And I'll just say, "Find me one motor reputable manufacturer, well two to make your supposition viable, that supports your contention...:weird:...and then check back with me."

LOL ~ That's what I thought :nod:

Having raced back in the late 80's in off road electric I will have to agree with Stumpy that just not dumping was a challenge.
Personaly I wish races were longer or atleast finals. I wouldnt care if we could stretch out to 10 mins or so but thats just because I like sending my buggies around the track and thats why I enjoy the sport/hobby.
For me I think Lipo technology will just make it more affordable and give racers more time to socialise and enjoy more time with mates down the track without having to worry about discharging and recharging packs. Also we wont have the expense of dischargers/conditioners and with the ability to just 'top up' Lipo packs we will need less batteies anyways.
I think in the future it will be the norm to turn up at a meeting with 2 or 3 lipo packs much like we did with the old 1200Sc batteries back in the day.
Im not out to push my perseptions on this debate but I will say that I like the idea of less maintenance battery technology. :)

heaps of us have been around long enough to know that motors don't smoke in ten minutes, and I'm a serial over-gearer. Just ask anyone on the knox thread. Long races are great if you are chasing, not so good if you are leading. Even in stock, I say bring on the longer races at club level. Lipo's or not. I get about ten minutes at moderate power out of my 4600's, and I challenge any lipo car to do the same. We all know they can!! I don't use my trackpowers yet, as they're not legal in vic, and I figure that if it aint event legal it will teach me bad habits.

I remember when the SC1700's seemed like they lasted forever. Bring back battery management to racing. There's nothing like exhilarating racing when you have to limp home a dumped pack, and hold off the opposition to keep your place.

As you can probably tell, I like vintage racing..............

Yeah, well I don't know 2 motor manufacturers well enough for them to post on an RC tech thread for me.:(

But, really it's not important if we once built a motor that ran for 3 hours. I was just using that as an example of how much we sometimes underrate the ability of the motors we have. Because we're really only talking about 10 minutes, and that's doable.

BORMAC, ant0276: I think everyone would like to race longer. So this is what I suggest. Take action. Start with club racing and start with a small increase. Talk to people at your club, get support and then ask to go to 6 minutes on club days. Usually there is a lot of waiting between rounds at club days anyway; the day won't take any longer. If that's working well, then in a year maybe we can try 7 minutes.

I'm sick of waiting for the sports administrators to decide that longer races are possible. What we need is a ground swell of support for the idea at the grass roots - at club level. When we show them its possible and its what we want eventually they'll have to react to that. We want to race longer, so let's race longer.

This thread is a very interesting read, with lots of different ideas and opinions and facts. I agree with a lot of them. ok my theories and understandings

In relation to the capacities, yeah, they'll probably keep getting bigger (not phisically) but we cant really stop it, i guess battery technology is going to continue to improve, as has been stated, sure to keep up, it costs a fair bit and certainly older batteries will continue to work if looked after, eventually they will need replcing and the budget minded racer can skip a generation so to speak.

With regards to lipo's, i thought they just put out 7.4v for the whole charge until they dropped off quickly. Now if they do just put out 7.4v flat for a considerable portion of the charge, there will be no benefit to the person with the larger capacity packs as there is in nimh at the moment where the nimh will put out well over 7.2v for a lot of the charge, and generally speaking the bigger the batt the longer that over 7.2v period will extend, so unless lipos dont deliver a flat output over the charge, they will actually work out better in terms of levelling the field voltage-wise.
Just thinking about the 1s cars, 3.7v with 13.5 or 10.5, the obvious nimh setup to compete would be 3 cell, 3.6v.

I have heard of lipos already with 8000 mah running in trucks in america with 20 min A Finals, so the potential for capacities above 5200 is already there and the capacity for races to be longer and not hurting motors is also there, brushless runs a lot cooler, people gear on temp a lot of the time (especially stock) so we would adjust accordingly, most esc's coming out now have lipo low voltage cut off, so the risk of over draining a lipo is taken out of the equation, but rather than the drama of the car limping home to the win, i think the car would just stop on track, but i agree with some here in enjoying the idea of having to look after the power usage a bit, though its all a bit of guess work, if we all had live telemetery with mah used (like a fuel burn meter) so we knew how much we'd used and whether we could push or had to conserve, that would be awesome, but theres nothing stopping us going to something like 7-8 minute finals right now if we wanted apart from race meetings then going too long, if i got two 7-8 min A finals, i'd chose that over three 5 min finals

Our Club has just decided to change to 6 Minute races for all club race days..

I seriously doubt that this will make the race day any longer, as we are now having to have short breaks in between heats so the racers can have time to get their batteries charged.. The extra time will now be spent on the track, rather than in the pits..

As I said before, I've been in this hobby for over 20 years.. Back in the good ole days of 1200 packs (early 80's), I'm quite sure we used to race for 6 Mins (maybe not in mod, but for 540 and stock (and 1/12 scale ran for 8 mins)).. At some point (memory fails me when Mid to late 90's?) but the battery capacities started to get larger, and the races got shorter (to 5mins)..

I could never understand why this happened.

Thoughts?

Hey guys,

interesting thread.

Im all for extending the races a little, in off-road at least. At Keilor we have been trialling 6 minute races and its amazing how much difference that extra minute makes! 4 heats + 1 final = same race time as 3Q/3F but a shorter day and IMO more fun.

In off-road, traction is the limiting factor and with modern battery tech, longer run times are easy. In hotter weather you may have to gear down a touch in mod but so what? Racing is about adjusting to the conditions.

8 or 10 minute finals should be easily achievable, even in 4w mod. The 20 minute Li-Po/BL thing seems to be taking off in the US, but I feel that electric has always been a 'sprint' race and that is what helps bring out the skills - personally Id like to keep races under 10 minutes to keep that aspect. However, keep in mind that longer run times attract newer players to the sport (how many times have you heard 'they only go for 5 minutes??')?

Im not an on-road expert but the extra grip seems to be a big factor - you can use all the power you have and therefore you push your equipment to the edge. Whether longer races (and therefore lower current draw) would actually help esc and motor temps I dont know.

From my POV, LiPo seems to be an advantage in terms of more durable packs. Its all too easy for the latest generetion of NiMh packs to go off if you leave them for too long (Ive lost a few since I dont race that often). This is unattractive to newer racers as well as us that have been doing it for a while.

I dont think the lighter weight is a big advantage in off-road, and with traction being the limiting factor, voltage isnt either. I can only see advantages letting them run. It may be an advantage in spec motor classes with extra voltage and less weight - ive got a data logger and if anyone wants to lend me a motor or two to test Id be willing to gather some hard data.

Ultimately, we all race to the same rules but i hope that the sanctioning bodies have some vision and change the rules for everyone.

L8r

Ray

The world of batteries is very well understood, and battery technology is advancing VERY fast. Being a nitro racer myself, i don't worry about batteries much at all. I run 1400mah NmH batteries in my reciever, and i dont see the need to go lipo, because i have a few sets of batteries and i can just interchange them between races. But with the electic cars batteries obviously are a big thing, and as the technology increases the capacity, it will also increase the ability to charge at more amps, and make the batteries hold the higher voltages for more of the batteries capacity. If you look at the timeline of battery advances, you will soon see that they advance VERY quickly.
So don't panic, your problems will soon be solved im sure!

Packs
 

I think lipos will dominate over the next few years and packs as we know it now will be lost forever.Theres already to much choice

A couple of people have expressed the opinion in this thread (perhaps in jest) that spiralling costs in electric racing might persuade more people to go nitro.

This would seem ironic given that enviromental concerns and the spiralling cost of petrol are creating more interest in electric in the 'full scale' car market. Surely when everyone has an electric car in their garage that would spurn greater interest in RC electric racing.

Out of curiosity, has the price of nitro fuel (for RC) increased in recent years to the same degree that petrol has? Is this significant for nitro racers?

Nitro fuel - AT 25% Racing Blend - $40 for 4 litres. Use around 1.5 litres for Club Day (4 x 10 min heats and 1 x 30 min final). 1 x 1500 Lipo receiver battery lasts all day.

those people haven't raced nitro before. at a rough estimate 1/8th nitro buggy would cost at least twice as much as 1/10th electric.

Yes "perhaps" we were jesting!:sneaky:
The cost of nitro fuel has stayed around the same price or only a small price increase sice i started out 5 or so years ago.
It all depends which brand you want to run and how much your willing to $pend in the end as Runnertime works out to be $23 a litre, while Macamo is $15 a litre and AT is $10 a litre.

Now please excuse my ignorance, but isnt the "Nitro" fuel that we use in RC Nitro cars, boats and planes "Manufactured", where as the Petrol and diesel that we use in 1:1 cars "refined" from Crude oil??

The only thing that may have increased in price through the rising cost of crude oil is the caster oil in the fuel.

http://www.rc-trucks.org/rc-nitro-fuel.htm for what is in Nitro Fuel.

To be honest, I had to smile when I read Jelly's post, as I then remembered all of the Magazine articles that I had read back in the 90's that said Nitro racing was less expesive than electric.. (didnt believe it then, still dont believe it now)

The point that I was trying to get accross is that for me, the tyre bill used to be the most expensive part of racing electric, especially off-road.. Now the most expensive bit is batteries, especially if you want to be competitive, and stay at the pointy end of the field..