However, there are two categories that are consistent throughout the entire hobby. On-road RC car bodies and off-road rc car bodies.
Rarely is a car built to do both of those things well, and practically every subset of activities is divided between those two categories.
Since whether a car is good for on-road or off-road driving has a lot to do with its body, we’re going to go over all the differences today. By the end, you should be able to compare everything to what you want to do with your car and make some appropriate buying decisions.
Let’s get started.
Bottoming out is the area where on-road and off-road RC bodies differ the most in noticeable ways. Depending on where you’re driving and which body you have, bottoming out can be a huge concern.
On-road bodies are a lot like real car bodies. They’re built low and sleek to maximize their aerodynamics and keep a lower center of gravity. This provides a couple of advantages we’ll talk about later, but for now, we’re going to talk about “bottoming out”.
If you take an on-road RC car and drive it through a bumpy yard or off-road course, it’ll be so low to the ground that every little bump scrapes the bottom of the car. This can potentially damage its important mechanical components, but it also ensures that the body takes far more damage than it’s supposed to. Of course, each of those bumps from bottoming out also lowers the car’s speed and keeps it from ever reaching its full potential.
In contrast, off-road RC bodies are built to ride higher above the wheels and provide far more clearance. This comes at a dramatic cost, but it ensures that the RC car can ride over rough terrain found on off-road tracks without bottoming out. This not only protects the vehicle's more sensitive parts but also allows the RC car to continue moving at maximum performance.
The center of gravity on a car is important. The lower an RC car’s body is to the ground, the easier it’ll be for that car to maneuver sharp corners at high speeds without flipping. Obviously, any time your car is sent flying and rolling, you risk causing excessive amounts of damage to the body and its other components. So, this is a tremendous trait to have. Especially on hard roads and surfaces. Thus, this is why on-road racers go for the lowest cars possible.
In contrast, an off-road body's higher center of gravity means it will flip over a lot easier and destabilize at higher speeds. These tend to be bulkier bodies lifted higher, and beyond the elevated center of gravity, they also have poor aerodynamics that catch the wind and jostle the car the faster it goes.
That’s not an issue if you’re casually driving an off-road vehicle around your driveway, but if you were to race it around on a paved road at high speeds, you could easily end up rolling it, busting up the body, and generally damaging your car for no reason.
Finally, manufacturers design their RC car bodies around the intended use they have for them. This doesn’t just include design choices that prevent bottoming out or flipping at high speeds. It also means constructing each car body to withstand different types of damage.
An off-road RC car is going to flip. It’ll probably flip quite often. Thus, the body needs to be built a lot more tank-like to ensure every time you drive your car you don’t shatter it or have to perform extensive repairs. The material might be thicker in what would otherwise be weak spots, or it might be made from an entirely different polymer that can withstand cracks and breaks at the cost of weight or stability.
On-road bodies are all about speed. Lighter materials are used, not as much emphasis is put on preventing damage, and the manufacturer’s core design theme will be reducing weight while maintaining stability at high speeds. Obviously, this means that a really bad wreck will likely result in serious damage, but on-road driving is usually the “safer” of the two options. So, as long as the car is easily controllable, and the driver has a good enough level of skill, damage shouldn’t be a serious problem.
Optimally, you’ll want to use a car equipped with a body designed for the type of driving you’re doing. There isn’t a lot of wiggle room here. If you enter a race for on-road cars, and you use an elevated, off-road, RC car, you’re asking for problems. Not only will you not match the speed you need to outpace other racers, but you’ll probably put your car at more risk of damage due to it flipping more easily. The opposite is true for using on-road cars for off-road fun.
To an extent, this isn’t as much of a concern for casual drivers. If you’re just out having fun with your kids, not pushing your car to its limits, and taking care of it, you can usually make things work.
In general, it’s best to have two builds if you intend to do both types of driving. One for on-road driving, and one for off-road driving.
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Unfortunately, the body still gets neglected fairly often in favor of the core systems, but it’s actually an imperative decision. You need a good body to encapsulate and protect the core parts of your car, maximize performance, and keep you from having to repeatedly invest in new bodies due to damage.
Today, we’re going to focus on the main factors you need to consider when choosing the right RC body for your car.
First and foremost, no matter what type of car you’re building and what it will be doing, you want to make sure the material used to make the body is one that will last. You don’t have to buy the most expensive body possible, but you definitely want to invest in one that isn’t going to degrade quickly or become damaged every time it takes a bump.
Plastic is going to be the main body material you find for RC car bodies. So, what you’re really looking at is the type of plastic used, such as impact-resistant ABS or other common plastics, and how well the manufacturer worked with that plastic to make the most of it.
This is especially crucial if you partake in rougher activities with your RC car such as off-roading, intense racing, and similar things. You don’t want to have to replace the body nonstop, or the cost will add up.
Weight matters a lot when you’re trying to maximize your car’s performance. The heavier your body is, the less speed your car is going to be able to generate. If it’s too light, it might be made with materials that are too thin to protect against impacts, and you’ll likely have control problems.
The ideal weight for your car is going to be largely dependent on the overall setup you have. You might need to experiment a bit, or you can make it easy by buying a body specifically built for your model of RC car as long as you don’t have a homebuilt car that obviously doesn’t have matching bodies available.
Eventually, you will need to make a repair. Even if you choose the right RC body, the bumps and wrecks will eventually put enough stress on the body that it cracks, chips, or otherwise requires maintenance.
You don’t want a body that is poorly made and likely to break in irreparable ways, and you don’t want one that’s going to require more than a plastic welding kit and a few basic tools to repair on your own.
Most plastic bodies are going to fit this criteria unless they’re extremely thin or thick. If the material is too thin and brittle, it’ll be likely to shatter. You're not going to make a patch or plastic weld that back together. If it’s too thick, even if the material is good, making repairs with traditional plastic welding methods is going to be difficult.
A body that balances flexibility, strength, and thickness well is optimal both for being able to repair it and for avoiding issues in the first place.
It doesn’t make sense to put a $100 custom body on a cheap DIY rig or something you grabbed at the local big box store. The body isn’t the core component of the vehicle, and obviously, price is something everyone thinks of when purchasing anything.
Ideally, you want to get an RC body that is price-balanced well against the mechanical components of the car itself. If you have a decent $200 model, getting a body that’s $70, $80, or even $100 or more, is justifiable. It’s protecting your investment in the mechanical components, and it wouldn’t make sense to go with an extra-cheap option that isn’t going to protect such an investment.
Installation is also something you need to think of. RC cars aren’t like actual cars. The body doesn’t go on and then never comes off until it’s being torn down for the scrap yard, and there’s also no real requirement for how the body attaches. Different makes and models will have different methods of installing the body.
You want a body that can go on easily with just a few screws or tabs to keep from having to spend forever messing with it, or if you’re buying a more high-end body, you’ll need to commit to trimming areas to match your car’s chassis, drilling your own holes to connect the body to the car, etc. That is optimal because then you control how the body connects to the car.
However, it’s not just the initial installation you need to think about. Quite a few types of repairs will require you to remove the body to work with the car’s mechanical components. You want to be able to do that over and over again without risking damaging the connection points.
Part of that has to do with build quality, but different attachment methods, or different choices during the initial installation process in the case of trimmable bodies, will impact this as well.
Considering these basic factors is a good start, but you also need to consider what it is you’re using the RC car for. Do you simply like to drive it around the driveway every once in a while, or do you go off-roading and racing with it?
In any case, you need a high-quality supplier to make sure your body looks and performs great without causing you problems or costing more than it’s worth. Delta Plastik USA is your go-to source for professionally molded, small-batch, RC car bodies that are a step above the competition. We offer a range of accessories, decals, Monster Truck Bodies, 1/5th RC Bodies, 1/7 Scale Bodies, Traxxas Slash Bodies, Arrma Vendetta 1/8, 1/8th GT 325mm Bodies, 1/10th Bodies, Speed Run Bodies, 1/8 GT2 360mm Bodies, 1/8 On-Road Bodies, 1/8 Vintage Bodies, 1/8 Off-Road, Thunder Truck Bodies, and many more! If you have any questions about our products, don’t hesitate to message us!
]]>However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for a competitive spirit in the hobby.
If you’re looking to max out your car's performance and break speed records, without your car falling to pieces halfway through a run, one of the main parts you want to look at is the body.
Today, we’re going to take a look at speed-run RC bodies and how they can get you closer to breaking records and truly competing with your fellow hobbyists.
RC cars, whether they run on fuel or electricity, have a lot of things in common with an actual automobile. One of those things is the body of the car and how it impacts overall performance.
For most cars, the body is more or less just a shell that protects the core components and holds everything together in a visually pleasing way. However, when you look at a race car, the design of the body is streamlined in every way possible, features such as spoilers are added, and more to help increase its aerodynamics and streamline it.
The same concept is applied to RC cars.
The average RC car you see in recreational use has a body that’s mostly designed to protect the car and look visually pleasing, but when you move into competitive speed runs, you’ll notice the bodies are a lot more streamlined.
So, how does this all play into the more competitive side of RC speed runs?
Well, it all comes down to four main categories and how well you can balance them against each other. With the right body on your car, you can boost your speed and control to allow for faster times with every run.
Obviously, your body only does so much for your car’s overall performance, but as long as you’ve invested in the right parts and built a good car in the first place, getting a proper speed run body will give you the extra edge you need to maximize your potential.
Here are the four traits you need to focus on balancing with your build to achieve that.
First, focusing on the aerodynamics of the body is crucial. Every RC body you find is going to produce some amount of drag. Drag is when the body of the car “catches” on the air as it’s moving, and that prevents it from moving as quickly as the overall system could push it without any sort of resistance.
Speed run bodies are specifically designed to minimize drag and boost aerodynamics, but that doesn’t mean they all do it well or that their other traits are in line with what you need.
Drag also isn’t the only factor. So, don’t just look for the sleekest design possible without making other considerations.
Weight is another key factor to consider. All the parts that go into your build might be relatively light to you, but they add up, and since the car is scaled down, that "lightweight" is actually substantial.
Every ounce of added weight puts more strain on your RC car and makes it work harder to achieve its maximum speed.
You can’t really scale down the core weight because those components are absolutely essential, but when it comes to the body, cutting back on weight is crucial.
The best way to do this is to get a body that’s made of plastic.
Furthermore, the weight distribution is crucial to look at. In the next section, we’ll look at how bodies are made in a little more detail, but parts of the body will be heavier than others. This is negligible for recreational use, but in a competitive setting, every bit counts. Having more weight in an unoptimized spot can throw off your car’s handling. Even when you achieve your top speed, wobbling around or taking unoptimized routes because of control problems can make you miss a record-breaking opportunity.
This has less to do with increasing your speed and more to do with keeping your car from falling apart.
Your RC body doesn’t just need to be sleek and lightweight. It also needs to be sturdy enough to withstand high speeds, and unfortunately, high-speed bumps and wrecks.
It’s easy to lose control and send your car flying when you’re pushing a well-built car to its limits. Having a body that is more likely to protect internal components well and not shatter itself is crucial.
However, body stability is also key.
A lot of vibration is generated when you push an RC vehicle to high speeds. With lower-quality bodies, fastening points, seams, and other bits can break apart and cause the body to deform, break, or simply fly off. That will definitely ruin your run.
The type of plastic used to make the body, and where the manufacturer made the form thicker or thinner for added stability and protection, play into this factor a lot.
This isn’t a problem with RC vehicles that aren’t being pushed to the extreme, but in a competitive space, it’s something to look out for.
Finally, how the body affects your control and stability is crucial, too.
Speed-built RC cars tend to have a very low clearance with the ground, and that means any frame that extends lower than the frame of the actual car can create clearance problems. This is especially true if your run is done on a normal road, dirt, or anything else that isn’t specifically made to be perfectly flat.
Extraneous pieces can add drag for no reason, and you also have to watch your wheel clearance to ensure you’re not rubbing or catching on the body while turning.
This is an easy problem to solve. Just buy a frame that is built with your RC car in mind, or check the detailed dimensions to ensure everything will fit well without impacting performance. You might need to make minor alterations if you’ve built your own car from scratch.
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