New to Brushless

[marca]

Hey guys

After realizing how expensive nitro is to maintain i was wondering if brushless cars and trucks need the same amount of time and money to maintain. if not i would like to get into brushless. i would like a 1/8 vehicle for offroad. any recommendations?

[SS Pede]

The brushless motor itself hardly requires any maintenance, just occasional lubrication of the bearings (and I mean occasional). The thing that you'll need to maintain and spend money on is batteries. It's nice to have good batteries with brushless to get the most performance possible. This costs some money up front, and you'll want a decent charger. Then you just have to keep a few rules in mind about battery treatment. There's definitely less time required to maintain things, but I'm not sure about money.

Currently there aren't any 1/8 scale vehicles that come in brushless form out of the box. You'd have to do a conversion yourself, or spend a ton of money for a company to do it for you. I should partly take that back though. You could buy an Emaxx and put a brushless system in that. But for other 1/8 vehicles like buggies and stuff you'd have to do a custom job. It's easy to make any number of 1/10 scale vehicles brushless, however. Or you could buy one of the Traxxas VXL models and have brushless from the get-go.

[marca]

ok thanks a lot well i was looking to getting a 1/8 truggy

[SpEEdyBL]

1/8 buggy/truggy conversions are real easy these days. Mike @ rc-monster sells custom motor plates that replace the rear center diff bulk of a lot of popular 1/8 vehicles. So once you have a vehicle and motor plate all you have to do is find a way to strap in the batteries and you are ready for a brushless setup.

[marca]

1/8 buggy/truggy conversions are real easy these days. Mike @ rc-monster sells custom motor plates that replace the rear center diff bulk of a lot of popular 1/8 vehicles. So once you have a vehicle and motor plate all you have to do is find a way to strap in the batteries and you are ready for a brushless setup.


Now how much can those setups run me?

[SpEEdyBL]

The cheapest route is a feigao xl motor along with the Mamba Max. That will cost about $215. Then you will need a battery. You could run 12-16 nimh cells but you wont get the full potential of brushless with them and you may not be able to fit them in the vehicle. If you are interested in lipo a Maxamps 5000 mAh 4s pack and hyperion 5i charger is about $250. I have that that pack and I absolutely love it so far.

Now, I don't recommend that you go with the feigao mm combo. I run an 8xl on the MM in my Ofna MBX R2, and both esc and motor heat up pretty quickly. The novak HV4.5 system stays cool, though it is not ideal for 1/8 conversions, because it only has a 1/8" shaft, which can break easily. The lehner or neu motors are twice the cost of the feigaos, but they wont overheat as easily and they are much higher quality design wise.

[schenck77]

speedy is right on with this. The feiago setups will get you good power but you will also have to watch the temps. A neu or lehner motor will run cooler because its more effiecent but will cost you.

You might also want to check out some truerc 8000mah packs. They are not as good cells as the maxamps 5000's but they are cheaper and will work well unless you have a very hot setup.

[Duster_360]

Everybody keeps telling me I shouldn't try to run 16cells on my 8XL with mm (using a ubec). I'm waiting on fans to show up and its getting close to testing time. Frankly I want the speed 16cells should deliver, but I don't want fry my mm. This is in a flm chassied emaxx, with UE cvds, TI centers, GM single speed trans, UE idlers and flm diffs. Mostly for parking lot bashing. I've upgraded motor brgs to Boca ceramics. Is 16 a prob or no? Thanks

The 8xl was $70 (Offshore Electrics), mm was $35 after I sold the motor/pc cable link it came with (close out sale!), RC Monster heatsink/clamp and brg upgrade $50. It can be done cheaper, just takes looking and some luck.

If this works as well as my 18th scale BLs (Vendetta, MQ SE, M18 and M18MT), then will consider quark monster pro and a neu or something of that quality level and go lipo. Want to get 'comfy' with a big scale bl first! Who knows, maybe by then mmm will be out, rather go than way for esc.