Drifting 101 - What should I buy, and how much will it cost?

Here is a rough breakdown of what you need, and how much they can cost. As far as kits and bundles go, there are usually three options; A "chassis kit" which usually includes a motor and speed controller, a "full kit" that has everything but requires assembly, or a "Ready To Race" (RTR) kit which comes pre-assembled with everything you need bar the paint for the shell. In the RTR kits, some items are on the cheap side and you are better off buying a good battery charger, some good batteries, and a clear polycarbonate shell so that you can paint and customise it the way you want.

Chassis: $100-150 A new Tamiya TT-01 "chassis kit" can be bought for $130 on special. A used Tamiya TT-01 assembled chassis can go for less, but is not usually sold on its own. A new HPI Sprint 2 assembled chassis can be had for $120.	Bodyshell: $30-50 each Branding and personal choice in model of shell make the difference in price. Shipping can cost a little more due to its size. Speaking of which, electric onroad shells are 190mm, and nitro onroad shells are 200mm.	Paints: $15 each You'll probably want to paint your new shell in at least two different colours, of which one colour you will need two small cans of paint. Allow for an average 3 cans of paint per shell, and make sure they are for polycarbonate plastic or lexan.
Radio gear: $80-150 A hand-controller and receiver with included crystals is all you need. The "pistol grip" is by far the easiest to use. Be sure to check with your local RC group about frequencies, and try to get a frequency that isn't already in use.	Motor: $30-80 Honestly, the cheap motors work just fine. Use them for 6 months and then just chuck it. If the motor is rebuildable, you can change the brushes every 3 months for $10 per set. More expensive motors could be overkill for drifting!	Speed Controller: $40-100 Again, doesn't need to be fancy. You're unlikely to need a braking function, and it is more convenient to have a reverse, as you'll be planting it into walls frequently! Something that supports down to 11 turns would be preferable.
Batteries: $30-80 each Cheap batteries will last about 6 months before they need replacing, and will give reasonable runtimes. Depending on your chassis, you will need either "stick pack" or "saddle pack" batteries, running at 7.2v and around 3000mAh.	Charger: $50-250 Get a charger to reflect the batteries you are using. An $80 battery requires a ~$200 charger to maintain them. A dual-outlet charger is always a bonus, but there aren't many around, and are usually pricey.	Rims: $20-40 set Most chassis kits will come with preglued tyres, so you'll need to purchase a nice set for your new ABS tyres! Hobby shops usually stock a variety of rims. Standard wheel fittings are "hex-drive". See down the page for more dimensions.
ABS Tyres: $10 set Available in the forums. One set will last you 3-6 months, depending on usage and surface conditions. An alternative is PVC piping. You probably won't notice any difference in handling, but they will not look like a tyre.

BRANDING:

Which brand?

Tamiya is a widely available and popular manufacturer, who offers both shaft and belt driven chassis. The entry-level of Tamiya's range (such as the TT-01) are favoured for drifting, as the chassis is fairly adjustable without being overpriced. Parts are commonly available through just about every hobby store Australia-wide.

HPI produce very high quality products also, from onroad to a brand-leading offroad range. With the success of the Sprint, HPI have released the Sprint2, which is the best value for money where drifting is concerned. HPI also have a specialty range of drift chassis built on the Sprint2, labelled "Stage-D". This particular line of chassis is priced around the same mark as the dedicated drift chassis made by Yokomo.

The third recommended choice is by Yokomo. Yokomo is is completely dedicated to manufacturing drift chassis'. Their range is slightly more expensive than HPI and Tamiya, but they offer many specialised drift kits and accessories. Their high quality kits and specialty drift bodies mean that they are a great option when considering the purchase of a dedicated RC drifter.

Shaft or Belt?

Drifting requires that your chassis is four-wheel-drive. The question is whether the front and rear differential is driven by a belt or by a shaft.

I prefer a belt-driven chassis. A Belt is lighter than a shaft, has less mass when rotating, and can be adjusted. A belt can be easiliy shredded by a rogue stone if the problem is not caught in time, and can cost $10 to $20 to replace. On the note of replacing, it is considereably harder to change a belt than replace a shaft.

Shafts are stronger than belts in the way that they shouldn't ever break, but they can wear and bend or warp. If your shaft wears on the cups that drive it, slack is introduced into the drivetrain which affects onroad handling more than it might affect drifting. Shafts are easy to change and cost about the same as a belt. They are noisy in comparison to belts, but if you just want a basher that you don't want to worry about, they are your best option.

WHEELS:

What size are my wheels?

Wheel compatibility

The standard is a hex-hub, which sits over the axle, and is turned by a spring-pin that runs through a hole in the axle. Other variations are not common, but some toy RC cars have a smaller hex-shaped hub, and old Tamiya cars have multiple bolts that attach to a bigger hub, much like a real car.

Tyres:

Your standard onroad tyres will be made from rubber, and there are many different grades of rubber available for professional racing. Foam is also very popular for maintaining high levels of grip, but drifting is quite the opposite!

There are really two compounds that you can choose from, PVC or ABS. There is a third option, PPR, that is not used widely enough to cover in detail here. PVC is a type of plastic used to make pipes that plumbers use. Drainage downpipes from your roof are usually PVC pipes. It is this sort of pipe that you can buy from a hardware store, cut up into rings, and use on your RC car to make it slide.

ABS is becoming far more popular now, due to its black plastic makeup. ABS comes in the form of piping the same way PVC does, but it is extremely hard to find. Being black, it looks like a low-profile street tyre when installed onto your RC wheels. Although cosmetically ABS looks much nicer, it is widely accepted that it is also slightly grippier than PVC, and comes in grades of softness based on a colour indicator on the pipe. I am unable to test any difference in friction or grip between ABS and PVC.

As if ABS wasn't hard enough to source in the first place, PPR has come into the scene, and is claimed to be even grippier than ABS. The rarity of this compound makes going down this avenue not worthwhile.

CHASSIS:

Once you have your chassis, and some drifting tyres, you'll need to set your RC car up to slide. The principles are similar to how real drift cars are set up, so if you are familiar with this you should be fine.

Camber?

No, you really don't want any, and i'll bet that your stock RC car will have a moderate amount of negative camber on it already. Fine for onroad traction and rubber tyres, but ABS or PVC are a hard compound that have very little grip, and have a flat surface. Any negative camber will cause the car to run on the inside edge of the ABS/PVC... which will make it too slippery and cause the compound to wear too quickly. Adjust your turnbuckles so that the ABS/PVC is dead flat with the track surface. A decent chassis will introduce more negative camber as the front wheels turn, same as a real car would. There is often nothing you can do about this, as it is generated by the angle of the uprights. (uprights hold the drive-axles, which your wheel bolts onto).

Stiff suspension?

You betchya! But not TOO stiff. Soft suspension helps transfer weight around when cornering with rubber tyres, which increases grip and stability. We want less grip and stability is just right out the window. Stability is replaced by skill, which is where YOU step in. Run your suspension too tight, and your car will hop, skip, and bounce around. This reduces the chances of you holding a long drift, as a little bump or skip will throw your angle, and you'd have to make a lot of quick little adjustments to correct for it.

Should I lower it?

Hmm... not necessarily. For looks, sure, go ahead, but ride-height only really affects the center of gravity. To a lesser extent, it affects aerodynamics, but considering that drift is not exactly a high-speed sport that relies on downforce, I don't think that you will ever roll your RC car or gain any speed from lowering the chassis. Lowering the bodyshell by lowering the body-posts that the shell mounts onto gives the same look as just lowering the chassis. On a real car, you can't lower the shell, and given the right circumstances, it is entirely possible to roll a standard road-car.

MOTOR:

We're getting into the electronics now, and this can be very general for RC cars without being particularly focussed on drifting. Your choice of motor and pinion DOES have an effect on drifting though, everything else beyond that does not.

Brushed or BrushLESS?

Brushless is great... for racing. Not having to change brushes every few races can be a real time-saver, and eventually a real money-saver. For drifting however, brushless is just too fast, and too expensive. In an RC drift car, a motor with brushes will never see the kind of torture that a pro racer could put it through. There are many different types of brush that you can install in your motor, and they each give different properties to the runtime and torque of the motor (full-face, serrated, there are some with an angle in them, others with a hole drilled through them). For drifting, a standard, full-faced, standup brush is fine, and might need changing every few months.

21T, 19x2. What's it mean?

Turns and winds... we'll start with the number of turns, which determines the RPM of the motor. Stock motors run between 20 turns and 23, which means there is a wire wrapped around the armature (the rotating part in the can) that many times. The lower amount of times the wire is wrapped (turned) around the armature, the faster the motor can spin.

The number of winds represents how many individual wires are wrapped in turns around the armature. A single wire is called a single, or times 1 (x1), two wires is a double, three is a triple. Easy! So for example, a 13x2 has two wires, wrapped 13 times each around the armature. Now is the hard part to explain, and it is based on torque, whereas the number of turns governed the maximum RPM. A single wind gives power right off the trigger, and eases off as you pull the trigger the rest of the way. A triple wind is a mirror image of a single... it has little power off the trigger, but the more you squeeze on, the more the motor speeds up. The RPM increases exponentially, and with a single, the RPM increases inverse to that. A double is much easier to explain, and probably doesn't need to be. A double is LINEAR. You pull a quarter throttle, it spins a quarter of its maximum RPM, pull half to get half, and so on.

It's entirely up to you and how you feel about it. A single is the preferred choice for pro racers, as they don't have to waste as much time pulling the trigger the full distance to get up to maximum speed, which helps reduce laptimes when braking and cornering. Drifting is probably more suited to double-wind motors, at a stock number of turns or slightly higher.

GEARING:

The pinion gear is attached to your motor, and the spur gear is attached to the main driveshaft of the chassis. There are two main aspects to each, which govern speed and torque... and these are; the number of teeth on the gear, and the pitch of the teeth. The pinion gear on the motor is always smaller than the spur gear. This allows the motor to spin faster, but lose some speed through the gearing to provide more torque. Much like a real car's 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and sometimes 4th gears are actually a lower gearing than the motors revolutions per minute. i.e The motor is spinning faster than the wheels on the road. We'll go into detail below to explain how this works, and what that means to you.

What's pitch?

The pitch refers to the number of teeth per inch, and is usually standardised on each brand of chassis. A HPI Sprint/Sprint2/StageD for example, run 48 pitch gears. This means, if you have a spur gear with 48 teeth on it, and it's a 48-pitch gear, then the spur gears circumference should measure one inch. Typically, your average 48-pitch spur gear has around 96 teeth on it. Do the math, and it's quite a large gear, measuring 2 inches in circumference. 87 teeth would give 1.81 inches. For space constraints or overall chassis design, some manufacturers will run other pitch gearing. A 96 tooth, 64 pitch spur gear will measure 1.5 inches around, rather than 2 inches, but it gives the same ratio when used with the same pitched pinion gear. The only downside to using a higher pitch like this, is that the overall gear becomes smaller, and thusly to squeeze as many teeth in the same area means each tooth has to be smaller and thinner... and spur gears can shred easily. The spur gear and pinion gear must run the same pitch for the teeth to "mesh" properly. The spur gear is usually made from plastic, and the pinion gear is almost always made of a metal compound.

So how about the teeth?

Right, the number of teeth can change the overall gear ratio. Perhaps you want more torque (power) for offroading or something? A smaller pinion on your stock spur gear will make the motor spin more times per minute to make the wheels on the ground turn over once. The stock setup that manufacturers provide is usually the best balance of power and speed, but as you start changing motors, these requirements might change. A faster motor could provide more power without more speed, if the speed it perfect for your particular application (tight onroad tracks, for example, where acceleration is more important). By making the pinion gear smaller, you will make the new motor spin more times per minute to acheive the same speed as your old motor and old pinion gear. The advantage to this? As it takes more revolutions of the motor to turn the wheels, the motor doesn't have as much load on it. The momentum and weight of the car has less of an impact on the motor. This results in now having a car that was just as fast, but now accelerates harder... the motor may even run cooler with less resistance being placed on it, and more air rushing into the spinning armature. The downside is that you may have slightly lower run times out of your batteries, depending on how much more juice the faster motor uses vs the amount of surplus power your old loaded up motor was using.

SPEED CONTROLLER:

For the hardcore performance racer who spends upwards of $300 a week on parts, the Electronic Speed Controller (ESC) is one of the most expensive items to buy. For drifting and friendly races, you don't need to spend a fortune! You don't need to worry about amperage draw, adjustable FETs, ABS braking and adjustable throttle control. The only two things that you might want to consider is; the number of turns on a motor it can support, and whether you want a brake or reverse function.

Motor support... what of it?

So your stocker kit comes with a motor and ESC, which are usually pretty well matched (and to a price). What if you want to step up the motor speed? Check out the ESC that you are looking to buy, and see how far the manufacturer claims it will go. Your average ESC that ships with a 24T motor will usually support down to 20 turns. Technically, you could run whatever you like, but you risk overheating and setting fire to the ESC or the motor just won't run to its full potential. Practically though, take two winds off the manufacturers claims to get an accurate idea of how much power an ESC can really flow without overheating. i.e: Using a 15 turn rated ESC, I wouldn't run any less than a 17 turn motor. This way you can safely thrash it to your hearts content and know that you won't set fire to your entire car.

Do I want brake or reverse?

I haven't tried drifting with a brake, and i'm keen to give it a try... from experience though, I can honestly say that a reversing-capable ESC is going to save you a lot of time and frustration. No drifter is perfect, and you are going to plant your car into walls, up ripple-strips, and possibly upside down! The number of times that I have been able to reverse out of or off something has probably saved me at least 10 minutes per outing. Those with braking functions get stuck frequently, and either have to go and retreive their car or wait patiently until someone else can drive up and give them a push. I don't ever use reverse while drifting, and I doubt you ever will either, it's just a convenience thing.

BATTERIES:

This is a tough area to cover in detail, so i'm going to shoot right through it and tell you what sort of thing you need rather than go into all the details and explanations. These are from most important to least important.

Stickpack or Ladderpack?

Have a look at your chassis, or the chassis that you are going to buy. It will take either stick or ladder packs, or be adjustable for both. A stickpack has 2 rows of 3 cells, where the cells are running length-ways. On its side it would look like this: = = =
A saddle pack is more like this: | | | | | |

NiCad or NiMH?

See the glossary for what these acronyms stand for. NiCads are not very common anymore, but some very cheap batteries still use these types of cells. The better option is to use NiMH.

What capacity?

The standard nowdays is about 3000mAh, with 3200's and 3600's becoming more popular as 4000's and 4200's cause them to come down in price. Shop around for deals on batteries, because they're expensive. I have read a post where someone was shocked at the prices of batteries and how long they lasted. That person was slightly less shocked when he was told that they were rechargeable. Bearing this in mind, the battery you buy is going to last you for a while, so get the best that you can afford. 4-5 batteries is more than enough for a full half-day out having fun. Intellect batteries made by SMC are currently very popular, as their cells have the lowest recorded Internal Resistance (IR) on the market, but you will pay good money for them.

Matched packs or not?

This is only applicable for really expensive batteries. I have a Sanyo 2400mAh battery that has matched cells, and it cost about $120 at the time. It's a fantastic battery for racing, but too expensive for anything else. Matched cells in a battery pack give better power, and predictable run-times, as each cell has exactly the same capacity as each other cell in the pack. Your standard battery pack has unmatched cells, which are pretty close to each other in the way of capacity. As the pack empties itself of power, some cells have a little bit more juice left in them, and you'll notice that your battery doesn't just suddenly stop, it will trail off and give less and less power until it just crawls along. If you got 20-30 minutes of fun out of a cheaper battery, and the last 5 minutes was a bit slow, who cares? It's still good value!

What kind of plugs do I use?

Important, but not as important as the rest because plugs can be chopped off and changed if you need to. Your average battery ships with a Tamiya standard style plug on it, and so will your ESC. For most average people, this is enough... for semi-pro racers, it's not, and they will swap to using "Deans" plugs, which sport higher quality metal compounds for better conductivity and lower resistance. I find them to be a bit of a pain to solder, and personally prefer to use "racing" plugs if i'm going to bother. (They have another name, i'll look it up). Otherwise though, the standard Tamiya plugs are just fine. Your ESC and charger is going to have these plugs, so why bother spending more money on plugs that you probably won't benefit anything from?

CHARGERS:

Generally speaking, you want a charger that has some "intelligence" to it. By that, I mean a logic chip that can cut charging power to a battery when its peak voltage is detected, trickle charge, and do battery reconditioning or cycles. Most decent chargers do, so as long as you're not using the one that came with your new kit, you should be fine with whatever you choose. Let's look at the options though!

AC or DC... or both?

OK, I have always bought chargers that can charge from Direct Current (e.g: A car battery) or Alternating Current (e.g: directly from the wall outlet). The convenience of charging batteries while you're doing other things around the house is priceless, but at the same time, it's handy to be able to charge a battery while you're out at the track or local netball courts. There are ways to make a DC charger work off the AC (mains) power though. A powersupply that can put out 12 volts DC (12VDC) at around 4 amps will work perfectly. An old computer powersupply is the cheapest option, but also the bulkiest. You're better off finding something that comes with it's own powersupply.

Single or twin outlet?

I would recommend that everyone get a twin-outlet charger, but then there are barely any affordable twin outlet chargers on the market. My last charger was an MRC SuperBrain 969, and cost about $200 after shipping it from the US. A single outlet is fine, and is what most people use, but if you have a keen eye, and a bit of time to shop around, definately get a twin outlet charger. The MRC could only discharge on one outlet, but could charge on both. My current charger can charge or discharge on both outlets. If you can't source a twin outlet charger, try looking around for a cheap battery discharger. (or make one of your own out of car tail-light bulbs) That will save you some time while using a single outlet charger.

RADIO GEAR:

Some of these parts are going to be personal preference, and other parts are just informational but necessary to understand.

Paddle or Pistol-grip?

Well, back in the day you have no choice. It was paddle or nothing. Paddle controllers are those square boxes with sticks on them. While they're extremely well setup for planes and helicopters, they completely suck for driving a car. It's personal preference, but i'll guarantee that you'll learn quicker and better using a pistol-grip style controller. Pistol-grip controllers are held like a... pistol... Anyway, they have a trigger like... yeah. The steering though, is nothing like a pistol. To turn the wheels of your car, you turn a small wheel on the controller. This wheel makes fine steering and quick responses much more possible than using a paddle-style controller.

Which frequency?

Now, this doesn't really matter too much. Depending on what and where you buy your controller from, it will use either FM or AM crystals to transmit a signal to the receiver attached to your car. In an RC application like this, range is not really discernable between the two like you would expect from broadcast radio. Here are the common car and truck RC frequencies that you can use:

So the thing that you must understand here is that you must run on a channel that noone else near you is running. Have a chat with your local RC group that you will be racing with, and find out what frequencies are already being used. It also pays to buy a spare set of crystals, just incase. One last thing to note. You cannot mix between these frequency bands... that is, if your controller and receiver originally came with 29Mhz crystals, they won't accept 27Mhz crystals. You must stick to the same range.

TX and RX? Eh?

A set of crystals come branded with RX on one, and TX on the other. Stands to reason that RX goes in your receiver in the car, and TX goes in your transmitter. Get these the wrong way around, and probably nothing will happen. Same applies for AM and FM... put FM crystals into an AM radio system, and the car will probably have a spasm.

GLOSSARY: