school me on 1/8 brushless
 

so ive been out of the hobby for 10 years now. i used to race 1/10 electric and 1/8 nitro. ive been looking to get back in, but it looks like the way to go is brushless/lipo. i had gone to the local hobby shop, and asked on which way to go and if they can help me, but they said they dont have time to talk to me and i should go on the forums and then come back..looks like i wont be buying anything from them.

anyway, i would like help on which way to go. i would do 80% bashing, 15% fun at the track, and then maybe a race here and there. im looking for a buggy that can go fast and hard, but id like longer run times with the lipo.. if possible . i know nothing about brushless and lipo and so on. thanks for any and all help.

Well for what you plan on doing I would definatly go with a lipo from hobbypartz.com or hobbyking. Much cheaper than other batteries and have basically the same performance.

If the tracks that you race at don't have a strict lipo limit on cell count I would suggest running a low KV motor like 1400kv or somewhere around there and a 5s or 6s pack for longer runtime which is good for bashing.

The standard for racing and the industry in general is 4s and a motor somewhere between 1700kv and 2200kv. If your going to be bashing most of the time then you'd probably go with a higher KV simply beacuse of speeed.

I'm in the same boat as you (used to be into 1/8 nitro, now just want a brushless conversion for my buggy to play around with / occasional track) so I'll share some of what I've learnt so you don't have to go through the same mess.

First thing is, make sure you get a fairly high amperage ESC - it will give you more flexibility in what motors you can run, and how many cells of lipo you can run (eg. 4s, 5s, 6s). I'd say a 150A ESC would be a good start.

For the motor, braniac covered it pretty well, if you're bashing most of the time you can get a ~2200Kv motor for better top speeds, and if you pick a good ESC it should run 5s and 6s lipos still.

There's two types of brushless motor too, sensored and sensorless... the sensored motors are smoother in the powerband especially down low, with no drawback apart from cost. If you go the sensored route, make sure your ESC supports sensored motors - basically it's just an extra cable that goes from the motor to the ESC.

Lipos are the last part of the equation - here, I'd just get the best packs you can afford, a good start might be a 4s 5000mah pack with a C rating of 30 or more. Don't forget a good lipo-specific balance charger, they don't like to be overcharged - or discharged too much either. The ESC will have a low voltage cutoff to prevent excessive discharge and it's worth setting the cutoff at 3.4v per cell as a generous/safe minimum.

My budget shopping list I came up with if it's of any help to you:
- Turnigy Acucell-6 charger
- 150A HobbyKing ESC (sensored and sensorless, supports 2-6s lipo)
- HobbyWing XERUN 2250Kv Sensored motor - 4168SD
- Any 4s 5000mah 30C+ Lipo

HobbyKing is a cheap online shop that sells everything there except the motor, I found they didn't have much range for 1/8 motors - but they're cheap for everything else. If you have a bigger budget you can buy more expensive stuff than I listed, I just wanted a reasonably quick and reliable setup which hopefully I've achieved.

Your list is a quite good start, however I suggest a more powerful charger, the one you listed has a 50W/6A limit, so it would take almost two hours to balance charge your battery. The Accucel-8 would be much better.

thanks for the ino guys! keep the info comming. its a long way off from having to make lights packs to discharge and so on..

would the same stuff work on 1/10 4x4 also?i ask because i see there is a new track by me, but it is a small track. may work well for that.