Installing LC Racing Roll Bars for your 144001, 124019, 124017

The WL toys 124019 and 144001 are budget 4wd on/off road RC cars that have great handling due to the fact they were essentially copied from the LC Racing EMB-1 and EMB-TG. With that said like many cars the are susceptible to body roll making handling less than idea on high speed corners particularly where grip is good. In this article I'll show you the LC Racing anti-roll bars that will cure this body roll and how to fit and give you feedback on how it improves handling (spoiler: it's a big improvement). This mod is not suitable for the 124018 nor the 124016

The suspension in these WL Toys cars is very good from the factory but from time to time needs the suspension oil filled to the correct level which I show you how to do here. I found that replacing the very heavy brushed 550 motor with a much lighter system like my drop in brushless upgrade or cheapest brushless upgrade improved handling further thanks to the more even weight distribution and better loading on the springs.

Already this makes the car near untouchable from a handling standpoint in this budget class but you can go one step further and add the LC RACING Anti Roll Bar L6134 to improve it even more. In this guide I'll explain how they work and how you fit them and will then let you know if they are any good in real life.

How anti roll bars work
Anti roll bars in full sized cars have been around since the early 1900s so not exactly a new invention. I remember using them on my Kyosho Lazer ZX-R 4wd RC race buggy in the early 1990's and it wasn't a new addition to RC cars then either. The tech is simple - you have a sprung steel bar that essentially links a left suspension arm to a right suspension arm which makes both want to go up and down in unison. When one side of the car encounters obstacles or cornering forces that the other does not, this spring steel bar provides additional resistance - think of it as adding extra strength to the coil spring on the side that is trying to be compressed while the other is not.

So in the following scenarios:

• On both hitting and landing a jump square, both sides of the car experience the same forces and so the anti-roll bar makes no difference.
• Going around a high speed corner with grip the outside shock absorber will want to compress but since the inside shock is larger unchanged, the anti-roll bar will provide additional resistance to the outside shock compressing, greatly reducing body roll (hence the term "anti-roll"). This scenario is where the anti-roll bar shines.
• On an uneven surface where the car experiences a bump on one corner or side, there will be more resistance from the anti-roll bar as above but this is where the antiroll bar is detrimental since it dulls the ability of the shock absorber to do it's job with the extra spring provided.

In summary, really good for driving in regular surfaces at speed (track driving and street bashing) but poor for really bumpy and uneven terrain like off road bashing.

Here's a good explanation Cusco, a Japanese manufacturer of suspension parts for JDM cars

Installation
Installation of these anti-roll bars are very simple, luckily WL toys copied the LC Racing car so well they they also included the mouldings and fixings that allow these to be bolted straight up. No cutting nor and extra parts are required. This mod is not suitable for the 124018 nor the 124016 because the rear arms on these cars are reversed and so mounting points are unavailable. I would recommend using droop screws as well because at full extension the anti-roll bars come close to touching diff cups and drive shafts.

Sway bar kit L6134 comes with soft, medium, hard bars for front and real. I'd recommend starting with medium front and rear first, even on a light car.

Remove the 2 screws and plastic brace at the front (circled) and nest the bar into the moulded slot in the diff housing. Re-fit the plastic brace and tighten the screws.

Use the included M2 screws with 1.5mm hex drive heads to fix the plastic riser bars to the suspension arms through the pillow balls as circled above. Holes are present in the stock suspension arms.

Tighten the M2 grubs screws in the circle ball joints on the bar as circled above. I would recommend loctite for the grub screw here. This essentially attach the bar to the suspension ares via the plastic riser bars.

Repeat the same exercise on the rear.

Here is the finished article with the medium anti-roll bars fitted on the front and rear. Even with this very light car (2440 motor) I found the soft bars too soft to be much use

So do they make a difference?
Yeah they do. The car feels a lot more confident in faster corners. By this I mean more predictable - changing the steering angle and throttle gives you the feedback you would expect. Of course, like any suspension item you can tune to your needs, this is another tool and the fact that hard, medium and soft bars are included for front and rear shows that they want you to have these options.

Should I get them?
If you want to get the most out of your car then yes. It's easy to become focussed on top power and speed without thinking about the handling aspect and to do this is selling yourself short. The car I have this doesn't have and expensive ESC, has a small 2440 4600kv motor with the stock 2s 1500mah battery and tyres that aren't super grippy. It is however light and well balanced and I did spend time getting the suspension settings right so it's actually my favourite car to drive at present. They sway bars are the cherry on top and give me that extra bump to handling I really like. Besides they are only $10 for the whole set and you can either get them delivered worldwide from Aliexpress here or you may have a local distributor.

Parts used in this particular car:

Anti Roll Bars -LC RACING Anti Roll Bar L6134
Front Wheels - 2PCS HT C601-5 Tires Wheels
Rear Wheels - 2PCS HT C601-5 Tires Wheels
ESC - Surpass Hobby KK 35A brushless ESC
Motor - Racerstar 2440 4600kv brushless motor
Radio Gear - ​DumboRC X6 Transmitter with Gyro
Servo - SURPASS Hobby S0017M 17g Digital Servo
Pinion - 15t 0.7m pinion gear
Battery - Stock 2s 1500mah lipo
Front hubs - Wltoys New metal hub carriers

This probably my favourite car at the moment due to its mix of speed efficiency and handling. I'll look to write up an article soon around tuning the handling to be more of a street basher.

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