All really obvious cheats. And you are referring to an ESC from day one of brushless, GM haven't existed for about a decade!

These are all really easy to scrutineer. And rules have made it impossible to tamper with stock motors. Winding stacks cannot be removed. Rotors are stamped to confirm the diameter. Where fixed timing is mandated, the timing is completely fixed.

Obvious cheats are obvious. The undetecatable cheating that people seem to think is happening simply doesn't exist. There is no black market in ESC firmware and there is no dodgy bloke in a garage who will rewind your Hobbywing 17.5 as a 16.5.

Soaking tyres pre-race isn't even cheating.

.

Please, surprise me.

Obvious cheats?
Any cheat should not be done at all. But this is a small list an probably there are more. And then someone dares to complain about policing is getting out of hand....

The fact such firmware for the GM existed does say it is possible. Recently on this forum someone stated such a firmware does exist for another brand. Fault of the manufacturer or just a handy programmer figured it out?

I did test the replacing of the sensors on the far space of the solder tabs, it gave about 4% more rpm. I showed a picture to the national section chairman and he could not see what was wrong with the sensors on the picture the picture. But if they are all obvious cheatings, why is there no list in any of the technical inspection manuals?

And no, the tires in some Tamiya classes may not be treated, soaking in oil is a kind of illegal treatment.

All I'm hearing is how that person races with a bunch of cheaters and wants to fix it by removing the rules. If they're really cheaters, they'll just find some other way to cheat.

Fault of the manufacturer. The replacement firmware for the Hobbywing has a different blink pattern so it's easy to scrutineer if you know what you're looking for.

I recently saw the ROAR rules that there is indeed a certain blinking frequency but I do not believe many people do know this than only it needs to blink.

There's a lot more to scrutineering ESCs than just looking for a blinking pattern. You need to verify that the ESC is actually on the ROAR list, and check the notes for that specific ESC - it'll tell you what to look out for regarding blink patterns/colors etc.

That is for ROAR, over here in many stock competitions blinky is the only requirement for the ESC. Because ROAR says a certain frequency of blinking then that we should check, sadly most tech inspections only look if it is flashing.

Thanks for the replies. Sorry I was absent from the discussion.
SInce posting I have talked to a couple of people and was told that the blinky buster was flawed. Maybe that's why they are not making it any more.
As to whether people are cheating, if you look on YouTube for a channel called Nelson Cortez and look for a video called "21.5 Champion,s race" you only have to watch the first couple of laps to see the first place car pull the other competitors down the straight. This is an ongoing thing and happens at every big race. People won't stand up and call them out for various reasons. The driver in question is a team driver for a motor and speed control company that I won't name. So, maybe they deserve it, I don't know. LolWhat do you guys think?

Had a quick look at that video. It was accelerating hard at the start of the straight but then the following car closed the gap a bit at the end of the straight. Might not be cheating, could just be tuned and geared well.

In a field of equal top level drivers and equal performing motors then in the top the differences are hard to notice. Look up the many ETS movies about the 13.5T stock class

Sorry for jumping into this conversation, F.O.G. here, and I remember back in the day when we used to run stock motors, hand outs, and things of that ilk (this was back in the day when all motors for R.O.A.R. were brushed), we used to do all sorts of things to make the motors as fast as possible, from the reckless like taking a sewing needle and jamming it into the windings of an armature and clipping it off to try to lessen the amount of "turns" on the motor (this was never consistent, I admit to trying it once on the club level in practice), modifying the brushes to change the timing a little bit (pretty much everyone did this in spec stock classes), and/or turning the armature to as small as possible (your goal was to have the motor "bird nest" as you crossed the finish line in your main, I also know people who did this with the old mubuchi sealed can 540 motors). Cheating has been around forever, also two of these things people may not consider cheating, modifying the brushes, turning an armature? We practically turned our armatures after every race, after every practice session, brushes would be honed to match and/or changed as they started to changed color. I am not going to sit here and say that these things are ok. Being completely honest, as I am trying to get back into the hobby I am lost on what a "blinky" esc is. However one thing I know for sure is that bending the rules, and outright breaking the rules has been around forever, and exists in every form of sport. I do find it both interesting and intriguing to see what people come up with to live within the rules but bend them to the maximum possible level, sometimes that extends into breakage. I am not saying that I am encouraging cheating, however it takes someone who is pretty smart to find the loopholes in the rules, then exploit them. From there the ruling body needs to decide what to do, allow it to continue, make rules against it, who knows what they will choose. This is why sports like F1 have statements about things that may be following the letter of the rule but not the spirit of the rule.

To simplify this, like most things, it is the old mouse trap scenario (or idiot if you want to go there) when you build a better mouse trap, they build a better mouse (or your make something idiot proof, they build a better idiot).

It's an ESC that has been verified to have zero timing. It's called blinky because the LED blinks to indicate it's in zero timing mode. There really isn't anything more to it than that.

Thank you for that, much appreciated.