Last reviewed: August 3, 2026 · By the RaceYear team
Short answer: An RC setup sheet is a one-page record of every adjustable setting on a car — suspension, shocks, drivetrain, tires, electronics — plus the track and conditions it was run in. Read a factory sheet in three passes: the conditions header first, then the boxes your car actually has, then the two or three numbers you can safely copy tonight.
Key takeaways
RC model and rule note: Settings, voltages, temperatures, fluids, gearing, tire treatments and service intervals are specific to the model, firmware, battery, motor, tire, class and venue. Use the manufacturer’s own instructions and the current event rules; menu percentages and setup directions are not necessarily comparable between brands.
You downloaded the sheet a factory driver ran at a big race, opened it, and a third of the boxes may as well be in another language. SWEEP. KICK UP. ANTI-SQUAT. BUILD. STROKE. Then near the header, one small line saying the track was indoor carpet with high grip — and your track is an outdoor dirt oval that goes dusty by the A-main.
That header line is the most important thing on the page, and almost nobody tells you that. Here’s how to read the whole document top to bottom, decide which numbers are worth anything to you, and start keeping your own.
An RC setup sheet is a single page that records every adjustable setting on one car, alongside the track and conditions it was run in. It exists so a setup can be repeated — by you next month, or by a teammate on the other side of the pit table.
Two different documents get called by the same name, and mixing them up is where most of the confusion starts.
Team Associated has been telling racers to keep sheets for years. The RC Handbook says to “get a notebook to take with you to the track,” and that when you change the car you should “make a note of what you changed, what affect the change had, and the track conditions.” It also points out that “many manufacturers now produce blank setup sheets for their cars,” and tells you to “make some photocopies, and keep them in a folder in your track box.” The RC10B6.4 manual compresses it to one line in its tuning tips: mark the change on the included setup sheet, and make copies before you write on it.
There is no universal RC setup sheet template. Every manufacturer prints its own, and the boxes follow that chassis — which is exactly why a sheet for someone else’s car has fields yours doesn’t, and is missing fields yours needs.
Here are two real blank sheets side by side, both from manufacturer kit manuals, so you can see what’s shared and what isn’t.
| Block | Tekno EB410.2 sheet (2019) | Team Associated RC10 4WD sheet (10-29-25 manual) |
|---|---|---|
| Conditions header | Indoor/outdoor, small/medium/large, smooth/bumpy/rutted/loose/hard packed, dusty/dry/wet/muddy, blue groove/clay, grip low/medium/high | Driver, date, track, event, indoor/outdoor, temp, surface (dirt/carpet/astro/multi), traction low/med/high, moisture wet/damp/dry, grooved/dusty/smooth/bumpy/hard pack/loamy |
| Suspension | Ride height, camber, caster, sweep, kick up, toe, sway bar, droop (front); ride height, camber, anti-squat, toe, sway bar, droop (rear) | Camber, caster, front ride height; rear hub carriers, rear ride height, camber; front and rear shock tower positions 1–3; wheelbase short/long/other |
| Shocks | Oil, brand, piston, spring, rebound, build, stroke | Spring, piston, shock oil, limiter |
| Drivetrain and power | Pinion/spur, motor, front/center/rear diff oil | Motor and wind, pinion, spur, battery, battery placement, ballast weight |
| Tires and body | Brand/tread, compound, insert, wheel, body make, wing make | Tire, compound, insert, wheel (front and rear) |
| Electronics and radio | Motor, ESC, radio, servo, battery | Radio settings, throttle/brake EPA, throttle/brake expo, steering expo, servo, ESC settings |
| Outcome | Notes | Qualify, main, finish, TQ, comments |
Read that table and the shape of the document becomes obvious. Both sheets carry the same spine — conditions, ride height, camber, caster, shocks, gearing, tires. Then each one adds boxes for the things that chassis lets you change. Tekno’s sheet has sweep, kick up and anti-squat because those are adjustable on that car. Associated’s sheet has shock tower positions numbered 1 through 3, wheelbase short/long/other, and rear hub carriers listed as 0° or 1.5°, because that’s how you move geometry on that platform.
Two practical takeaways from that. First, if a box on a factory sheet doesn’t exist on your car, stop trying to translate it — you can’t. Second, a good sheet prints its own options right on the page, which means the sheet doubles as a list of every adjustment your chassis has.
Some boxes copy straight across, some copy only inside one brand, and some are worthless to anyone who wasn’t standing on that driver’s stand. Sorting them is the whole skill.
| Box on the sheet | Copy it? | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Camber, caster, toe | Yes, if it’s your exact chassis | Angles mean the same thing on both cars, so these are the most portable numbers on the page |
| Ride height | As a starting point | Their number assumes their surface; a rougher club track usually wants more |
| Droop | No | Only comparable if you measure droop exactly the way they did |
| Shock oil | Only within the same brand | Two published charts convert 30 wt to different cSt values (see below) |
| Springs and pistons | Only within the same brand and range | Tekno’s own sheet prints a BRAND box right next to the OIL box for a reason |
| Pinion and spur | Convert to rollout first | Internal transmission ratios differ, so raw ratios don’t compare across cars |
| Tires, compound, insert | Almost never | The right tire tracks grip, and grip changes inside a single race day |
| Diff oil | Directionally, not literally | Use their thick/thin relationship, then adjust for your traction level |
| Radio EPA and expo | No | Those are driver preference, not chassis setup |
| Ballast and battery placement | No | Depends on what your electronics weigh and where they physically fit |
Droop is the amount of down-travel a suspension arm has, and it is the single most commonly mis-copied number on a setup sheet. CompetitionX puts it bluntly: “asking others what their Droop is is often a mute point – that number will only work if the both of you measure Droop the same way” (CompetitionX). The same page notes there are “a couple different ways to measure droop,” so two sheets can disagree simply because the two racers measured off different reference points.
Pick one method, write it down once, and use it forever. Then your own droop numbers compare to each other, which is the only comparison that ever mattered.
This one is worth knowing before you copy anything. Shock oil gets labeled two ways — weight (WT) and centistokes (cSt) — and the two published conversion charts we checked do not agree.
That’s a 75 cSt spread on the same label. They also disagree on how much brand matters: EuroRC warns “cSt and WT values aren’t directly comparable between manufacturers” and that mixing brands “will mess up your damping, even if the numbers match,” while So Dialed says brand-to-brand viscosities at the same label “vary a few percent — close enough to start, then dial in by feel.”
The safe read for a club racer: don’t convert across scales when copying someone’s sheet. Match the brand if you can, and if you can’t, treat their shock oil weight as a direction — thicker or thinner than kit — rather than a number. So Dialed notes that Mugen, Yokomo, Hudy and AKA label in cSt directly while most US brands label by weight, so check which scale you’re reading before you pour anything. More on that in our guide to shock oil, springs and ride height.
A pinion and spur pair off someone else’s sheet is meaningless until you convert it. So Dialed explains why: gear ratio can’t be compared across models because internal transmission ratios differ, while rollout — tire circumference divided by final drive ratio — describes how far the car actually moves per motor rotation (So Dialed). Same page makes the other point people forget: tire size is part of the calculation, so a racer who has sanded their tires down is effectively geared lower than you on the identical pinion and spur.
Run their numbers through a rollout calculation, then gear your car to land near their rollout. The full method is here.
Start by reading the two conditions headers against each other, then move the setup in the direction the grip difference demands — softer and freer for less grip, stiffer and tighter for more.
A national event track is groomed, watered and packed. A Wednesday club night is dry by the third heat and dusty by the A-main. That grip gap is the reason a downloaded factory setup can make your car worse.
Be honest about the ceiling here. Murfdogg’s own summary is that “there is no magic setup.” A downloaded sheet gets you a defensible starting point on a surface you’ve never run — it does not get you their lap times. Our surface-by-surface guide goes deeper on dirt, carpet and astro.
Write down the kit baseline before you change anything, then log one sheet per race day with the conditions and the result on it. That’s the entire discipline, and it beats memory every time.
Because the editable PDF was filled in a web browser instead of a real PDF reader. Petit RC, which hosts editable setup sheets, warns that “many persons fill the form on the web browser and save it afterward: the result is a blank setup sheet” (Petit RC).
Their fix is to save the file locally first — the page calls that “the key step in the process” — then open it in a PDF reader that supports forms, fill it there, and save it under a descriptive name. Their alternative, printing to PDF, produces a shareable file you can no longer edit.
That’s the mechanical failure. The bigger one is human: sheets that get filled in with settings but no conditions, no date, and no result. A setup number with nothing attached to it can’t teach you anything later, which is the only reason you wrote it down.
Lay them side by side in three columns — their number, your number, the difference — and work only the rows where the difference is real and the box exists on both cars. Cross out every row that failed the transfer test above before you start.
Then change in this order, biggest lever first:
Do those one at a time, with a run between each, and log what happened. Five logged changes on one night teaches you more than twenty guesses across a season.
Start with the manufacturer. Team Associated keeps a manuals and setup sheets section on its site, and most kit manuals print a blank sheet in the back. Beyond that, hobby dealers and hobbyist archives post factory driver sheets by car and event — RC Raceworx lists them with the conditions they were run in, and Petit RC hosts editable sheets you fill in on your computer.
No. Copy the parts that survive the trip to your track — geometry angles if it’s your exact chassis, gearing converted to rollout, diff and shock direction. Then set tires for your surface and your grip, not theirs. A national-level sheet was written for a groomed, high-bite track, and copying it whole onto a dry club track usually makes the car worse, not faster.
A kit setup sheet is the baseline the manufacturer built and tested the car with, printed in the manual. A race setup sheet is that same form filled in by a driver at one event, on one track, on one day. The kit sheet is where you start and what you return to when you get lost. The race sheet is a data point, not a destination.
Because you filled it in the browser. Petit RC warns that many people type into the form in a web browser and save it afterward, and the result is a blank setup sheet. Download the file to your computer first, open it in a PDF reader that supports forms, fill it there, and save under a descriptive name. A photo of a filled-in paper sheet never does this to you.
All of them. The value of a setup log is in the comparison, and you cannot compare two nights you didn’t write down. Keep the kit baseline, one sheet per race day, and a short note on how the car drove and where you finished. Team Associated’s own 4WD sheet has boxes for qualify, main, finish and TQ for exactly that reason.
You can absolutely do all of this on paper. Photocopy the blank sheet out of the kit manual, keep the stack in the toolbox, and write neatly — that’s how factory drivers did it for decades and it still works. The measuring isn’t the hard part. Filling the same boxes the same way every week, converting somebody else’s gearing before you trust it, and finding the one sheet from the night the car was perfect — that’s the part paper is bad at, and it’s what RacerRX was built for:
Log tonight’s setup in RacerRX — it’s free to start, and sheet number one takes about five minutes. New to RC tuning generally? Start with the RC car setup guide for beginners, then work through dirt oval, off-road and carpet setups and differential tuning once your baseline is written down. Once you can read one, the question is where to keep them — choosing an RC setup app covers what’s current in 2026 and where the free baseline setups are. One thing the sheet has no field for is the transmitter, and it should — EPA, dual rate and expo. The setup sheet field nobody records is RC gear mesh.
Hit a term on this page you’d have to go look up? They’re all defined in the RaceYear racing glossary.
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