Yesterday we looked at How to Lower Your Hotwheels Vehicle but today ‘It’s all about that Stance, bout that stance (low travel)’ *
Stancing your Hotwheels (JDM) car is another method of lowering your hotwheels in that the result is a vehicle sitting a lot closer to the ground. The difference however is that you will not have a rolling chassis when you are done. HellaWhat-eva!
Don’t Be a Debbie Downer.
I consider myself a glass is half full kind of guy and something I like to say is that
“the only two negative things I allow in my life are Camber and Offset”
So without further ado, let’s take a look at how to stance your hotwheels car and get some negativity into your life! :p
How to Stance a Hot Wheels Car
The first thing you will need to do is remove the base and take the axles out. I am going to go through the process of removing the axles so they can be returned to their original home without incident but please follow the link HERE if you would like to know how to remove the base in the most clean and efficient manner.
Removing the axles…
- To remove the axles you need to lift up the plastic tabs holding the base (this does not work with metal bases for obvious reasons) and the best way to lift these tabs up is with a tiny flathead screwdriver. Like this one:
- Lift the tabs by gently placing (wedging rather) the head of the screw driver into the axle channel under the tab and prying it up. You don’t need that much force so don’t push too hard or you will snap the plastic tab clean off. You will also need to do the side with the two tabs first, but you’ll figure that out quick yourself 😉
TAKE NOTE of how far the axles stick out each side of the base!
The reason you need to note this is because you cannot bend the axles beyond this point. If you do you will not have the negative camber on each side that makes the car stanced and sit so hellaflush. Instead you will just have wheels trying to push up into the guards with maybe a hint of negative camber.
- Once you have removed the axles and noted where exactly the bends need to occur you need to…. bend them. To do this you take a pair of [pointy nose] pliers and hold the axle just a mm shy of where you want the bend to happen.
- I start with the end furthest from me and whilst holding the axle firmly in the pliers I gently bend the wheel up. I use pointy nose pliers because the thin head means I can bend the wheel until it hits the pliers and won’t bend anymore. This results in all four wheels being bent at roughly the same angle.
- It is important that you take care for this next step as it requires a steady hand, for like a second anyway.
- Now that you have bent one wheel you need to bend the other AT EXACTLY THE SAME ANGLE. TO do this you need to gently and carefully slide the pliers down the axle so they come to rest in the requisite position on the other end. If you move too fast or lose focus the axle turns in your hand and you end up bending the opposite wheel at a scewed angle and the car never quite sits right.
- Pictures don’t really show the angles but I have already bent the top wheel and have now carefully moved down to the bottom without disturbing the axle itself. The result should be an evenly bent axle and two wheels sitting at ridiculous (ridiculously awesome) angles.
- Repeat this process for the second axle (I always recommend slightly less camber on the rear but that’s just me) and then place your axles back into their channels. Because we neatly lifted the plastic tabs we should be able to take the same screw driver from before and use it to push and then press the tabs back down into place:
BEFORE.
AFTER.
- Now that your axles are back in place you can put the body back on aaaaaand spend the next 2 minutes frustratingly turning the wheels round and round until they finally decide to listen to you and roll from positive to a negative camber position. :p
Hellasweet Results
From this…
To this…
And because you know I love a good bit of diorama action. Not bad considering this isn’t even a wheel swap!
will it still drive
generally no. When it does it looks absolutely hysterical as it goes from serious negative camber to stupidly positive and back again LOL
Maybe affixing the axles in place would fix this problem? Also, people tend to bend the axles too far resulting in massive camber. Is it that difficult to do just a tiny amount of camber instead?
Agreed! – and no not at all, slight camber is just as easy as over doing it IMHO
There is a video on YouTube that shows you how to rebuild the axles and it will still role no plroblem
I actually lower and give camber by taking a couple of cut pieces of a ziptie and gluing them under the axle, then shaving down the fenders a bit to make sure it can roll sorta, ive done this on a prelude, 22b, datsun 510 wagon, a wheelswapped kia stinger, an djust finished my gr supra and an intercooler, its not too difficult to do however there is a bit of superglue involved, but very, very little