Team Durango's Travis Amezcua explains how to adjust ride height and what the changes do

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By Aaron Waldron
LiveRC.com

From Team Durango:
www.team-durango.com

Travis Amezcua – Ride Height Basics – Tutorial

Hot new tips from the Team Durango super-racer, Travis Amezcua

In the latest installment of our exciting Team Tech Tips tuning series, hosted by our Field Consultant for North America, Travis Amezcua, we take a closer look at vehicle ride height.

Travis shares some useful hints on how to gain a fast and easily adjusted tuning advantage when the track conditions are difficult. Using his DEX8 1/8 4WD Nitro Buggy as an example, Travis shows you how to get the perfect ride height adjustments, time after time.

Over to Travis for his valuable insights:

This week I will cover the effects of ride height. Ride height is best explained as the height of the chassis in relation to the ground.

You should always set your ride height when your car is race-ready. Electronics or Engine and Battery Cells installed.

First up, how to check the ride height you are currently running.

1. You will want to use a flat surface/set-up board.
2. There are many different ride height gauges out there you can use. Stick to using the same gauge as consistency is key when taking measurements.
3. When your car is race-ready, lift the car about 6-8 inches from the ground. Then drop the car onto the flat surface/setup board.
4. Take your ride height gauge and slide it under the chassis. This will tell you what the ride height of your car is at from the ground to the bottom of the chassis.

Position your chosen ride height gauge in the center of your Chassis Plate, underneath the front diff.

Now to look at making adjustments and what you can expect to see from your tuning efforts:

• Rotating your Shock Collars will increase your ride height in one direction, then decrease your ride height when rotated the opposite way.
• Adjusting the ride height is a quick tuning option for your car. This simple adjustment can really change the way your car is handling on the track and can have you ‘dialed’ back into the changing race conditions quickly.
• For most cars, you will want the front and rear ride height to be within a few mm from each other, or ‘equalized’, as we say at Team Durango.
• Make sure that the adjustment is equal from side to side on the Shock Collars. You can easily check each ‘quarter’ of the ride height setting by putting your gauge in the four corners of the Chassis Plate.

Now we know how easy it is to make the actual ride height adjustments, and also measure them, lets understand what we can expect to happen when we increase, or decrease our vehicle ride height:

Generally speaking a lower ride height will have less traction, and will be less prone to traction rolling.

A higher ride height will produce more traction but also want to traction roll easier.

With a higher ride height your car will also land the jumps and handle those bumpy tracks a lot better. Again this will depend on the surface that you’re running on.

Some settings to consider:

Front lower than Rear

• Increases weight transfer to the front off power.
• Increases steering.
• It will also make the car want to jump more nose down.

Front higher than rear

• More rear traction on power
• Decreases steering.
• Will make the car jump more nose up

Always keep in mind that no matter how often you tune a setting on your vehicle, you should keep a starting set-up noted on your Team Durango set-up sheet. This will allow you to easily return the car back to the settings you started out with, without forgetting valuable measurements and values.

You can also see our colleague, Jason Ametrine, creating custom ride height settings with his DEX210v2 here: 

Stay tuned for the next Travis Amezcua Team Tech Tips article very soon.