Hi experts. First of all, I'm not an expert, and asking genuinely ahead of racing. Ideally I'd go to the track, ask the regulars, but we all know why this isn't possible right now, and I wont be able to get to the track until a week before my planned race. With that in mind, I thought I'd ask here.

I'm going to be running a 10th scale touring car in a 17.5T blinky race. I have mod motor run 2wd and 4wd off road buggies, and generally they have more power than I need, so I tune for driveability and the jumps/straights. This is all known to me. For touring onroad, and specificaly as there is no mod class, I have to go blinky, which despite the name "stock racing" is decidedly more complicated to get right. The purpose of these questions is to gain as much insight and knowledge before I get there and realise I needed to order something else and it's too late for me to be competitive. What I mean here, I want my car to be competitive, so I can focus on driving, and improving my driving and basic shock/suspension setup, and not be left behind on the straights cos I got this stuff wrong. I have no doubt I wont' win anything, but theres no fun turning up with a car that literally cannot keep up with the others.

With that all said... here we go.

My setup questions are around electronics and gearing. Its a low-medium grip outdoor asphalt track (Cotswolds in the UK) which is quite large, and from what I understand, gear ratios need to be in the range of 3.5-4.0. I have pinions and spurs that will give me a good range of options within that range, possibly go as low as 3.0 if I need to. So when I'm there, I will be able to test and fine tune.

I have purchased a Hobbywing Justock 17.5T combo, with a 17.5K RPM limit. These are newer firmwares with these limits (17,500 limit for 17.5T, 20,000 limit for 13.5T etc). The motor is fixed timing hobbywing G2.1 2450KV, and the ESC is blinky so no timing adjustments on the can or the ESC. I have also ordered a Ares V2.1 17.5T which is 2200KV but with up to 55deg timing adjustment. WIth a ton of timing, is this motor really going to be much faster than the 2450KV hobbywing? thats over 10% difference in RPM per volt, so it makes sense to me that HW at 0 timing, would be similar top speed to Ares with lots of timing, or does timing increase more than that?

If I run the Hobbywing G2.1 as-is, and gear really long, say 3.3:1, will that give similar performance to the Ares with loads of timing at a lower FDR say 3.8? Just giving these numbers as examples, I imagine it'll be different in real life. We're allowed to change motor timing, so I got this additional motor to play with, but reading about how these settings are related, I feel that as a beginner in this class, I might find it less risky for heat and reliability by just using the fixed timing motor and gearing up, rather than adding a ton of timing to the Ares. Super interested in peoples opinion on this. There is so much misinformation out there, and lots of it quite dated, and these HobbyWing combos are relatively new to the market, so felt this was a valid discussion to open.

Thoughts?

thank you whoever moved this to correct forum. Apologies for getting that wrong.

This 3 part write up should answer your questions.

thanks waitwhat... this is super useful. Putting all of this together with my own thoughts, makes me believe that running this Justock 17.5T motor with fixed timing, doesn't necessarily mean its 0 timing. Given I'm an amateur at the actual driving part, I feel like I should be able to gear this motor and get what I need from it, whilst still being in the same ballpark as the others around me.

I shall do some testing with both motors to confirm. Many thanks.

Sidenote... after reading a lot about blinky classes (mostly from Americans where all buggies and onroad seem to be blinky much more than mod) that this rabbit hole is only worth really exploiting for the very top drivers where the differences between them are in the car. For me, I can put this theory to bed for now, and come back to it if/when I get to that level of competitiveness. All in all, I should be able to gear whatever motor I have to a suitable top speed, and work from there.

Thanks again, much appreciated.

I mean you already have experience making adjustments with your mod motor stuff, it's just that with a spec motor you need to get close to everything out of it to not be down on power compared to everyone else. Timing changes the kv of a motor, so the motor you purchased that has adjustable timing is likely rated with the timing adjustment in the middle of the range.

what will be super interesting to know is by how much, and if I can find someone with a motor analyser see what the fixed timing on the Hobbywing motor is actually set to. From what I'm learning its unlikely to be 0 deg, but also unlikely to be as high as 40 or 50.

Thanks again, that article was a good read, and the background is super helpful to understand all this properly.