Actully I agree with Smokin. I used the new Viper 8.5/Tekin RS last weekend in my FT T4 with mixed results. I had it geared at first more traditionally with the 84/18-20 and the Tekin was set with 85timing in dual mode. Motor had 10 deg timing on the can. It wasnt any faster then a 17.5 to me. Tried a slew of things to get it faster until I tried using a 75 spur. It finally woke up in the main geared at 75/24 but came off at 160ish degrees. I lapped the field mind and won but still not fealing it was "better" then my D3 or SP motors. Now this motor had plenty of battery to draw from too...used a TP 65c 5300 pack. T4 isnt binding, good bearings, clutch is V2 and set correctly, also has gear diff.

I am going try sensored mode with some boost to see if I can get it any faster this weekend. Maybe these motors like some boost?

Any thing I shoujld do different?

I was unable to get power out of a 17.5 until I over geared the thing. For an 8.5 I would only be running in sensored mode. I would try no boost first and just see if you can get the power you are looking for with gearing. 160 is about right. I run all my motors hot but in onroad if you are not pushing 180 probably doing something wrong.
I also noticed that running the motor in buggy I could not get a large enough gear to really make the motor work. I put it in a sc truck and that seemed to get the power out of the motor. These motors seem to have lots of torque but do not like to spin up like say a D3. Right now I am running 75/23 with full endbell timing and 40 degrees of dynamic timing just to keep up.
Not really sure how the team drivers are setting up their vehicle but from all the posts on here you and I may have got bum ones.

I would also love an 1/8 scale motor to test. What do I need to do. I just got my 7.5 to put in my SC but I have 2 buggys coming that need motors and esc's.

that's what I'm getting but no viper motor

Patience

They will be out soon enough

thanks for the feedback, I'm going to go practice tonight at the track and take the laptop. :P I'll try a few different things and see. Race tommorrow morning.

In my RB5, and a buddies B4, no timing, running 34/72 with 40 degrees ON the motor. Just as fast as the guys with timing and turbo on our track, and coming off at 130-140.

See that right there is what we are talking about. 74/34? Wow. Way off skew to the traditional gearing charts. Guess these motors have a all together different "sweet spot"

Yes, very true. These motors are torque based, so you can gear out of that and still have plenty of bottom.

Interesting. I am geared or my typical gearing for buggy and 17.5 is 34/69 with zero timing. With boost I will typically drop about 8 teeth maybe a couple of more if I am running the RS. This is because the RS is soft compared to guys running the MMP or Novaks SC pro controller . But I dropped this motor in expecting more I guess. I am not complaining or anything but for buggy it is just not fast enough. While I appreciate the torque we are racing on a carpeted track with foam tires so grip is not a problem(jumps too). What I need is massive corner to corner acceleration and a good top speed on a short straight. I just couldn't find enough with this motor. And to be fair I wasn't slow, I was consistently fast around the track, but there was no "wow" factor I was expecting after reading this entire forum. But in SC it seems much more at home. The motor refuses to get hot. Even geared at 28/75 with zero timing. Motor comes off after 6 min at 155 with no noticeable slow down. So it definitely likes to be geared up. And the low end grunt works well with the SC. So for this class I would recommend it over say a novak motor for SC.

Yeah, i could see these being amazing in SC. I helped a guy set his up in an SC with boost and timing. Tried it without, and I thought it looked great, but he didnt like it, as he used to have boost and timing in a Tekin.

So-we put the boost and timing into it and it was "awesome"

I just got a SC-R and will be running an 8.5 in it, so we shall see what this SC craze is all about...

Ok,, im super excited for tommorow,, our track is having its 3rd anniversary celebration race,, and,,, i will be running my new buggy with the Vtrax and viper motor,, did a quick setup in the house on the speedo,, nice and easy to use and feels so damn smooth on the throttle and braking. Thanx goes out to everyone at Viper for the great products and killer support.
Steve Semeraro

Yeah you geared it traditionally... but maybe try not running such a strange setup for mod truck. Extra low motor timing, plus esc boost and an oddly high gear ratio? The end cap isn't even designed to go below 15* motor timing.

Try starting with default 30* motor timing, 20-21/84 gearing, and no esc boost. You should expect around 130* motor temps after a run. Let us know how it works!

Not strange to me. Actually Tekin has a .pdf setting up there 8.5 like that on there website and I figured they're both torque based so why not start there..... The 10 was a typo, meant 15 being that is the lowest setting. Anyways funny you mentioned it, ended up running the stock 30 deg on the motor with zero boost and timing on esc. Motors temps were 140ish and was geared at 75/22. Ran fast but....you know it should be for a 8.5. I still feel there's more to get though outta this motor. I got what another 40 deg to go. :P I do understand that using a 84 spur might be better because of the mass of the tires over a buggy geared similar but.....this motor doesnt seem to bothered and when I did use a bigger spur it felt slower off the line and in the corners.

Yeah the motors definitely have strong pull when you put a tall gear on, I just wanted to get you a little closer to our standard setup to be able to help you better. Everyone's setup and track conditions will be slightly different, run what works well for you. But if you're having trouble and not seeing the results you expect it's usually a good idea to start where we know it works

If you try increasing the motor timing you may find a much better powerband by running the larger spur. More motor timing = more rpm/less torque. Less motor timing = less rpm/more torque.