RC Drifting 101 - Part 1

Welcome to the first part of my RC Drifting Tutorials where I talk about technical aspects of RC drifting. These tutorials are designed for everyone to get a better understanding on how RC Drifting works. In the first part I will talk about chassis selection.

2WD vs AWD

When it comes to RC drifting AWD is the way to go, due to the weight transfer and setup, 2WD RC’s are too difficult to drift.  2WD has a tail whip effect and will not give you that smooth sliding action that you see real drift cars doing. So if you plan on purchasing a chassis to drift make sure you choose an AWD car.

Basically any RC car that is AWD will work for RC drifting but of course there are some chassis’s that work better than others.

Some of the more popular brands are Tamiya, Hotbodies, HPI, and Yokomo.

If you are on a budget you can always go with an RTR chassis, the HPI E10 and the Tamiya TT01 are good choices to start out with, they are inexpensive and have tons of support for hop-ups and spare parts available at your local hobby shop.

HPI E10

Tamiya TT01

With the RC drifting scene becoming more popular, manufacturers have created drift packages, these cars are usually rebadged touring cars, with the addition of a drift body and slick drifting tires.

Some manufactures have created chassis’s and chassis conversions specifically for drifting such as the HPI PRO D (available in japan only), Yokomo D-Maxx, Yokomo Drift Master, Square TA-05 Drift Conversion and the more budget friendly HPI E10 Drift.

I would choose a drift chassis that has good parts support, these will give you the possibility to try out many different drift setups (I will be explaining different chassis setups in later tutorials)

You also get to choose from a shaft driven or belt driven drivetrain, this is up to preference, but I've found that shaft driven cars are easier to maintain and replace when they wear down. The downside to shaft is that it has torque steer when you have a powerful motor it tends to twist the chassis, belt driven cars are more forgiving because the flexibilty the belt provides under acceleration.

There are dozens of setups that a single chassis can be configured too, but your setups are only as good as the parts you can find, such as ball diffs, one-way diffs, shafts, shocks/springs and replacement parts that often break. The choices can be overwhelming, but HPI and Tamiya have a proven track record with the quality and their involvement in the RC drift community for the US market. I am partial to Yokomo chassis’s since that is what I use but Yokomo does not have a strong presence here in the USA, in Japan it’s the #1 choice for RC drifting, they have a huge range of D1 style drift bodies and hop-up parts that are specifically designed for drifting.

My 5 top choices for a drift chassis:

Yokomo SD

HPI Sprint 2 Drift

Hotbodies Cyclone Drift

Yokomo BD

Tamiya TA-05