How to Choose Tires for RC Car Models

Choosing the right tires for your remote-controlled car is crucial to maximizing performance and enjoyment, whether you're racing on smooth asphalt or challenging off-road courses. With so many tires available, compounds, tread patterns, and profiles significantly impact how well your RC car handles different types of terrain. Understanding these elements will help you make informed choices that enhance your driving experience and enable you to adapt to any track conditions you encounter, ensuring that you get the most out of your RC model.

What Are the Key Components of RC Car Tires?

1. Tire Compounds

The three main elements that makeup RC tires are foam, natural rubber, and synthetic rubber. Drag racing benefits significantly from the lightweight and superior grip of foam tires, but chunking can cause them to wear out quickly. Natural rubber is appropriate for long-term use where grip is less important because it is durable but has less traction. Between these two extremes, synthetic rubber offers a good grip while being softer than natural rubber. Although it may wear more quickly than more brutal compounds, it is a popular option for situations requiring excellent traction.

2. Tread Patterns

Your tire's tread design has a significant impact on its performance and grip. Because slick tires don't have tread, they can make the most contact with smooth surfaces like asphalt, which improves speed and handling. Because they dig into the ground to provide traction, spike and pin treads perform exceptionally well in uneven or loose terrain. Often seen on the front tires of two-wheel drive vehicles, ribbed treads aid in precise steering on a variety of terrains. The kind of surface you're driving on and the desired level of traction have a significant impact on the tread choice.

3. Tire Profiles

The profile of RC tires can be either square or rounded. For straight-line speed, square profiles optimize surface contact and offer superior forward traction. They might not be as successful at cornering, though. Rounded profiles are beneficial for off-road and uneven terrain because they minimize the contact surface, which makes it easier and more controlled to slide around turns. Knowing these profiles enables you to adjust the handling characteristics of your RC car to your preferred driving style and track conditions.

How to Choose RC Tires Based on Terrain

On-Road Surfaces

Your best option is to use slick tires on smooth surfaces like concrete and asphalt. By eliminating tread patterns, these tires increase the amount of surface area in contact with the ground, enhancing acceleration and grip. Ribbed tread patterns are an additional option that is especially useful for 2WD cars' front wheels since they provide precise steering control without compromising speed. For racers looking to maximum performance on reliable, smooth surfaces where minimizing friction is essential, both shapes are perfect.

Off-Road Conditions

Spike and pin tread tires excel in off-road situations, such as dirt, gravel, or rugged terrain, since they sink into loose surfaces to provide optimal traction. Spike treads feature more prominent protrusions, making them ideal for extremely rough terrain, whereas pin treads have smaller, more frequent projections that offer a flexible hold over a variety of off-road conditions. These innovations prevent slippage and ensure stable handling in unpredictable environments.

Specialized Tracks

Selecting tires with the right size of spikes is crucial while racing on grass or carpet circuits. On AstroTurf® or low-pile carpets, shorter spikes offer the necessary traction without causing excessive wear. Longer spikes can extend deeper into the ground to ensure adequate grip on longer heaps or field grass. Consider tires designed specifically for synthetic surfaces, such as AstroTurf®, when driving on them to balance durability and grip, minimizing unnecessary wear and maximizing performance.

How Can You Optimize Tire Selection for Specialty RC Applications?

RC Drifting

Tire Characteristics: Choose tires with controlled sliding capabilities; these usually have more brutal compositions to lessen grip.
Options: Because they allow for smoother and easier drifting, take into consideration tires with slick surfaces or low tread.

RC Drag Racing

Foam Tires: In straight-line racing, foam tires are used because of their lightweight design, which maximizes acceleration and grip.
Traction-Enhancing Treatments: Increase tire stickiness by applying traction compounds, which will improve performance and launch speed.

RC Rock Crawling

Durability and Traction: To preserve shape under pressure and offer better traction on uneven terrain, use tires with belts.
Reinforced Sidewalls: For increased durability and protection against jagged pebbles and uneven terrain, choose tires with reinforced sidewalls.
All-Terrain Capabilities: To improve climbing ability and stability in a range of rugged terrain, choose all-terrain tires.

Final Tips for Selecting RC Car Tires

Researching different tire formulations and tread patterns will significantly impact your RC car's performance. Each mix has unique properties that work well on a variety of surfaces and events. Experimenting will assist you in picking the ideal arrangement that fits your driving style and individual requirements, consequently boosting handling and speed.

Pre-mounted tire sets allow quick and straightforward tire switching, providing great convenience. This is especially useful during practice sessions or race days when time is limited. Pre-mounted sets eliminate the hassle of mounting tires yourself, and they also ensure that you're prepared to react swiftly to shifting weather or track conditions.

Having a diverse selection of tires on hand is a brilliant idea. This gets you ready for a variety of track conditions, such as rugged off-road terrain and smooth asphalt surfaces. When these tires are stored correctly, they stay in good shape and are prepared to operate at their peak when needed.

Customize Your RC Experience with the Right Tires

Choosing the right tires is essential to maximizing your RC drifting car's performance on various terrains and applications. By thoroughly understanding compounds, tread patterns, and profiles, you can configure your setup to suit specific driving styles and conditions. Experimenting with different options enhances performance and enjoyment, ensuring that you are always prepared for any racing challenge.

VS4-10 Phoenix Body and Accessories

Examining the wheel wells and other molded plastic chassis parts from above, you can see that the truck's breadth is thickest in the middle and gets thinner toward the front. This purposeful design offers the front tires greater mobility and raises the front-end clearance. In addition, it is a perfect reference for body alignment.

As many of you are already aware, the Phoenix's three-piece Lexan body includes the cab, back plastic cage, and rear Lexan fenders. However, if you prefer a truggy appearance, you do not need to use the rear fenders.

In any case, the body looks great and has the right headlight and taillight buckets, rugged plastic door handles, wipers for the windshield, and a complete interior with seats, a dash, a gearbox, and other components. Vanquish is also planning to manufacture an LED kit for the truck. It fits directly and is compatible with both 2S and 3S LiPo.

This body has been made easier to mount on the Phoenix thanks to a post that passes through a front hinge and is held at the other end with a body clip. Two clips hold the body in place at the back. Therefore, take out the two back clips and turn them up if you need to access the chassis rapidly.

With posts that sit in retainer holes, such as the side guard and rear shock tower holes, this body cleverly secures the chassis in many locations. The posts just rest in the holes; no body clips are utilized. However, the entire system retains the body tight on the chassis with minimal flex for a more solid, realistic appearance.

If you choose not to use the body, any 313mm wheelbase trail truck body should fit; however, you will need to purchase this Vanquish body mount set (VPS10113) and might need to reverse the front shock towers' orientation.

What VS4-10 Phoenix electronics do we suggest?

Since the stock body is obviously transparent, painting is necessary, and all other electrical parts are not included. We have specified this for our truck. We employed two EcoPower WP120T servos for the on-the-fly DIG and overdrive systems and a Protek 370TBL for steering. These servos run at high voltage, have aluminum servo horns, and are waterproof.

We fitted the truck with a Sanwa MT-44 transmitter and receiver, as all of these features require a four-channel transmitter. We installed the receiver in the fuel cell, but it shows the wires. To make it look cleaner, we'll probably hide that or move the receiver later.

Finally, the motor and ESC we used is the Castle Creations Copperhead 10 with the Slate 2280kv. It should be noted that this is a brushless, sensored system that is compatible with 4S LiPo, and that is precisely how we plan to use it.

What batteries do we suggest for the VS4-10 Phoenix?

Without the batteries, our finished truck weighs 2,874 grams, or around 6.3 pounds, on the scale. As you can see, we have a 50/50 left-right split with a significant front bias of almost 57%.

Battery examples:

The first is the 135-gram Protek 3S 1800mah pack, which eliminates 1% of the forward weight bias. The Protek 4S 1800mah comes next, weighing 175g, which is 40g more, but the outcomes are comparable.

This is Protek's larger 4500mah 3S shorty crawler pack, which eliminates 2% of forward weight bias and weighs 60g more than the previous battery (236g). Last but not least is Pit Bull's full-size 5000mah 3S LiPo battery. It weighs 357g, yet its front weight balance percentage is almost the same as the other three batteries.

Because the Castle Motor & ESC is compatible with 4S LiPo, we are utilizing a Protek 4S 1800mAh LiPo battery. With the factory gearing, the power delivery at the absolute low end is relatively slow, with a maximum top-end output of approximately 7 mph.

Without a doubt, we're using the stock Phoenix body, and Will, a local R/C enthusiast, gave it a unique paint job. It is fitting that he join us for a rock crawl as he also owns a VS4 Phoenix.

So, what's it like driving the Phoenix?

The first thing we noticed about the Phoenix was how well planted, steady, and steerable it is in this terrain. It also performs quite well. The truck has both wide and narrow wheel hub offsets; we chose the broad one, which probably helps with stability. The brass axle tubes, which increase weight down low, are another factor in this. Even though this is a "plastic truck," the chassis is incredibly stiff, which is another Phoenix trait that we believe is significant but not discussed enough. When you're driving across rugged terrain, the truck chassis remains sturdy, second only to an aluminum VS4 vehicle. The suspension is compelled to function simultaneously.

Finally, the true delight of the Phoenix was its on-the-fly features—mainly the DIG function, which allows the truck to turn on a dime or descend treacherous terrain with control. We made extensive use of this feature, which is quite beneficial when hiking. After using a truck, it isn't easy to return to driving one without a DIG.

For the majority of the crawling, we kept the truck at 6.5% and barely used the overdrive feature. We preferred the 6.5% overdrive option with the DIG since the 33% level seems like an oversteer when the truck's front end is driving the rear.

Summary

With an incredible list of features that it can perform straight out of the box, the VS4-10 Phoenix is a fantastic truck that comes highly recommended. At $500 for the kit, it's the least costly Vanquish VS4 ever launched, and we believe it to be the greatest.