axle182

iTrader: (18)

Thats funny, i seem to remember a thread last year along similar lines. People seemed to want more choice, and wanted to be able to spend MORE money than just race. The SMART thing to do, if everyone could agree, would be spec a battery, get a bulk order, cheaper on every single driver, and hey, we all have the same pack so why sweat it. Technology can improve and we wont need to worry about it. Hell who has noticed how much cheaper the spec tire has made things? i know i know..... its too close to so called ' full spec' racing for some people. It could be so easy to do this.... mega easy.

Can you imagine the power WE would have as racers, if we went out in an organised fashion, setup a proposal as a series, and sent it to respective distributors for reputable battery manufacturers? They could be looking at a lock on a series, with an agreed price, definate sales etc. It could be done. You *could* do it with any parts we WASTE our money on.....

Capt'N_Slow

iTrader: (10)

Completely agree with you AJ. The South West Tour (http://www.southwesttour.com/) has done exactly this and picked two manufactures. Orion for Batteries and Novak for Brushless Motors.

As a result of locking in for 3 years with these sponsors they get special treatment as a series from novak / orion. So not only does everyone have the same power on the track they get a price break on the products.

The SWTour only runs pan cars on oval while WCICS is currently running 7 classes of cars on road courses. Other differences I noticed as well.

-3 out of 7 classes can run the same battery (1s lipo).
-5 out of 7 classes can run the same motor type (brushless).
-2 out of 7 classes run the same chassis (touring car / 12th scale).

I can see now why there is a desire to have more choice as it is going to be challenging to find a battery that fits all 7 class chassis correctly on the market. (touring car : upper deck clearance, mini/gt fitting a 6 cell battery stick opening.).

BoneCrusher

iTrader: (2)

On the subject of Touring Stock weight limit, I’m just wondering how I would get my car’s weight down without spending money. I’ve got an Xray with the brushed motor, ESC, servo, receiver on one side and the SMC 4000 lipo on the other. Race ready weight is 1530 grams. I’ve got about 170 grams of weight on the outside of my Lipo to balance my car. Sure I can remove the lead to come in at 1400 grams but how do I then balance my car. I guess if I spend more on lighter, smaller and MORE EXPENSIVE motor, ESC, servo, and receiver and some lighter parts I can do it. Then doesn’t that become ‘who can spend more money?’ to do better in this HOBBY? Does that extra 100 grams (some want 1500 gram reduce to 1400 grams) make really that much difference to you? I’m in this hobby just to have fun.

my 2 cents,

Ivan

axle182

iTrader: (18)

Good points Micah, but no need to spec the whole series, you spec the classes on a class basis. Look at touring stock, its still a big class in itself, it could easily have batteries spec'd. you could spec a battery for the whole of touring including GT. Actually that ALSO breeds cross class competition. as an example, people who have limited funds, only race GT or mini etc. But if we spec'd a battery that was cheap, and it was spec'd for gt, that race would only have to pick up a stock motor to run touring stock, he can run the jaco blues in touring GT also.

Its obvious you cant spec the whole thing, but we've seen the fruit from specing the tires in touring, why not put our own hold on batteries. You know the technology will never stop, and neither will the prices.

If a battery manufacturer could be chosen for our series, and 1 specific model was chosen, at a cheap price, who would be against it? yes yes everything else like availability, yes it would fit your chassis etc etc etc is taken care of, Who would legitamately be against it?

axle182

iTrader: (18)

Very good point Ivan. Add to that, if we are all equally 2000 grams, whats the difference? if someone tells you its less abuse on your car, slap them. They are lying. Hitting a board hard with a 1550g car vs a 1400g car will be very very similar. Both will break. Dont forget lead is and always will be dirt cheap to pick up. Hell my local CT gave me a bucket full for nothing.

Just my 2c.

Danny-b23

iTrader: (3)

Ok, first, with my Mi4 I can balance at 1425g front to back, left to right with a Novak GTB and full sized Rx and servo.

Second, I'm not saying we should do it to cut down on wear and tear, if anything, it's to make the cars more robust. 1400g transfers quicker through a high-speed chicane then 1500g.
Just my $0.02.

Danny-b23

iTrader: (3)

Perfect, that's doing the same thing as a C rating cap. It's limiting the money advantage some racers may have on others, PLUS it's actually making it cheaper in the long run.

Johnny Wishbone

iTrader: (6)

May as well make it all Mini then and get rid of the TC class. And what about guys that are sponsored, how do they promote their products if they can't run them. Tires are nice as it take the insert issue out of them.

axle182

iTrader: (18)

Lol how did i know you would pipe up Gary lol. Your still very loyal to the sponsored drivers, and im very loyal to the budget racer, so im sure we will never see eye to eye . I dont see a need to keep spending blind money on this sport, when you can save yourself $$$ and still get the same racing adrenalin, fun and competition. Only people adversely affected by this suggestion.... sponsored drivers, excuse me if i dont shed a tear Make it all mini? Did spec tires make TC worse? Not what i heard, otherwise we would have gone back to foam this season. What problems (other than sponsored drivers ) do you actually see with the idea of a spec battery? Im sorry, maybe im blind, but i just dont see your arguement for spending way more $$$ than we actually HAVE to......

What this WOULD do, is make the manufacturer promote their products to our reps, they would battle to give us the best deal, because its business, We can choose on what suits US the Majority, they will either get our business or they wont, they wont be able to continue with the "look we squeeze another .02c out of our packs, they MUST be faster, quick buy em now!!" What a sad day that will be lol

axle182

iTrader: (18)

Remember this isnt the IIC, snowbirds, or any other major $ series. This Wcics series is not made up of sponsored drivers, what makes this series is the loyal club racers, the volunteers who rep for our local clubs, and the hardwork of the volunteers to set the whole thing up. You take away the budget racer, you loose the whole series. Find ways to keep the $$ low and you invite more people to it, and build it all stronger. Keep allowing the prices to climb, $ to sore and new changing technology in classes like stock to keep entering, and you loose racers again.

+1 for Spec a battery for some classes for 2010/2011.

Danny-b23

iTrader: (3)

Hence my suggestion for the C rating cap. Doesn't matter what we do, it will be cheaper for everyone.

As far as I know, we have little to no "works" factory presence at our races, which means everyone has to shell out some amount of cash... BUT, some drivers are able to get batteries from their respective sponsors cheaper then others. A C rating cap would enable them to run their battery, promote their product, and also keep competition between the supported drivers and the "privateers" fairly close.

Danny-b23

iTrader: (3)

How is leaving battery choice up to the person "taking away the budget racer"?

axle182

iTrader: (18)

I hear the same reason for not racing at all, or not racing certain classes. Dollars. Keep the dollars down and you have more people racing. More people racing, more people paying fees to the club, more money in the club, better facilities. better facilities.... etc

I agree a cap will work to reduce prices also, so +1 for that too, but I like the idea of a spec battery because as a group we can then deal with the manufacturers and get a better price. Its just like the Jaco Blue spec tire. Id love to know how many MORE sets were sold of this tire since we went to spec tires. I bet they were really happy we went with them. Its good business.

When more $ buys you more performance, then your forced to spend the $. If the $ is controlled, we have more consistent performance, then things like setup, the driver etc, will decide on who wins and who looses.

As always I'll leave it to the masses and stop filling this thread . Loved the move to a spec tire

Stu thanks again for running with all of the rules etc early. Plenty of time to get ready

Scottmisfits

iTrader: (7)

I am sponsored by a store, not a battery maker or anything else along those lines. For little things I don't have to use what I can get from the store but for the chassis and electronics, the bigger things I do. If I can't get the battery from this store, I can't run.

Let's say a store in Edmonton carries these batteries but the store in Regina doesn't, how does that guy in Regina get it if he doesn't do mail order? I don't do mail order as a rule. There are always exceptions, but I agree with Gary. Put to many limitations onit and we might as well all be driving Mini.

It is a good idea Aaron, and for a spec class, sure. But this is touring car.

Johnny Wishbone

iTrader: (6)

You know Aaron, in most cases I would disagree with you, just on the principal of it , but in this case with Lipo batteries, here is the deal. Right now you can buy a 6000/28C battery for 2/3rds the cost of any of the 5xxx batteries, all 40C or 50C. Now myself I can't use the power, (lack of talent) and the bigger cell makes the weight and balance so much easier to tune with, so with that being said, having the cap on the mah or the C doesn't really save the average racer any money. Yes, you could have a bulk buy on cells and that could work, but then, it really doesn't save the racer that already has his stuff, any money either, the only person that would benefit would be a brand new guy just getting in, or the racer that wants to re-new what he has, but with Lipos they have a much longer life than what was anticipated. With that said I'd rather just see ROAR approved cells than setting a limit. (This is only for TC)

Spec rubber tire work well for the series, although, I certainly hope the clubs made some money on the tires, as the cost of the tires wasn't any cheaper than if we would have supplied them ourselves, and in most cases just caused more work for the clubs on registration day. Now don't get me wrong, I still like the whole idea of the spec tire, but even with our "big" buy, we didn't see a cheaper entry price. So like I said, I hope the clubs saw the extra money.