ajparry1989

Purchasing a rolling VXL slash 4x4, and looking to purchase a brushless setup for it. I definitely dont need to spend as much as the original traxxas vxl setup, looking to land somewhere in the 30-70 dollar range. What luck have people had with the cheap ones out there? I dont plan on doing any serious racing, but I dont want to sacrifice speed if another $5-$10 could have gotten me a lot more, either! haha. Ive been really considering this one, Ebay item number 142857263599. Seems to be the Hobbywing ESC then another off brand motor. But I see even cheaper ones that I see are more and more popular, like the goolrc, etc. What have you guys used and have had decent experience with? I am mostly interesting in performance and durability...extra special features are not so important.

JerryRigged

iTrader: (2)

The cheap Suprass/GoolRC motors are decent, similar quality and power as a RTR motor of the same size/KV. All the GoolRC motors I have (2838/4500kv, F540/3000kv, 3660/3800kv x2) still work fine, zero issues.

GoolRC /Surpass ESC's are a crapshoot. I have had 4, only one still works. Two (35a/45a) lasted 6-10 runs, one was Dead On Arrival. The last (80a) has lasted quite a long time, but it is neither smooth nor cool, but it does work.

Personally, I would recommend a GoolRC motor to save a few bucks, but get a decent HobbyWing ESC, like Quickrun 10BL60 for $40 or a Max10 for $60.

Vertebreaker

iTrader: (6)

I just thought I'd chime in since I've bought 2 setups for a couple of Arrma Sentons I picked up. I have only setup one so far but it's been working great the past couple of weeks. I did buy one of the motors from from the same seller on ebay as you posted. Mine was a 3660 4700KV motor and I paired that with a Hobbywing 10BL120 ESC which are normally around $45 and I'm running 2S setups. For me this is the way to go. The HW ESC is much better than all of those cheaper ESC's which can be hit or miss and with trucks like this can burn them out and then you have to buy again. It's 120A, is autosensing for sensored or nonsensored motors, and has better resale value if you do end up parting things out. The 10BL120 is the king of ESC's for the price and programming options, it just doesn't have blinky mode for racing.

The other setup I bought one of the Surpass 3660 4300KV motors with a HW 10BL120 but haven't set that one up yet. Just make sure you get a decent heatsink and fan for the motors.

MaX-D

iTrader: (2)

I've got the same Hobbywing 10BL120 in all of my cars. For $45 it's a steal. Get the programming card for it. I've had zero problems with them.

ajparry1989

Awesome, thanks guys for the input!
while I have you guys here, what is your best formula/method for determining spur and pinion sizes? I will be upping the tire size on this slash slightly as well. its got factory spur in there probably still. any quick methods to determine that, or a link to somewhere that explains it? I used to know it well, but its been so long! ughh...

rodcpierce

iTrader: (3)

Kind of off topic a bit, but would these esc's work fine in an 1/8th scale buggy? 1900-2100kv motor.
*Nevermind, only for 2-3s*

woofenstein

Seconding Vertebreaker's recommendations, the Hobbywing 10BL120 as an excellent value ESC, and paired with a Surpass motor (I'd try the 4300kv, but yeah get a motor fan) will be an incredibly solid 2S setup for your truck that will last a long time and perform great on a budget.

Going cheaper such as the GoolRC stuff I wouldn't recommend, I bought one of the 40 dollar setups to keep in my bag as a backup setup. I fried my motor early on in practice day (geared wrong and running max boost ended up smelling funny) and installed that GoolRC 4300 setup and it was terrible.

ajparry1989

I did end up getting that same hobbywing esc you all recommended. And I bought a bunch of RC parts and accessories from a friend for dirt cheap, and he included a barely used brushless motor, that he said was cheap like $30, but looks like one of the ones off the surpass website. will try that out and see how it does, can always get another motor down the road. Any good recommendations on formula for pinion and spur set up?

SFL

Another vote for the Hobbywing 10BL120, and the programmer card is only around $12 on Amazon. This motor might be over your budget, but I got that Hobbywing esc in combination with a Castle Creations model 1410-3800Kv motor and the combo works fantastic. We put two of these setups into Traxxas Slash 2wd trucks and they work fantastic, but we're now having to upgrade the other driveline parts because the extra power is breaking things, but if you've already got a VXL setup I would expect those parts to be stronger than what came in our trucks which originally had the 550 brushed motors.

ajparry1989

Believe it or not, that is the one thing that I have not been able to verify, if the driveline parts are any different/stronger. did lots of research but couldnt find anybody commenting on that specifically. everybody compares the varying vxl setups, like the Ultimate, etc. but cant find anybody comparing the chassis of the regular brushed and vxl brushless. Does anybody know anything about this? I feel like originally, when the slash came out, the two chassis were different, but as the years went on, the slash evolved, and now the two chassis are basically the same, besides the electric components. Can anybody verify this, or comment otherwise?

SFL

You can download the manuals and compare part numbers, Traxxas has excellent parts diagrams and that will at least tell you if the parts are the same. If what you have was originally a brushless setup from Traxxas then I'm sure it will be fine. In my case the original setup used one of the T550 brushed motors which was significantly less powerful than the brushless setup I changed to, so I don't think the original parts were intended to handle the power of the brushless motor. But it was rock solid with the original motor, so if yours was brushless to start with then I'm sure the parts are up to the task.

ajparry1989

right, I understand. I think i did do some comparing, and found the parts were mostly the same. thats what Im saying. back in the day, there was a difference between the two chassis. today if you go and get both off the shelf, I think they will be basically the same. but maybe I am still wrong. I am not worried about my set up, I am sure it will be fine. I just dont think there is much of a difference between that and brushed chassis I have, which is only a couple years old. how old was your brushed chassis?

SFL

We bought these around 2018 (we've got 4 of them).

woofenstein

I found this Traxxas article https://traxxas.com/news/slash-spec-racing-guide that talks about gearing. They give examples of

90 ÷ 16 = 5.63
86 ÷ 17 = 5.06

So it looks like they are recommending ratios of around 5-6 on the stock motor.

If you are going up or down in motor power (kV or turns) you will need to gear accordingly to maximize performance but not destroy your motor/ESC.

The motor overheating is what you want to watch out for when gearing too tall (lower ratio, higher top speed). The general rule is you don't want your motor getting any hotter than 160F, gear your truck and then run it hard for about 10 minutes and check the temps. You can get one of those laser temp guns for 20 bucks or so and comes in handy.

But anyway, gearing is a broad topic, if you search around and ask people that are running your truck you can get recommendations for what ratios work good with the motor you are running.