Just looking for people's thoughts on this, and I'm referring specifically to the 17.5 and 10.5 classes.
I ran at Summernats with a Trinity Duo 10.5 and a GTB, and got smashed. Would anyone care to shed some light on the pro's and con's of the current crop of ESC's relating to these classes?

Driving skills still come into it more so than what the speedy can do, thats my 2 cents. But get an awesome driver behind a Tekin and look out

It seemed to be a complete lack of power for me. Consistency was good, generally between 0.3 and 0.4, running good intellect cells, but getting hammered for power.

As your experience already shows, consistency (i.e. skill) is not enough to beat the speed some of the current ESCs can deliver. Your GTB doesn't have variable timing I guess. There might be other factors, but if there was anyone with a variable timing ESC they can easily beat you with a lot less skill (especially on a favourable track). Technical tracks might take out some of the edge of new technology, but there's no guarantee.

Tekin is one of a number of variable timing escs on the market and their software and setup expertise is available to all users free of charge and in a very timely manner. This means that pretty much all the kinks are ironed out quite effectively.

Yeah in the 10.5 B final, I noticed the difference between other people's cars and mine, running a LRP Sphere.

Your main choices are tekin, team wave, and LRP. For 17.5 it looks like the tekins with the latest software were the pick, even though Darrin won with the team wave Alex had a lot more power at the end of the straight. In 10.5 I think most of the front runners were using SPXs

As far as pros and cons go, tekin and team wave both have updateable software so that's a real plus, team wave are a bargain but I've seen a few go up in smoke, LRP have a lifetime warranty & you don't need a laptop to set them up. LRP is also just about to release the SXX stock spec, I don't think it's software will be updateable but it is more adjustable than the SPX

Keefy your sphere on profile 8 with a bit of motor timing should have been able to keep up, the 10.5s really weren't winding out at all at IMCC

This is a popular topic at our club as it has become a who has the latest ESC where 12 months ago it was a cell IB or E Power thing.
Honestly its a real pain as at our last clubby my well prepped 416 running SPX Duo2 and 50C packs was left for dead by a TC5 with my old Tekin 17.5 and a TekinRS with the new software and i mean left behind !

This car with a 17.5 was only .3 slower than Antoni Caretti's 10.5 T3
and .5 behind Rhys Marshalls Mod 416

so stock aint stock anymore , some of us think timing advance ESC's shouldnt be used for 17.5 gee i dont know.

Tekin RS with new software is nuts

Mark Miller

Agree with Craig, its the adjustable timing these esc have, I ran the SPX which isnt as adjustable as say the Teikin, but still advances its timing as the RPS go up.
Any of the new stock spec, esc are good.

The GTB does not have adjustable timing, however i did try ramping up the advance on the motor. This provided a little more top end, but i noticed a small drop in low end acceleration. I'm guessing these ESC's with automatic timing gives the best of both worlds? Low timing for bottom end power and increased advance for top end?

With the new Tekin software, you gear down 5 teeth. This allows for good acceleration out of the corners and through the infield. You them have the speedy ramp up the timing from 0 to whatever you want based on the motor RPM. This gives you excellent top end for short straights. Further to this, you can add a little turbo. This further ramps up the timing after you hit full throttle. All these settings can be customised to the track. A lot of people now carry around laptops for this purpose.

Penmark you are right on the money....
Stock is not stock anymore & I think something should be done about it.

How is it stock with the times like they are in SA .3 & .5 behind mod... com on.
We do not realise how many people we are turning away from this great hobbie because this class is getting out of hand.

The word STOCK in most other sports is interpreted to be just that (STOCK)
But we are allowed to race everything on the car chassis the same as the mod class except
for the motor. How is this stock?

This is why in general more people do not race..... other than at club level, the cost of speedies to keep up with the jone's.
Think about it... how many members from each club IMCC, SMA, Windsor, ACT etc were at the nsw Summer Nats. A hand full each, how many members do these clubs have....

One of nsw top drivers, Robbie L has left the stock class & gone to mod because of this very reason, you dont need the latest speedie & we are about to follow....well not mod. It at least appears that you can still run at the front in super stock with the old LRP SPX.

Just my thoughts, not done to offend anyone.

Cheers Daz

At a club level I would like to see stock slowed down a bit as its like driving 10.5 12 months ago. i have a sphere x11 10.5 that is slower than my spx duo 17.5. Maybe sportsman 17.5 could be introduced alongside expert 17.5 for example and be a class that allows no timing advance speedies and over timed motors. This could be a great class for the new racers to enter and become confident enough on the track without being bullied at the end of the straights by these turbo monsters

Daz ...old LRP SPX? This is one of the latest generation high tech ESC's so of course it would be competitive.

As for Robbie L, well he had the Tekin ESC so he should have had no reason to move up unless he wanted to.

And maybe the real STOCK motor should actually be the 21.5 motor

I actually find the argument funny. No one was complaining when the SPX blew everyone away so everyone went and bought one to outdo others. Now another company comes up with a fast ESC and people complain. The problem is more about the fact that certain ESC companies do not provide free upgrades.

There are some guys with Tekins who have had them for nearly 2 years and haven't needed to buy a new ESC because of free upgrades.

As for lack of numbers at the Summer Nats. This event has been in steady decline over the past few years because of bizarre rules and restrictions and add that it is in the middle of school holidays when people are away and busy

Again just information to consider

It seems that this topic is about on road, speaking as an off roader, one of the benifits of variable timing is that the motor doesn't get as hot, I have a tekin 17.5 setup and at the start of last year heat was an issue now I've got as much speed as I can handle and I'm not thermalling motors
just my 2 cents

STOCK was only ever called STOCK because that is what the motor was called... there was NEVER any other reason for the name

The only difference between the top STOCK and top MOD runners in the brushed era was the motor and the difference is EXACTLY the same now... its always been the guys that could spend the big dollars on the Novaks, LRPs, Tekins etc that ran up the front... and it happen at club level as well, maybe just a bit less obviously.... batteries, ESC's, chassis and radios were all free, only the motor was spec'd as a 27T with fixed timing at 24degrees... and even THAT sometimes caused controversy when companies came out with new motors that seemed to be so much faster than those that had come before...

It strikes me that 17.5BL isn't much different...

The real issue is that the technology has moved ahead in leaps and because everyone was in such a hurry to adopt BL its come back to bite them on the ass!... anyone with any sort of technical background or interest looked at the early BL systems and KNEW than once the competition between the brands got into full swing, the possibilities for tuning them would be almost boundless and now the RC world doesn't want to lay in the bed it made for itself!... the Tekin RS has shown just how far the technology can go...

Stop trying to attach some mythical nirvana class to the name STOCK...