Putting an RC Away: Storage That Doesn't Destroy It

Most RC damage does not happen while you are driving. It happens over the four months the car sat in a cold garage with a charged pack in it and dirt still on the chassis.

Nothing about storage is difficult. It is a half-hour of work that decides whether you come back to a car that runs, or to a puffed battery, a corroded transmitter, and bearings that grind.

⚠️ The two that actually destroy things

1. Lithium packs must go to storage voltage

A lithium pack left fully charged degrades measurably faster, and sits closer to the state where a fault becomes a fire. A pack left flat can drop below the voltage where recharging it is safe at all.

Put every lithium pack to storage voltage — around 3.80–3.85 V per cell — before it goes away. Most chargers have a Storage mode that gets there from either direction. The charger guide covers the numbers; the LiPo safety guide covers where and how to keep them.

Store them somewhere cool, dry, fire-safe, and not in the car. A pack left connected will slowly drain through the ESC and end up at zero.

2. Take the batteries OUT of the transmitter

If your radio runs on AA cells, remove them. Alkaline cells left in a device for months leak, and the corrosion travels up the contacts and into the electronics. It ruins transmitters, and it happens in exactly the situation where nobody is looking.

Same for anything else with disposable cells: a glow igniter, a battery checker, a temperature gun.

Clean it before it goes away

Dirt is not neutral. It holds moisture against metal, it holds salt if you ran anywhere near a treated road, and it wicks into bearings.

• Clean the chassis properly before storage, not after you get it back out. There are two guides here on doing it after a wet or muddy run and a dusty or sandy one.
• Dry it completely. Compressed air if you have it, and time.
• Check for water in places it hides: inside the receiver box, under the servo, inside the wheels.
• A light film of protective oil on exposed metal is worth it in a damp garage.

The mechanical bits

Bearings. If the car has been through water, the bearings have too. Clean and re-oil them before storage, not after — a rusty bearing seizes over months. See the bearing care guide.

Tires flat-spot. A car sitting on its tires for months, especially in the cold, takes a set that may never fully come out. Either store the car up on a stand with the wheels off the ground, or take the wheels off, or at minimum rotate them occasionally.

Foam inserts take a set too, for the same reason, and a compressed insert changes how the tire behaves. Off-the-ground storage solves both at once.

Shocks. Leave them assembled; there is no benefit to draining them. If you want to be thorough, storing the car with the suspension unloaded — wheels off the ground — takes the standing load off the springs and seals.

Grease and diff oil do not need changing for storage, but if a diff is already leaking, fix it before it empties onto the chassis over four months.

Nitro is different, and it is not optional

Methanol pulls water out of the air. A nitro engine left with fuel in it can rust its bearings and crankshaft internally while sitting on a shelf doing nothing.

Before storage:

1. Empty the tank.
2. Run the engine dry so the lines and carb clear.
3. After-run oil through the glow plug hole and the carb, and turn it over by hand to spread it.
4. Clean and re-oil the air filter.

The nitro guide has the full version. This is the single most important thing on that page and it matters most before a long layup.

Where you put it

• Cool and dry beats warm. Heat ages batteries and rubber.
• Avoid anywhere that swings through the dew point. An uninsulated shed that goes cold overnight and warm by afternoon condenses water onto everything inside it, repeatedly.
• Off the floor, especially a concrete floor — concrete stays cold and damp.
• Out of sunlight. UV hardens tires and yellows polycarbonate bodies.
• Rodents chew wiring. A car stored in a shed or garage over winter is a nesting site with tempting cables. A sealed plastic tote solves this and the dust at the same time.
• The body off the car, or supported, so it does not deform under its own weight or take a set from a body clip.

Write down what state you left it in

Six months is long enough to forget everything.

Note what you were in the middle of, anything that was already broken or worn, what gearing and setup you were running, and which packs went into storage. The Run Log and setup sheets on this site are exactly this — and a rig with its state recorded is the difference between picking up where you left off and starting again from confusion.

Bringing it back out

Do not just charge a pack and go.

1. Inspect every lithium pack before charging it. Any swelling, damage or a cell that has drifted very low means it does not get charged — it gets retired. Check cell voltages first.
2. Fresh cells in the transmitter, and check the contacts for corrosion.
3. Check every screw. Things loosen even sitting still, and you may have left it mid-repair.
4. Check the gear mesh. It is free, it takes a minute, and a wrong mesh is the fastest way to end the first run back. See the gear mesh guide.
5. Spin every wheel and listen for bearings.
6. Check the diffs turn smoothly and have not emptied.
7. Bind and range check if anything about the radio changed, and confirm the failsafe — see the binding guide.
8. Wheels off the ground, gentle throttle, listen. Then drive it gently for the first pack.

Tires that flat-spotted usually come back after a run or two of use and a bit of heat. Tires that hardened with age do not — see the tires guide.

If anything at all feels wrong on that first run back, the systematic version of finding it is in the troubleshooting guide.

The short version

If you do only three things: storage-charge the packs, take the cells out of the transmitter, and clean it before it goes away. Those three cover most of what actually gets destroyed by sitting still.