How to change the camber on your rc truck or car and what it can do for your performance and handling.

Getting the camber adjusted or tuned correctly is one of the first and easiest adjustments you can make to your rc vehicle.

What is camber? Camber is the vertical angle of your tires. When you look at the front or rear of you car or truck are the top tires leaning towards or away from the chassis.

If the top of a tire is leaning towards the chassis this is negative camber and if it is leaning away it is positive camber.

What camber does to your handling. To start off let us look at what incorrect camber angles will do to your handling. It affects overall traction, cornering ability and handling.

With camber angles not adjusted to both track conditions and your driving style can make driving or racing your car or truck very frustrating.

Now let us look at why camber angles are so important. When you enter a corner your car or truck will want to lean, because of the force of gravity.

The faster or harder you enter a corner the more lean you will have. This flex of the suspension will cause the inside tires to want to lift off the surface and the outer tires to lean away from the chassis.

This changes the contact patch of the tires, the area of the tire in contact with the surface. If camber angle is incorrectly set the contact patch lessens causing the loose of traction.

On the other hand, with camber angles set correctly the contact patch remains flat, lessening chassis roll then increasing traction.

Now let us look at how to adjust camber. Almost all rc vehicles use turnbuckles to adjust camber. These turnbuckles, in most cases, are threaded in opposite directions with hex nuts mounted in the center of the turnbuckle.

When installing camber turnbuckles make certain that they are all installed the same way. This will make adjusting camber much easier and faster if all turnbuckles turn in the same direction to shorten or lengthen.

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To make installing or adjusting new turnbuckles easier put a little white grease on the threaded ends of the turnbuckle. If you are putting together a kit, just add the grease before installing the turnbuckles the first time. If your new vehicle is a RTR or ARR just unthread the turnbuckles and add grease to the threads and reinstall. This will make installing and future adjustments much easier and less frustrating.
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Plus, these setup stations help with many other setup options. Also needed is a turnbuckle wrench or pliers.



At what camber angle should my rc vehicle be set at? Camber angles for on-road and off-road serve different purposes, but there is some common ground between them.

Let us first look at rear camber, it is a little more straight forward. As a general rule rear camber will be set somewhere between -.2° to -.5° will be more than enough to counteract chassis roll.



When it comes to the front camber settings can get a little more complicated. When setting camber on the front caster also comes into play.

Caster is the angle of the kingpins or steering blocks when you are looking at it from the side. Generally when high degrees of caster are used less camber angle is needed and the when less caster is used more camber angle is needed.

Refer to your owners manual to help determine what camber angles are the best for your rc car or truck.

Also check race setup sheets for different conditions to help find what camber angle best suits your conditions or driving style.

One other item comes into play when adjusting camber angle and that is the angle of the camber link. Almost all rc vehicles have the option of changing the angle of the camber link.

This angle is changed by moving the camber links to different mounting holes on the shock towers.

Again refer to your manual to see how your rc truck or car reacts to changing the camber angle. Plus this is a very easy adjustment so it is easy to play around with.

Change the angle of the camber link and see how it affects your car or truck's handling.

As a general rule the higher the camber link is mounted the more on-power steering you will have. Plus the car or truck will respond slower to your input. This works better on smooth, high grip tracks with long fast corners.

When you mount the camber link in the lower mounting position will result in less on-power steering. Plus,it will respond quicker to your input. Best to use on tracks that have quick fast direction changes.

Again refer to your owners manual to see how your rc car or truck is designed to handle camber link angle changes.

The last thing to keep in mind is the length of the camber link. On many rc vehicles you have the option of mounting the camber link in either a short or long length.

In most cases the shorter camber link length will give you more camber gain, slightly more traction and less steering and stability.

While longer camber link length will result in less camber gain, more stability and it will respond to input slower.

Again refer to your owners manual to see just how your vehicle reacts to changing the length of the camber link.

In my opinion the most important thing about doing any tuning on your suspension is keeping notes as to what you have changed.

Plus, until you fulling understand how you rc truck or car reacts to each different tuning option, just change one thing at a time, then run your rc vehicle to see just how it reacts and make note of the change.

Doing your suspension tuning in a slow step by step process before you know it you will turn into a suspension tuning guru.

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