When it comes to racing RC cars things start to get serious, so when deciding on which chassis to invest your hard earned cash it pays to take time to learn what options are available and which one you should stick too. Here we go over some of the decisions you need to make and what effect they have overall. The most important decision to make is what chassis to buy.

Selecting a Chassis

To be able to select a chassis you need to know what exactly you want. Some of the consideration need need to take into account are:

• What Class Do You Want To Compete In?

• Once you know which class you are aiming for it's easy, a lot of the classes have certain restrictions which you will need to abide by if you want to compete. The Tamiya Cup races for example require that you own a standard Tamiya kit, without any major modification.

  Apart from the chassis type you also need to decide which motor class you will run in, there are three main classed, Stock, Super-Stock and Modified. Not all chassis are able to fit the required motors for each class, a Tamiya TT01 can only be hopped up to Super-Stock, while a Tamiya TA05 can go all the way from Stock to Mod

  Once you know the answers to the above it'll be fairly easy to pick out a chassis as you will be forced to buy within your budget. If your just starting out then it would be best to stick to one of the entry level racers and compete in the novice and amateur events, this will give you a better understanding of the racing structure and help build your confidence. In my opinion confidence is the number one reason good drivers do bad. There is a lot of pressure up on the stand, especially with RC Drifting as most of the time it's either a solo-run or a heads up, so you know every single person is watching you.

• Down To The Chassis

• Once you have decided what chassis suites you the next thing is to decide which how much budget you have to splurge on RC. The basic chassis is make of plastic, but the pure breed racers come in carbon fiber and anodized aluminium, while the benefits of using space-age technology makes all the difference the cost can be astronomical.

• Why use Carbon Fiber Or Anodized aluminium

• Carbon Fiber is very light and incredibly strong, what this means for the remote control racer is that you get very little chassis flex. Less chassis flex means less body roll and more controlled weight transfer. The aim at the end of the day for any racer, doesn't matter if it's radio controlled cars or real racing cars, is to keep your wheel on the road as much as possible and be able to use the power that is available to it's maximum effect.

  By reducing the amount of body roll and chassis flex your suspension will be have to work less hard, you can spot a carbon fiber remote control car a mile away, because of the way if hugs the asphalt. Keep in mind that there are other factors which affect the handling of a car

  From a practical point of view cf rc cars are also a lot more sensitive to setup changes, a 1mm change in ride hight or shock stiffness will have immediate and obvious effects on your handling, it's because of this that a lot of amateurs struggle when moving from the plastic tub to a fine tuned machine, the plastic tub chassis seems to soak up a little of the setting changes you make, making the car slightly unpredictable.

  While you don't need a cf rc car to compete you, it does help once you get to a certain level, but apart from that most of the people I know who get into RC are there for the love of cars, and there is nothing cooler than carbon fiber, seriously even a carbon fiber scooter is cool, sort of...

• Other Key Modifications

• So we got our chassis and our motor and everything in between, what else do we need to be competitive, well one absolute truth about racing kits is you need good shocks, these have the single biggest impact on your racer, and also allow you to fine tune your handling. You need adjustable oil filled shocks, while there is nothing wrong with the plastic ones you get, they are oil filled and adjustable but you generally adjust them with spaces, which means you can only adjust in increments as opposed to fine tuning. There are a lot of setting you can change on the shocks, so it makes sense to spend a little more and get a good set, they will last a very long time and can be moved between your other rc cars. The setups you should be able to make are:

  1. Shock angle front and rear
  2. Spring Stiffness
  3. Dampening
  4. Rebound
  5. Ride Height

  Ride height is not adjusted by changing your shocks, although it is affected by changing your shocks, check if your chassis has a ride hight adjustment, most of them to, then use this in conjunction with your shock absorber

  With the above information you will be ready to compete, the only thing left is practise, practise, practise. Don't be afraid to jump right into the racing, the best way to learn is on the track with other cars, if you practise alone you won't learn the key skills needed in racing, like following someone when they are using a unique line and over taking. Without these skills you can't be competitive.

• Sign Up For A Team

• Most teams will have an entry fee, this is normally a once off or a annual fee. This is important as a lot of organizing goes into the successful running of a remote control race team. The fee will also ensure that anyone who signs up will be serious about it, nothing worse than having a team that's ten strong and only have three or four people show up for events.

  The benefits of joining a racing team are huge, apart from the advice and help you get there is also the motivating factor, nothing like a little bit of healthy competition to get the blood pumping. Just keep in mind that all the successful racers have fun, while a lot of the time this can border on obsession, if you have fun on the track you will relax and do much better.

I hope that you have been able to find something useful, be sure to checkout the rest of the site for more information

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