SkyRC corner weight system Review

In all forms of racing, ensuring you have a good knowledge of the overall balance of a car is an essential tuning aid.

If your car is unbalanced you will experience the car rolling more one way than the other leading to all sorts of handling issues when trying to get a consistent handling car.

There have been many ways to check the balance of your car, from the basic Hudy balance tool, to buying your own 4 sets of digital scales to place under the 4 wheels of your car. However SkyRC have now released a system that promises to give you a comprehensive range of chassis balance information in a nice simple package, so lets take a look.

Whats in the Box?

The small box contains the four individual corner weights, the main unit and also a power cable if you want to use your 12v power pack to power the device. I opted to fit 4 AA batteries into the bottom of the unit to power it.

Setting it up is very easy. You just plug the Jack plugs into the unit for all of the corresponding units and press the on button. You also need to ensure that you place the scales onto a solid flat surface such as your pit board, otherwise you will not get an exact display.

The display is clear and you can see the information displayed below

As you can see you get all of the crucial information that you need. The weight's measure down to a 1/10th of a gram (it can also use ounces) which is more than close enough. Also each scale is able to take a weight of up to 2kg, allowing this to be used for a range of cars from 1/8 buggies all the way down to 1/12 pan cars.

Balancing the car.

I switched the unit on and waited until it reset all of the corner scale values to 0. I then set about placing the TRF418 on the scales.

NOTE: Here is my 1 critisism, it would be good if each scale had a centre point marker. As placing the car down on the scales is a little hit and miss to ensure its central on the scales.  However its not really much of an issue and you soon get used to placing it in the middle (Although set-up wheels will help).

As I wanted to ensure the weight of the electrics etc were as well balanced as possible, I actually made 4 turnbuckles that were the same length as the shocks from eye to eye. I swapped them with the shocks and positioned things around to get the car in the right ball park. Then I swapped in the shocks.

As you can see, It didn't take long to get the balance of the car very close to the perfect balance. I like to have a little more weight on the rear of the car, but the left and right is very close. After this pic I removed the 5g weight at the rear right of the car to ensure that the left and right balance was even closer.


I wont lie, the car felt great when I took it to the track racing, although it has been great for quite some time. My original balance was pretty close, but now I have the confidence that the balance is even more precise, and it may have been psychological but I managed both fastest lap and FTD with the car and I was really confident with the car and it felt very stable.

Tweak

The good thing is that it also shows both the front right and rear left, and Front left and rear Right combined weights. This is then adjusted with the preload spacers on your shocks. I always ensure that they are the set at the same distance (I measure mine with digital verniers to ensure they are equal, otherwise they will affect the readings). Then turn them to get a better balance.

NOTE: I wouldn't adjust them too much, so a couple of grams here and there is fine, you do not want your pre-load spacers to be massively different as it may start to then affect your ride height settings etc.

Once you have the car balanced, check ride height, and then make sure you adjust the pre-load spacers equally to get the car sorted again.

This system gives you the ability to quickly see if your car has tweaked after a collision, the TRF418 seems to never tweak, but sometimes the shock collar can move in a collision which will change the FR/RL weight. This will also be good when running the GT12 or F1 it will really help to be able to quickly see if the springs need adjusting to ensure that the car feels balanced.

Overall

The SkyRc Corner weight system is a cracking piece of kit, and something that will stay in my pitbox until I retire from the hobby. The price is quite high, but it's a specialist part for a niche hobby.

The information is great that they provide, but be warned, you do not want to obsess about perfect balance a few grams here and there is ok, otherwise you might just start loosing your mind ;)

The fact I can use it on all of my cars is a big advantage, and when we are chasing that extra tenth of a second, the knowledge that you have a perfectly balanced car will always help.