through that section and drive the slower parts as well as you can. Be consistent, stay out of traffic, don’t crash and you will be on the podium more often than not.