vintage electrics and modern racing..

[B3.is.King]

well i have recently decided to attempt R/C racing again hopefully with a few more meets.

so i dug out the Associated B3 and blew about 10years of dust off of it lol...

found some old nicd batteries that were from my first tamiya car so they must have been 18years old! plugged them into my core-50 charger and low and behold after charging the batteries and the car worked.

so now onto my question... the current motor fitted is a Trinity speed gem opal 10 turn triple, with diamond brushess (use to see A finals with it on most meetings. Will be putting it on my motor lathe for good measure). So how will this compair to the modern brushless motors?

Will i be following a couple of laps behind someone running a stock RTR brushless setup?

have ordered a couple of lipo packs though, i like the sound of 30min run times electric powered seemss to have come on leaps and bounds.

[spikey_58]

Like you, I am returning to the sport after a 4 year break, lastly in Nitro. Last time I ran or bought batteries was ten years ago on NiCad's. The biggest leap has to be with LiPo so you should already see an improvement with your motor using a Lipo. Although need to ensure your ESC can handle it. But hey, I'm only a beginner myself hunting down new ESCs and motors myself.

I have gained so much knowledge from people on here that I am sure far more experieced and knowledgeable people will soon be offering their expertise (of which I can learn from even more

Welcome back to the hobby and hope you enjoy it

[B3.is.King]

i had to buy a new ESC as my old trusty Hitec SP1500 MOS FET had finally given up the ghost, most probally due to moisture in the attic...

so i bought a Modelsport sniper forward only (i didnt read product listing properly) seemed to be the cheapest ESC that could handle a brushed 10turn motor at £23. Im sure running everything on lipo wont make any difference to the lipos as its only a .2v increase n the voltage.

the only difference that i can see with these lipo ESC is that they have a cut off point, nothing that a stop watch can fix. or maybe install a heli voltage beeper??

[spikey_58]

You're a braver man than me! Yeh you could use the preverbial stop watch but then I guess speed, use and conditions will alter the speed your bettery drains as well. So be careful! You don't want any fires

(LiPo's actually scare me to death, so I'll stick with a built in cut off in an LRP or Orion etc just so I dont either burn my apartment block down, or myself haha)

[imull]

Just for comparison, I ran my Procat indoors last week in our 4WD heats just to see how she faired. I had a Trinity Kinwald 11x4, 1700 SCRCs and a Tekin 411G2 speedo and whilst I was a long way down on the top boys running 5.5 and lipo, the car was plenty capable against the other drivers in my final

There was only 1 car that out pulled me down the straight and I'll sort that with gearing (I was cautious as I didn't know how good the cells would be)

If you can, cycle your cells and use them to get back into the swing. Your cars handling is based on nicads/nimhs so changing to lipo is going to mean you needs loads of weight to set it up properly, which might pee you off in the short term.

Hope this helps and makes sense,

Ian

[jasjeet]

The advantage with lipo is that as they discharge they have a very flat power output, unlike Nimh/cd as they discharge they quickly lose power.

So with Lipo youll get a much longer runtime at close to peak performance. And they can provide much more current than the Nimh/cd batteries.

Lipo 2s is 2x3.7v cells, that fully charge to 8.4v.

If you want the stick kind of Lipo get some Turnigy ones off ebay, and a good cheap charger is the Turnigy Accucel 6.

[B3.is.King]

ah thanks for the replys.

i had'nt really thought about the loss of weight being a bad thing but now.... might ha ve to give that some thought

to be honest even when i did race i wasnt one to go into the car setup much past electrics and motor and tyres lol....might have to use use my brain this time around

[jasjeet]

Dont worry about weight tbh, if i put in my Nimh in my Xray T2 i cant tell a difference in handling compared to the Lipo.

I always read the pro reviews and they always say, there is no need to be adding weight here and there, usually stock works just fine.

[peetbee]

If you did want to bring the weight back up to the same as running nicd/nimh the simplest way is just to weigh your lipo and your nicd/nimh to work out the difference and cut a flat sheet of lead to the same weight and put it in the chassis under your lipo.

You may find with running brushed with a lipo that you get through brushes faster than with your old cells, but that's down to having the same power at the end of the race as at the start unlike the old days!
For racing I can't see you taking enough out of a fully charged lipo within 5 minutes to ever run it too flat, but if you wanted to be safe then Novak do a lipo cutoff that you can fit
Enjoy