Gold Pan suspension tuning. Where to start??

[Claymore5150]

Ok, I've never tuned my goldpan to a track, don't even have springs for it yet and I've owned it since it came out in 94....
Decided to race it with the club guys and now I have GOT to start dialing the thing in.

So Ruffy Rios or Jeff Harris gets the box back in the day, builds it to factory specs, puts the right tires for the track on there...
Gets some laps in for the "Default" setup sheet.......and then you start working on what next?

This is kind of where I want to start...essentially a box-stock suspension bug....
Bearings all around and in tranny.
Green springs, stock pistons (2 hole maybe?), and 32.5w on all 4 corners.
ESC mounted rear left, 2s hardpack lipo up the center, small 2.4 receiver on rear right wall.
2.2 jc wheels with m3 calibers/blue closed cell foam. Have both ribbed AND calibers for up front.
Front and rear arms are stock.
MIP BB steering.
2.25 stealth w/b4 topshaft & slipper. 3930kv "10t" brushless, 60a esc. 81t spur, 19 pinion (touch aggressive or tune to the power?? Asking 'cause I don't know, but I can drive a little better than the avg bear)

Not looking for a setup, but advise for a goldpan on where to focus my attention on the buggy as I'm driving for tune first/second/third...how did/do you guys attack your personal default track setups?

Got a ton of blank setup sheets, springs and shock oils on order....I'm going to enjoy it as it'll be the first time I take the time to tune to my rig to my style and not just copycat tuning like I've done along with 99% of the guys that I run Open SCT with.

There's something to be said about "group" tuning, but I want the satisfaction of MY tune and wanna learn how to go about it. Read the "high bite indoor clay" thread, saw some ideas on bench tuning by FredSwain, etc.

My bug needs to carry way more corner speed consistently without being on the edge of kicking out the rear end all the time which is how it has been driving last few times at the track and I'm sure that's how it'll feel when I start out my tuning day with your advise and blank set up sheets in-hand.

Thanks in advance for any help, advise, ideas, etc.!

[Claymore5150]

Got Ruffy's setup sheet, too....but this is for learning experience.

[gjeeper04]

Claymore, I was after the same thing how to tune my suspension. I ran across this old video on youtube that explained a lot about what to do with the shocks if you understeer or oversteer, and what if it nose dives or doesn't level off in the jumps. It is an old video and made by kids it looked like but I thought it was cool. I wish I would have seen it when i was a kid. here is the link hope it helps... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrL7rt-YLxQ&feature=related there are 5 parts, take some time and watch all 5.

[Jay Dub]

Well I see there haven't been too many replies and thought I could help. I have recently begun running my own tub chassis car and have become very happy with it. I started with the "standard" setup -similar to what you described. I was unhappy with it at first. It took quite a while to come to a few conlusions regarding my setup, and this is what I learned and then applied.

First, as with any car, is weight distribution. I found that I needed to add about 1 ounce to the front in order to get the balance right on the car. This was something I worked tward by running. I feel that car should be consistent through out the day as the track changes. If your car pushes, it should push all day. If it is loose, it should be loose all day (these are just examples btw). If your weight disribution is correct, then (if you run the same tires all day) you should expect the car to go faster or slower as traction changes, but will have the same handling traits. I don't generally add weigh to give more or less traction on a given end. I add weigh to make it consistent. Once I find the right weight distribution for a given car, I almost never change it.

Second is springs and oil. Although these go hand in hand, I believe springs to be the most important of the two. I found that with todays modern rubber, and the amount of traction we have on our local tracks, that the spring rates for the rear are just not enough. It is important to learn to watch the car and its parts while running to see what needs to change. I found that with the green rear springs, the rear wanted to rotate too much. I was driving the car with the rear end. The front of the car wasn't moving much at all. It would stay high in the corners, and would even lift the inside front on occasion. By going to a stiffer rear spring, it forces the front to dive and transfer weight. This ended up giving me more rear bite, and gave the car more pop on the jumps. I also opted for a softer front spring to help facilitate the process. So on the rear, I run a silver with the shocks layed in all the way on my tower (or blue in high bite) and a green or black in the front. I think that this is the biggest part of "seeing" your car -being able to tell how and when the car is transfering weight properly.

After that is just fine tuning things like oil/piston, droop, camber adjustments, ride height, wing, etc. Hope this helps. -Jeff

[RC104ever]

Does the oil weight front / back matter? Also, I'm not familiar with the different colour springs. All I have are the stock gold or silver springs.

[Jay Dub]

Yes, the oil matters. The oil in the shocks is intended to control how fast the chassis transfers weight. The springs control how far. Unfortunatelly this is not a black and white definition. There will be overlap -really heavy oils will take longer periods of time to transfer and vice versa. This can affect the weight transfer by not allowing weight to transfer in the amount of time necessary to get the desired effect. E.g. realy heavy oil may take away steering in a high speed chicane, even though the spring is proper. Associated sells spring sets for the RC10 series of cars, and they are very reasonable. The only ones you are likelly to use however are black/green/silver (maybe blue) for the rear. and brown/black/green/silver for the front. -Jeff

[RC104ever]

What would be a typical setup? Do you want stiffer rear springs and softer up front? Equal oil weights all around or different front to back?

[Lonestar]

What would be a typical setup? Do you want stiffer rear springs and softer up front? Equal oil weights all around or different front to back?

Got Ruffy's setup sheet, too....but this is for learning experience.

[fredswain]

I've been involved in a very detailed tuning method on rctech where I completely describe my tuning method from the start. i never got to finish in that thread but it's pretty close.

For a gold pan, I'm not sure which shock towers you are using but the best ones to use for stock shocks are the team car towers that have 6 mounting options in front and 2 in rear. The key to tuning is balance. Run the camber links in the long setup in front. In the rear either run them on the inner upper hole on the tab portion of the bulkhead or if you prefer the inner location under the wing tubes that most people use then run a swaybar in the back but only the back. You'll never need a front bar on an RC10. The bar should be somewhere between .047" and .055" thick depending on your personal preference. I currently have the .055". I made mine from piano wire and used the swaybar links from a B4.

For springs run the blues in the rear. Run them on the inner hole on the shock tower and the next to outer hole on the arms. In front run green spring with the shocks mounted on the inner hole on the arms and the middle upper hole on the tower.

I like #2 pistons with 30W all around. It's a very nice driving setup that works very well for me. You may of course need to run a different weight oil so play around and see what you like. If you find you want a stiffer spring rate run the reds in the rear with the shocks in the same position. Run silvers in front and move the top over to the inside hole on the tower. That's a stiffer rate than the first one but may be a bit too stiff for you. I've run this setup with stick on weights mounted the length of the battery on either side of it and the car handles brilliantly. It just gains weight. Each setup works well for different types of tracks.

Try the first one out and see how you like it. It's different than what most people run but as I said I use a tuning method and it works itself out regardless of what kind of car it is, how many wheels are powered, or where the motor is. Describing it in detail again here would be as long as a book. Out of all the available springs from AE and the available mounting positions, these are the only 2 combinations that I have found so far that is balanced. There may be others but I've tried lots of combinations and still haven't found more. These 2 work for most situations.

[RC104ever]

Thanks for the reply! I am running original / stock shocks and towers, both front and rear. But I would love to swap the gold shocks for newer threaded ones along with newer carbon fibre shock towers. But I'm not sure which towers you are referring to with moving the mounting points - some pics might help if you have time.

I am currently running the original gold springs (and I have the original silver softer ones too) but I have no idea how those compare to the springs you mentioned. I know that there are different spring rates based on colours but wasn't sure what the pure numbers were.

For the rear sway bar, the issue I'm having is the bar won't clear the RPM engine cover now that I have the B4 top shaft, unless I do some kind of bend to go around it. The other issue is that I need to drill the rear RPM arms and put in a ball stud but I'm afraid to screw it up and break them.

[fredswain]

The shock towers are easy to find on ebay. They are fiberglass although carbon fiber ones do turn up from time to time. As far as springs go, the rates are determined by color. The springs are the current ones from AE so they are easy to find.

I made my own rear sway bar. I'm using the RC10B4 sway bar ends but bent my own bar out of .055" piano wire. You can find it at hobby shops or art supply stores.

Here's a link to the shock towers I'm talking about. I've found them for cheaper but you can see which one's I'm talking about. These are even dirty in the same mounting holes that I use.
http://cgi.ebay.com/team-associated-worlds-rc10-vintage-shock-towers-/250827442248?pt=Radio_Control_Parts_Accessories&hash=item3a667b0848#ht_911wt_956

[RC104ever]

Thanks - I looked on Tower's site on a whim and found the front:

http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LX2529&P=7