I just went to a local Harbor Freight tools and bought 4 digital scales. They were $20 each. I was always meaning to buy 1 anyways so what's 3 more!

you can get the scales from ebay.

but I think with offroad, it does not matter about getting the L/R balance correctly. Do they make tweak stations for offroad......no, so it is not so important

Also, I mean you look at the pics of all the pro's, and they hardly any use weight/ballast on the receiver side of a 2wd buggy to counteract the heavy speedy on the opposite side. Onroad touring car with a flat surface is a different story however.


But great thread!

So why don't we just put the battery and motor completely off to one side to fully unbalance it since it doesn't matter that much? I quite frankly don't care what others do "pro" or otherwise. How many people constantly copy setup sheets of the "pros" but then have issues they can't resolve? The 22 and Cougar SV threads are full of good examples. Balance can not hurt you. Imbalance can. Is a small amount of imbalance going to ruin your handling? Probably not. But why settle for almost when you can get it perfect?

I bought the same scales lol. What is the proper way to use them and do you put the truck on in full trim minus body?

I just use a scale centered under each wheel. Yeah I generally leave the body off but I'm running a buggy so body weight isn't much of an issue. Technically speaking I probably should use it though but I haven't found it to matter. It's symmetrical. A short course truck on the other hand with a much larger body could definitely contribute to a change. I set them up in ounces since I use stick on wheel weights and they come in either 1/4 or 1/2 ounce. I use the 1/4 ounce weights.

You need to be very careful with corner weighting as shock collars can achieve the same result, and that's not what you're looking for. I prefer to set the balance left/right by hanging it by central points eg the front tower and center of the rear of the chassis with a couple of hex drivers and bias the weight to achieve a balance. Then you can corner weight it to get the right shock collar position. Just my 2 cents :D

YUP what he said! how can you say that an onroad car can benefit from balance but off-road cant. I feel greater differences on off-road than on.
the buggies move around sooo much more. but keep in mind that when you are "weight" balancing on a chassis just because you are balanced left right doesn't mean it is done correctly. for instance you can put 30g in the front right and 30g at the rear left and achieve balance but as long as you keep the 30g on each side it will stay balanced no matter where you put it but does that mean it is right? the best way to achieve almost perfect balance is to weigh each component and put that exact same weight on the opposite side of the chassis. if your battery is 250g divide that by four and that gives you an approximate weight per quarter. i will draw up something to show you what i mean tomorrow but here is a pic of how i balanced my Hyper 10sc, which i also added saddlepacks to better distribute the weight.once you get the weight close than use the shock collars to dial it in almost perfect. to me the body is relative since it is symetrical.
http://i770.photobucket.com/albums/x...3-29173808.jpg
here is a clip of the truck on the track, the combo of saddlepacks, weight and corner balancing as well as adjustable compression and rebound on shocks has now put this truck .5 second quicker than anyone else and about 7 tenths quicker than my previous best time! its best time last week was 24.6. the week before the best 4w buggy time was 24.4! i did the same technique on my 4w buggy and this past weekend i went 23.8!
http://www.youtube.com/user/Mantiswo.../5/OniQ__aZN_o

whooo settle down. It really doesnt matter with OFFROAD cos simply the chassis is hardly ever in a flat position, cornering traction will never be the same every corner due to uncertainty traction. Done this, done that. I use to be obsessed with it, still am with touring cars, but not with offroad.

You mean like this? ;) This was during oval a couple years ago. It pays to balance RC cars on this. I balance my vehicles from onroad to short course before every race. Many times people come up to me with a setup problem, I run it through the balancer and it straightens them out a bit. I try to get crossweight within 5 grams and left-to-right within 5 grams. I wrote a program on my TI-89 so I can balance quicker.

A balanced RC car just feels so much more planted, onroad or offroad.

http://images.rcuniverse.com/gallery...8/lg-92505.jpg

If you want to get real crazy tuning, just check out below ;) First pic is a GG Diagram using a Sentry and a custom Dyno using a Sentry. Sometimes it is more fun tuning than actually driving!

http://images.rcuniverse.com/gallery.../lg-222030.jpg

http://images.rcuniverse.com/gallery.../lg-222028.jpg

bump for a great read, I am half way threw and will try to finish tomorrow night.. Thanks for all the input.

Of course it doesn't matter for you. You're on the other side of the planet. You are always driving upside down! :p

How often are touring cars level?

Under acceleration? No, weight transfers rearward.

Under cornering? No, weight transfers to the outside.

Under braking? No, weight transfers to the front.

If your touring car is not doing at least one of these things, you need to work on your driving more than your setup.

Is it me or the pic, or is a) your chassis leaning to the right hand side b) your front shock collars wildly different...you may want to fine tune your setup procedure...

Thats an oval set up truck... its probably about perfect like that... suspension is "ballasted" to one side...

OK, thanks for the clarification :D No oval track rc down our way :blush: