Well the first step to getting a decent setup RC Drift car is to lock the rear differential, while not everyone will agree with this or might suggest reasons why you would still want to keep your read diff locked I can honestly say from experience that locking the rear diff will help make your car more drift friendly.

To check which diff you have in your RC car try turning one wheel while the car if off the ground. If the other wheel spins in the opposite direction then you have the standard differential, this is good if one wheel needs to move slower than the other wheel, for example during a corner, the outside of the car needs to go further than the inside, so by allowing them to rotate at different rates you will be able to keep your power on the road for the entire time. If both wheels turn at the same time when you rotate one, then you have a spool or locked diff, this means that some power will be lost when you go around a corner, as both wheels can only turn at the same rate. If you turn a wheel and the other wheel only turns in one direction then you have a one way diff, this can also be set on the shaft or belt pulley, but that is out of scope of this tutorial.

Well by locking the rear diff it will give you more control, if you had the standard differential installed the diff would try and compensate for your slide by sending more power to one wheel, but with a locked diff all the power is evenly distributed to both tires, hence the name "differential". I find that with a locked diff I have a lot more control over the car, mainly when entering the drift and maintaining the drift, I often find that exiting the drift with a locked rear is a tad more tricky, but why on earth would you want to stop the drift? Just keep it going forever... ;)

If you built your TT01 from a kit you already know how the differential works, the TT01 uses a planetary gear system, the idea is that you can use different types of grease to get different levels of slip out of the diff, so our job is to replace the grease with something that gives zero slip.

This step requires you to strip the car down and remove the diff, you need to open the differential up and clean out any existing grease. This can get a little messy, but it's not complicated at all.

Once the differential has been opened you have a couple of options, you can use a glue gun or a nitro RC fuel tubing. I prefer to use the latter as it's easy to find and easy to undo should you change your mind and want to go back to racing, I find that the fuel tube will also last a lot longer then the glue gun, and because it's a bit of a mission to

I've taken the following from the TT01 Manual, it's not easy to explain, should you not be able to work this out please e-mail our experts from the contract us page. The goal is to prevent the planetary gears from turning, you can use any method you can think of, the above are tried and tested by several local drift teams.

This is the standard page from the TT01 manual, you need to lock the MA13 and MA12 gears, see the pictures below to see where to put the nitro fuel tube.

You need to experiment with different kinds of setups to find out which setup will work best for your particular drift style, as mentioned before this is the preferred method from 99% of the drifter who we compete with.

The Nitro Fuel Tube Technique

Inside the TT01 Spider Gear When you open up the differential you'll find a few different parts, firstly there is the white plastic housing and secondly the planetary gears. Now if you want to use a glue gun this will also work well. Click the Image to enlarge

Installing the Fuel Tube Place the two pieces of fuel tube as shown here, the only goal here is to stop the planetary gears from turning, essentially creating a spool diff that would normally cost a pretty penny. Be careful of what you use to stop the diff from turning, if you use something that's hard you can damage your RC car, the glue gun and fuel tube method still allow for a little give, say for example when you accelerate hard after braking. Click the Image to enlarge

Replacing the Planetary Gears Just pop them back into place, if it's too tight you can always trim the fuel tube a little to get the perfect fit. Reassemble the chassis and your all done. Now when you turn one wheel the other should turn at the same time. This is the ideal setup for a drift RC car, locked rear and your choice of diff in the front, the safest bet is a standard ball diff, for a little more control of your rear (or lack of) try a front one-way. Click the Image to enlarge

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