Tuning and Dialing in your LOSI XXX-S

Setting the Ride Height

What is ride height?

Ride height is the distance between the bottom of the chassis to the track surface.
How do I set my ride height?The first step is to install all your electronics, motor, and battery in your XXX-S, as if it were ready to run on the track. To set your ride height you will need a ride height gauge. Several aftermarket companies offer ride height gauges and should be available at your local hobby shop or track. On your XXX-S you will notice that the sides of the chassis are slightly higher than the front suspension and rear suspension mounting area. This is because there is a slight angle from the center of the chassis to the very outer edge for clearance when rotating around corners. There is about a 1mm difference from the outside edge to the center of the chassis. The chassis is perfectly flat right below the front suspension and rear suspension of the car. This is where we measure the ride height as seen in the pictures. When you view setup sheets from the Losi website, the ride height number listed, was measured at the points shown here.
Ride height in pictures is set for example only and may differ from track to track
Most Carpet tracks have a minimum ride height rule, you'll want to check with your track to see if these rules apply. These rules are made so that cars do not run too low and cause snags in the carpet. For racing on carpet, with 55-59mm tire, we like to run our cars right around 3mm ride height unless the track does not allow that low. As for asphalt or concrete tracks with rubber tires there normally are no ride height rules. For asphalt we run our cars right around 4-5mm ride height. You will find as you lower the ride height of your car it will free the car up through turns. On some of the team driver’s setup sheets you will see they run the car a little lower in the front. This helps the car steer into the turn and hooks the car up more when coming back on power.
Now that the ride height is set on your sedan, we can move onto setting the "tweak"

What does tweaking your car mean?
It is balancing the front of the car to the rear. By not having your car tweaked flat you may experience a push to the right and your car being loose to the left or vice versa. By adjusting all four shocks and making all four corners of your car evenly preloaded will result in a well balanced and smooth feel with your car.Before you can "tweak" your car, your XXX-S needs to be in good running order. Be sure that that all the ball cups rotate freely, the shocks are clean and operating smoothly and that all hinge pins and suspension mount points move freely. If any of these parts are bound in any way, this will affect the "tweak" of you sedan.

Now take your hobby knife (a lot of the top racers like to use a hobby knife to find the perfect center on their car. Please use caution when using a hobby knife for this exercise) or 1/16” Team Losi Allen wrench and push up on the center in the rear of the car with your tool.

This is done on the rear bumper. If your car is not perfectly tweaked, one tire will start to rise before the other. In the picture below we find that the left tire rises before the right tire. This means your car is not TWEAKED properly.

As shown in the picture below, to fix this problem you will want to apply pressure to the left rear side and relieve pressure from the right rear side of the car. This is done by putting more preload on the right front shock (adjusting collar clockwise) and taking away a small amount of preload on the left front shock(adjusting collar counter-clockwise). Keep in mind when doing this you will only need to adjust the preloads of your shocks slightly to get the tweak corrected. You now have the front of your car tweaked flat with the rear. As shown in the picture below.

Now we are going to "tweak" the front end of the car. This is done the same way as in the previous steps. With the front end of your XXXs facing you, find the center of the car (use the bumper) and score or mark it like we did the rear. Now take your hobby knife or 1/16" Team Losi wrench, and slowly push up on the front until one or both of the tires come off the ground. If both front tires come off the ground simultaneously, your car is tweaked perfectly flat. If the left front (with the front of the car facing you) comes off the ground first you will need to apply more preload to the right rear shock (adjust collar clockwise) and reduce the preload on the left rear shock (adjust collar counter-clockwise). Check your tweak again until you get both front tires to rise off the ground simultaneously.

These tips should help get you on the road to successfully racing your Team Losi XXX-S.