The Post-Run Teardown: Ten Minutes That Stops Cheap Damage Becoming Expensive

Most expensive RC repairs start as a cheap one that nobody spotted. A loose grub screw becomes a stripped spur. A dry bearing becomes a cooked motor. A hairline crack in an arm becomes a broken arm plus a bent hub plus a snapped driveshaft, mid-jump, three weeks later.

Ten minutes after each session catches nearly all of it. This is what to look at, in an order that means you are never chasing your own tail.

Do this bit before you put it down

Two things, immediately, while you are still at the car:

1. Take the battery out. It should not sit connected in a hot car boot or a bag.
2. Feel the motor and ESC — or better, point a temperature gun at them. This reading is only valid in the first minute or two; after that it means nothing. Comfortably warm is fine. Hot is a message about gearing, mesh or drivetrain drag, and it is the earliest warning you get.

Everything else can happen at the bench.

The order, and why it is this order

Work outside in and top down, so you are not undoing your own work: clean before inspecting (you cannot see a crack under mud), inspect before tightening (a cracked part does not need tightening, it needs replacing), and leave anything requiring disassembly until last.

1. Clean it — but the right way

Dry and dusty: a soft brush and compressed air. Get grit out of suspension pivots, out of the gear covers, and off the shock shafts.

Wet or muddy: this matters more, because water does its damage in the days after the run, not during it.

• Get the standing water out with compressed air or a leaf blower
• Wash the grit off before it dries in place — dried grit in a hinge pin or bearing is abrasive forever
• Dry somewhere warm with airflow for hours, not minutes. Not sealed in a bag or box; trapped moisture with no airflow is the worst case
• Re-oil the bearings once it is genuinely dry

⚠️ If it was salt water, rinse with fresh water immediately. Salt keeps corroding long after everything looks dry. Rinsing is the whole treatment.

What not to do: avoid blasting a pressure washer directly at bearings, the motor, or electronics seams. It drives water past seals that would have kept out ordinary splashing.

2. Shock shafts and shock bodies

Do these early, because you are looking for a film of oil that cleaning will remove.

• Run a finger down each shock shaft. Oily? That shock is leaking and has less oil in it than its partner — which means the two ends of that axle are damped differently. That is exactly the fault that makes a car behave differently turning left than right.
• Look for a bend in the shaft by compressing each shock slowly and feeling for a catch.
• Check the shock body mounts for cracks.

Leaking shocks get rebuilt in pairs. Rebuilding one leaves you with mismatched damping, which is worse than two equally tired shocks.

3. Suspension, arms and hubs

• Look for hairline cracks, especially around hinge-pin holes and shock mounts. Flex each arm gently by hand — a cracked arm gives differently from a sound one, and you will hear it.
• Check hinge pins have not walked out. Retainers and E-clips go missing.
• Sight down the front and rear from a meter away for a bent hub, block or arm. One wheel leaning differently from its opposite is the tell.
• Check every turnbuckle by rolling it on a flat surface — a bent one will wobble visibly.
• Check the ball ends have not popped off or worn loose.

4. Drivetrain

• Spin the wheels by hand with the motor disconnected. They should turn freely and coast. Gritty, rough, or noticeably different side to side means bearings.
• Check the gear mesh — and check the pinion grub screw is still tight on the flat of the motor shaft. This is the single most common thing to work loose, and losing it takes the spur with it.
• Look at the spur gear teeth all the way round for chips or a flat spot.
• Check the slipper, if fitted. It should take real force to slip. Too loose and it heats and glazes; a car that has "lost power" is very often a slipping slipper rather than a tired motor.
• Look for oil around the diffs. Oil outside is oil that is no longer inside.
• Check driveshafts and dogbones — pins present, cups not worn oval, no visible twist.

5. Fasteners and hardware

• Wheel nuts. Every time. First thing on the list for a reason.
• Motor mount screws, servo mount screws, and the servo horn screw — a loose servo horn feels exactly like a failing servo.
• Anything you can reach with a driver, checked for snugness — not over-torqued, which strips plastic threads.
• Look at the chassis for cracks, especially around the motor mount, the shock towers and any impact point.

6. Electronics and wiring

• Trace every wire for chafe, especially where they pass through the chassis or near moving suspension.
• Check connectors for heat discoloration. Brown or loose means it has been running hot — replace it before it becomes an intermittent fault you chase for weeks.
• Check the receiver is still seated in its box, and the aerial is intact and routed away from carbon, metal and power wires.
• Check the ESC is still mounted and its wires are not under tension.

7. Tires and wheels

• Check the glue line all the way round each tire. A tire unglued in one spot balloons at speed and behaves like a completely different compound.
• Squeeze each tire — inserts should feel matched, at least front-to-front and rear-to-rear.
• Spin each wheel and watch for it running out of round or wobbling.
• Look at the wear pattern. Uneven inside-edge wear says camber; feathered edges say toe; one side of the car wearing faster than the other is not a setting — that is tweak, a bent part or unequal ride height.

The three-tier checklist

Not everything needs doing every time.

Every run (5 minutes):
Battery out · motor and ESC temperature · wheel nuts · pinion grub screw · gear mesh · quick clean · shock shafts for oil · look for cracks

Every few runs (15 minutes):
All of the above, plus: spin test all four corners · every fastener · wiring and connectors · tire glue lines · diff check for leaks · slipper tension

Periodically, or when something flags it:
Bearing clean or replace · shock rebuild in pairs · diff rebuild · full mechanical setup check · re-check bump steer

After a crash specifically

A crash changes the list. Before the next run:

1. Tweak test — hard landings twist chassis plates
2. Sight down both ends for a bent hub, block or shaft
3. Roll every turnbuckle on a flat surface
4. Compress each shock, feeling for a bent shaft
5. Re-check bump steer — a bent steering part reintroduces it
6. Re-check gear mesh and that the drivetrain still spins freely
7. Range check the radio. Aerial damage is invisible and this is how you find it

Keep a short log

A note on your phone with the date, what you ran on, anything you found, and anything you changed. Within a season it tells you which parts wear fastest on your car, whether a surface is unusually hard on it, and whether that handling change was gradual wear or something you did.

It also stops the most common self-inflicted mystery: chasing a handling problem that started with a repair you made and forgot about.

What we could not confirm

We are not publishing torque figures or service intervals in runs or hours. Fastener torque depends on material and thread — plastic strips easily and there is no universal figure — and how often anything needs attention depends entirely on surface, water, temperature and how hard the car is driven.

Your model's manual is the authority for both, and many manufacturers publish a maintenance schedule for their specific chassis. Use the checks above as the trigger rather than a calendar.