Carl Giordano

iTrader: (32)

Anyone have any feedback using the KO VFS series speedo's in Mini with the silver cans?

rccardr

iTrader: (8)

The next production run of Red Dot silver can motors is scheduled for the week of August 16th.

We make consistent, reliable horsepower that wins races all over the world available to every driver.

Not voodoo...just science. Straight to you from the Secret Underground Laboratory.

Interested parties should shoot me an an e-mail at [email protected].

tamiyarcracer

Well, I can tell you that the two times I one the TCS Nats, I had a VFS in my car.

woodys3b

iTrader: (1)

Our track has two silver can classes. One of them is Tamiya M chassis cars and there are no rules about speed controllers or batteries. How important is the speedo and battery? I am using a Novak XRS speedo and a middle of the road Lipo. At what point is a higher C rating just wasted on this motor? How good or bad is the XRS?

UltegraSTI

iTrader: (20)

i wonder if doc mertes ever reads this thread and if so, is it only for a good chuckle. man has a talent. 1 day i'll set up my dyno finally and play around. but that guy is in another building.

R

rccardr

iTrader: (8)

Ryan- I actually check the electric onroad forum daily, but this thread doesn't get much action. I only chime in when it appears that others are not eventually going to get to the right place.

Mitch-e4fs

iTrader: (7)

I have been playing around with silver cans just recently but i'm not too sure if im having any real success with what i've been doing.
Are there any particular methods that give good results? Ive tried water dipping, dipping in brasso, applying brasso to just the bushings and dipping in coke zero. All with similar results that are not really worth bragging about. Am i doing things wrong? Or are there different methods i should be using? Im not afraid of trying and burning out a few motors. Any advice?

Thanks

A-Ko

iTrader: (2)

Usually breakin the bushings, breakin brushes and cleaning the com are the 3 major factors. Once you do that, then you need to resolve gearing and maintaining cornerspeed. It sounds simple but gets complex.

Mitch-e4fs

iTrader: (7)

Gearing is my other problem. At my local track the other guys always seem to be able to gear up more than me and for example just last week I burnt out a motor while I was getting beaten speed wise and they had a slightly higher rollout! And they run like that all year with just the one motor and I'm burning one every couple of weeks. I just don't know where I'm going wrong

woodys3b

iTrader: (1)

Just a guess here because I have never seen you drive and it may very well be a mechanical or electronic issue.

As A-Ko said, maintain corner speed. A car that slides a lot is going to come off the track hotter than one that tracks through the corners. If this sounds familiar, back off a bit and let the tires do their job. I think this may be the hardest thing to learn. It's really hard to back off when you are going slower than everyone else.

Short story here about my son racing last year in rubber touring car on carpet. He had a 21.5 while everyone else was using 17.5. He had his Tekin set up with all the timing and boost it could handle. He was getting run over out there and he kept complaining that his car was too slow. I kept telling him that he was over driving it and to slow down in the turns to keep the corner speed up. Anyway, while he was marshaling after his race, I plugged his car into my laptop and took out all the timing and boost without telling him. The next heat he came off the driver stand and said that there was something wrong with his car. I asked what the problem was. He said it was way slow. I asked if he was listening to the announcer? He said no. Then I told him that he had completed two more laps than he had the heat before. Lesson learned! After that, he actually started to listen to his old man and his driving and lap times steadily improved.

Sorry to be so long winded but I see this all the time. If it doesn't apply to you, it certainly will apply to many. The key to fast lap times and running a taller gear ratio without overheating the motor is throttle controldriving a good line that keeps corner speed up.

A-Ko

iTrader: (2)

With these motors if you over gear them, they will burn up eventually. The wire starts smelling funny and the magnets will go away.

As woodys3b said you might be over geared and might need to go slower. Listen to the motor down the longest straight, if it peaks out almost all the way down the straight, over geared. Another way to look at it is if you ran a taller gear, every time you slow down and then pick it up again through the infield, you generate heat. I have had scenarios where I might be slightly slower down the straights but can beat them on the infield which on a road-course is more important. Having straightaway speed is only a bonus, not something to go for unless everything else is taken care of with your car.

I would suggest starting around 5.50 ratio and work down to 5. If you can check the temp usually keep them under 170F, you should be good. I would think 160F area is best. If not, then you need to check for binding, dial out braking and take away some traction, if it is a high bite track. It is all about corner speed and not slowing down. Of course if the bushings are not broken in, brushes are not seated or the com is dirty, that will effect heat.

For me personally I have gone down to 4.6 ratio and come off the track under 140F. To do that I run 2 fans, optimized the car as best I can for corners and worked hard at breaking in the motors. Plus I do have the bonus of straightaway speed. For now, I would stay out of the 4 ratios, maybe you are? Possibly you could be in the low 4s?

The other thing to do is keep talking to the fast guys at your track and ask for tips and pointers. Eventually you will find one that will take the time to help you get where you need to be by giving pointers or better yet, looking at your car.

bladeszx2

iTrader: (1)

RCcarDR

I've built a 80x35 foot dirt track in my backyard for Tamiya Rally racing. I'm building a bunch of cars so people can race, and in anticipation of needing a lot of motors purchased 100 Mabuchi 540SH motors directly from Mabuchi. They have 3 degrees of counter clockwise timing advance, and I beleived to be the same motors Tamiya puts in thier kits(other than the Johnson's). Now I've built a couple of cars that are using the kit supplied motor, and two others that are using the motors I bought. The kit supplied motors are Johnson motors, and seem to run considerably faster than the motors I bought from Mabuchi. Do you have any insite as to why the major difference in performance?

Your help is appreciated

Thanks,

Ben

bladeszx2

iTrader: (1)

Well,

Just as a little update to my above situation/question. I took out one of the Mabuchi 540 motors I mentioned was pretty slow and executed one of the cleaning tips from this thread. Surprise, surprise it brought it right back to life. I believe some of it also has to do with it being better broken in as well. All is well, and the racing I had with 4 Tamiya rally cars, two using kit supplied motors, and two using the Mabuchi motors I bought, were very, very close in speed and performance. I still think the kit supplied motors have a bit of an edge, but not enough to make the racing uneven.

Any insite on the motor difference would still help though.

Thanks

Ben

rccardr

iTrader: (8)

Sorry, Ben, I was out of town and missed your previous question. The Johnson motors are better built, beter balanced, and use higher quality components, hence the significantly improved performance. We've messed around with the Mabuchi motors with some success, but as soon as we get them going faster they burn up. It seems that armature balance is critical to ultimate performance. One reason the old 4-slot motors were generally faster than their two-hole counterparts was that we believe the arms were manually balanced. By the time the two-holers arrived they had moved to machine balancing.

kyle133

when i was running handout silvercans in tamiya mini sports last year, i dipped my motors in simple green. ran then backwards for 2 mins in the simple green concetrate, then blew out with air compressor, motorspray, oiled and reinstalled. really liked the results as i could turn a slow can into a reasonabily speedy motor with that method.