XRAY - Model racing cars

Weeelll, Chipmunk does have a point. And it is answered as follows:

After I have setup the car completely (ride height, toe-in, camber, downstops etc.) using the Hudy tools I put the car full race ready (excluding the body so I am able to reach the downstop screws) onto the setup board. I put the car on the edge of the board with the front (or rear, depending on which side I'm checking) and using the 1mm allen key in the middle bumper screw I slowly lift the front (or rear) upwards until the wheels lift of the board. If they do not lift at the same time I increase the downstop on notch (minimal turn on the screw) on the side that lifted last and decrease the downstop on the side that lifted first until they are equal. I do this to both sides. This prevents tweaks during cornering.

If the difference was big compared to the base setting done with the droop gauge then this indicates that either there is a tweak in the chassis (undo top deck, put car on droop blocks and retighten the top deck) or that the dampers are no longer equal (rebuild dampers).

The reason I do it this way is that even if you set the downstops using the droop gauge with the dampers on the setting is not perfect unless the car is equally ballanced when sitting on the ground. Doing it without the dampers allows me to spot tweak/damper problems better as this way the setting is exact compared to the chassis. Note that the chassis has to be untweaked before setting the downstops.

The easiest way to spot the tweak is to set the car onto the droop blocks making sure the tyres are off or at least not touching the setup board. Also make sure the droop blocks are not touching any of the screws (just the chassis itself). Now feel on both sides of each block whether it can move freely. If it can the chassis is tweaked and you need to loosen the top deck and then retighten.

Hope I was making sense as there is a lot of stuff in here

Hi
iv'e always checked the droop with the shocks on and then checked for tweak with the same lifting the front/back thing BUT if the left rear wheel lifts first then i loosen the front left sping collar or tighten the right front

is this wrong
i would have thaught that the droop screws bieng exactly the same would be more important the the ride height

thanks tony

Although you are right in principle I prefer having the ride height equal left and right and then adjust the downstops instead. The reasoning behind this is that I want to run the lowest possible ride height without the chassis bottoming out while cornering. If one side is lower than the other the overall ride height will have to be higher to prevent the low side from bottoming out. Anyway I have never had a tweak in the car with this method so I guess the end-result is the same either way.

Nevertheless I will try the "common" way of de-tweaking the car to see if there are any noticeable differences.

Tony- Josh told me to set the droop with the shock lengths. I know every driver has his own way.

so having the droop screws set slightly diffrently wont add a tweak to the car