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If you have used your RC rock crawler for a while you will probably be wondering how to upgrade your RC car to get better speed and performance. Your perfect car as a newbie with questionable piloting strategies can now seem amateur in comparison to your neighbor’s brand new RC vehicle.
If your vehicle is holding you back as an RC driver or racer and you do not realize your potential, then in this article you will learn things that you can do or try to make your RC crawler faster.
There are a few basic things that you can do to make your rock crawler faster. They are:
- Change the gear ratio
- Lower the weight
- Change the tires
- Upgrade the motor
- Upgrade the battery
- Practice
There are of course other things besides these that you could do to try and speed up your RC vehicle but these will all have the largest effect so they are where you should look at first.
It’s an excellent idea to make your RC faster because you will not only have more fun but you can also get to know your car much better as well as the mechanics about how RC cars really work.The best part of trying to do this is it won’t cost you a ton of money either as changing or upgrading is relatively inexpensive.
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To learn more about making your RC car go faster check out the video below.
How to make your RC rock crawler faster
Surprisingly there are quite a few things that you can do to your RC crawler to make it go faster. We have listed a few of them below.
Adjust the gear ratio
Adjusting the gear ratio is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to make your RC crawler faster. Your RC has two gears and those are the pinion gear and spur gear. These two gears can be upgraded and adjusted to give your RC either faster top speed or better acceleration.
Pinion gear: this is attached directly to your motor. The equipment is typically made from aluminum, steel, or titanium.
Besides coming in many various sizes and pitches, they are also easy to remove with a hex driver. Generally, the higher the teeth count on your pinion gear, the faster the RC will go.
Note that this does not refer to acceleration, but the fastest high speed your RC car can reach.
When you decide to change the pinion gear, don’t make a mistake of increasing too many teeth at one time because it can mess with the temperature of your RC car’s engine and can do some damage.
Ideally you will want to use the strategy of one or two teeth at a time, and do a periodic checkup of the temperature of your vehicle.
If you would like to have faster acceleration, a smaller pinion gear with fewer teeth will do this for you. It will help your car accelerate quicker off the line and won’t compromise the temperature of your vehicle.
Spur gear: this is the larger plastic gear which the pinion gear turns. When you adjust the spur gear, it can give you either higher top speed or quicker acceleration, but you will notice the difference is less than it is from changing the pinion gear.
When you reduce the size of spur gear it will result in a higher top speed but less acceleration, while increasing the size will result in faster acceleration with a lower top speed.
For bed results consider changing both the pinion and spur gears.
Change tires
You will want to make sure that you use the right tires for the surface you are driving on because the wrong tire will slow your RC crawler down immensely.
Slick tires are the best if you are driving on the road or tarmac. For slippery grass or mud go for full spikes, mini pins are best for carpet, and an all-round good grip, mini spikes are a great choice for general terrain.
You will also want to make sure your tires are of the highest quality. Cheap tires will not only cause poor traction, but also they are much less durable and will give you more issues than you will want to deal with.
Meaning, in the long run, you will spend more money, and the chances of reaching those top speeds are much less as well. Premium tires are the best since they will ensure you can go faster and handle the corners better.
This will decrease the chances of your RC car spinning or rolling if you hit a corner too fast. You are also saving maintenance money which you can use to upgrade other RC parts.
When choosing tires it is a good idea to go for bigger ones. Tires with a bigger diameter can cover more ground per turn which will increase your top speeds but you should note that bigger tires have more weight so it is a balancing game.
Weight reduction
One of the best and simplest ways to make your RC crawler faster is by reducing the weight. You can achieve this by replacing heavy parts with lighter pieces or simply removing aesthetic pieces that have no effect on the car itself.
If you replace one or two parts in your vehicle it might seem like a waste of time but You should keep in mind that lightening your truck even with a single small part can make a surprising difference in the top speed.
You can also lighten your vehicle by switching the batteries. If you are currently using a NiMh battery pack, swap to a LiPo pack and you will see weight reduction of your RC car.
The main challenge with LiPO batteries is that they are more expensive and can be trickier to use. So if you are not prepared to upgrade budget-wise then this option is not the best.
When you reduce weight, you can be sure the speed will increase as well; the downside is that reducing weight will also reduce the traction of your vehicle which may make it more prone to flip.
Upgrade your motor
The brushed motor is best for beginners. If you want to get to higher speeds though, you will likely have more experience as an RC driver and are probably ready for something brushless.
If you want to get higher speeds then you will want to upgrade to the brushless motor, as they are more efficient than their brushed counterparts which in turn means more power and speed.
Very little energy is lost through friction with a brushless motor, which means the vehicle can travel faster and with more power. This is the opposite of brushed motors, whereby brushes convert electricity into motion with some of this energy lost through friction.
When you upgrade to a brushless motor, you are guaranteed that it will increase the speed and power of your RC vehicle. Once you upgrade the motor your RC crawler will be a little bit harder to drive, so inexperienced drivers should be careful.
Upgrade the battery
Upgrading your NiMH battery to a LiPo battery pack will automatically speed up your vehicle. LiPo is not only lighter, but they also boast more power.
Because of this increase in power you should see better acceleration as well as top speeds. Of course everything isn’t all roses with LiPo battery packs as they do wear out faster than NiMH does and they are also more expensive than NiMH.
LiPo batteries will also normally require a special charger as well as special maintenance and care to be taken when storing them but for most people the extra power and speeds are well worth these negatives.
Practice
The cheapest way to make your RC crawler faster is to simply practice. Many people spend a lot of money on upgrading and changing their RC to reach the highest speeds, yet they don’t know how to handle the car properly in the first place.
The winners of races are not necessarily those with the most expensive or best RC cars but instead the winners usually are people who have perfect techniques and can uniquely navigate tracks.
I’m sure that you have heard the old saying that practice makes perfect and while that isn’t true with everything when racing RC cars it certainly can be. The more you practice with your RC crawler and know exactly how it will respond to corners or bumps and what the max speed it can handle with those the faster your times around the track will be.
Conclusion
These are just a few of the things that you can do to get your RC crawler going faster. For most people they will normally upgrade the batteries as well as the motor and see how fast that will make their car. In general those two upgrades will make your RC car quite fast and you likely won’t need to do anything else.
No matter what you do or don’t choose to upgrade you can certainly increase your speeds by simply learning how to handle your car better. If you know the exact moment you have to brake before a corner or bump and can stay at higher speeds for longer that in turn will cause you to place higher in races without even upgrading the RC car!