A handy little kitchen-scale* allowed us to make some weight analysis:

We’d just received the new Etronix Brushless 10Turns + Esc set and we were curious to check what the difference in weight would be. So we took:

• a standard brushed motor – GM Racing Purple Tiger – 21 Turns
• vs.
• the new 10T brushless motor by Etronix.

174-151 = 23 grams lighter. In all fairness though, the Brushless ESC is heavier probably by more than just 23 grams.

*——————————————-*

The real and more interesting comparison is in the type of battery we can use with the new Brushless Set – NiHm vs. Lipo: 

• an old NiHm 3300 mAHr
• vs.
• a new Lipo 4000 mAHr (20c)

359-213= 146 grams lighter which is a considerable 10% of the overall car’s weight!

We saw a BIG improvement in Speed (due to Motor) but mostly in Run Time. We have two of these new Lipo 4000 mAHr batteries and, in all fairness, we still haven’t managed to run them to their 6v lower limit. (the weather always forced us off the track before the batteries gave in)

One really pleasant surprise was the Lipo-friendly ESC (Viper V12r) which allows us to use these new excellent batteries also on our previous brushed motors.

Thanks for watching

A.

WARNING : Don’t attempt soldering unless you know what you’re doing or are being supervised by someone who does. We won’t accept any responsibility if stuff goes wrong or if you hurt yourself.

Following a series of complications caused by the high current trying to flow through the Tamiya connectors (the older they are the worse the problems get) we decided to make the “leap” and move onto Deans T type connectors.

•  <– Tamiya Type Connector

     <– Deans Connectors

They’re really rather inexpensive to buy (for example: in sets of 5 males and 5 females plugs) All that needs to happen is a little soldering:

A set of “soldering helping hands” are really rather precious for this type of work as they also allow for the two bare battery leads to be kept nicely apart.

Given the opportunity we’ve also made some Tamiya-to-Deans adapters so that we could still keep swapping between Newer and Older ESCs and, if necessary, swap batteries around. More importantly, our old Battery Charger had Tamiya-Connectors and it felt wrong to change it.

Here are the results:

All recently purchased LIPO batteries and ESCs came fitted with Deans connectors and we’re pretty sure we’ll never need to change to any other type. They just feel real sturdy and trustworthy.

In all honesty, fitting the NiHm 1800 battery with Deans seems, in retrospect, a bit of a waste of time.. but it’s done; so let’s pretend that it’s nice to know that those precious 120 seconds of run time are flowing through Deans!

Thanks for watching.

A.

We wanted to introduce to you our Team’s Supervisor/Engineer. Litxia is always carefully overseeing any of the RC work that takes place in our workshops…..  

 

How did people learn anything new before the days of YouTube ?

After watching How to Clean a brushed Motor (on YouTube) using a simple power drill, a   piece of sandpaper, and some “time”. I did my best to clean out our old but mighty Dr. Speed.

The opportunity also helped us determine that it is indeed a 12T motor.

Used a piece of sand paper and an electric drill to polish off the commutator: (see you tube videos for a full walk-through)

nice and shiny and it’s been working pretty great since !

Thanks for watching

A.