Rating Springs for Radio Controlled Cars

March 14, 2009 · Posted in How To, Maintenance · by simon  

Radio Controlled Car springs come in a variety of ratings, some hard, some soft, in a mixture of colours, from many different manufacturers, in different lengths etc.

It can be a bit of a minefield, especially if you’ve gathered springs from various sources over the years.

A really simple way of figuring out what you’ve got is to get all your springs for a particular car, make sure they are similar lengths, and then just get any two, put them on top of each other and press them together, the one that squashes up the most is softer.

Take the next and compare it with one of those, soon enough you’ll have all your springs in order of hard to soft.

Now, here’s the secret, MAKE A LIST! A really simple list of colours from hard to soft.

BUT, if you have several springs that appear to be the same colour, but of different hardness, get a permanent market, and on top and bottom, just put a dash, or two dashes, or three dashes. Then in your list, call it colour 1, colour 2, colour 3.

It’s so much easier then to think “right, I need a softer spring on the rear”, just look at your list and choose the softer one.

You then don’t have to have all the springs from the same manufacturer and you can mix and match to suit.

You can even go so far as put on your list some ‘known’ springs from a manufacturer, so you know roughly whereabouts in the list you are if you are comparing setups with other people etc.

Written by simon.

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Comments

4 Responses to “Rating Springs for Radio Controlled Cars”

  1. Tedwardo on March 23rd, 2009 14:18

    What like this one??

    http://www.thard.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=33

    :D

  2. simon on March 23rd, 2009 14:34

    Thanks Ed, your list is great when you know what make springs they are, I’ve got springs I’ve no idea where they come from though!

  3. Tedwardo on March 23rd, 2009 17:07

    there is a formula somewhere that you can do to calculate the spring rate… all you need to do is measure the number of coils, and wire diameter… I’ll see if I can hunt it down.

  4. simon on March 23rd, 2009 17:39

    Doesn’t it also depend on spring material?

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