Increase the Speed of an RC Car by Shimming

One very cheap speed tip is to use shims to remove any unnecessary slop in your rc car. Excess slop reduces an rc car's speed and makes it handle erratically.

Content Removing Hub and Axle Slop How to Make Plastic Shims Picture on right shows a gap between the hub and the axle pin. This causes undesired side to side movement, robbing an rc car of speed and making it handle erratically.

Removing Hub and Axle Slop

One place to remove excessive slop is between the rear hub and the axle pin. We can do this by using thin plastic shims.

Pictured is a thin plastic shim next to a ball bearing. Note the inner hole and outer diameter should match the ball bearing's dimension for good results.

Then assemble the rear hub, but this time insert the plastic shim before inserting the ball bearing.

The final assembly should result in a minimal amount of gap between the axle pin and the ball bearing inside the hub.

Important: Too much shimming will cause binding. Better to have some amount of slop rather than have binding. You can test for binding by removing the dogbone temporarily and spin the tire with your hand. The tire should spin freely for at least 30 seconds. If not, there is binding, better to reduce the amount of shimming.

How to Make Plastic Shims

Here is a step by step guide to making cheap plastic shims for the rear axles.

First step is to find a thin piece of plastic and punch a hole which is slightly bigger than the axle diameter.

Next is to cut out the outer diameter that matches the outer diameter of the ball bearing. You can easily do this by first finding a spare axle, then insert the plastic shim and a bearing. Then use a cutter to mark the outside diameter.

You can then cut out the outside diameter using scissors. The final result:

Summary: If you wonder why the rc cars of top drivers are so fast, it is because their cars are built with almost no slop. Hopefully this cheap speed tip with help your car go faster and handle better.

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