Originally Posted by
Racer X
Team Losi once had a car out that had the batteries located right in the center line of the car...it never seemed to work well, partially because in any touring car, handling has a great deal to do with weight transfer. With the batteries on the center line, there just wasn't enough weight to transfer from side to side. Running smaller, lighter batteries and then having to add weight to the car to make min weight is only really useful if you need to move where the weight in the car is, but the Mi4's already has pretty good weight balance and distribution. For that reason I really don't see much of an advantage to it (unless the governing bodies lower the min weight required). Just my input...
The problem with the losi car was nothing to do with lack of weight or balance. For one it weighed a ton, it was incredible stiff, all the weight was at the back of the car and high speed steering was non-existent. But the biggest problem was that because all the electronics down the middle meant the drive chain was down the left side for the rear and the right side for the front meaning the car tweaked every time you hit the throttle or braked hard.
And you don't need extra weight to get weight transfer. if you did you wouldn't see all the team drivers trying to get their cars as light a possible.
I've never really thought much on the extra capacity making much of a difference either that you lose from running a shorty pack.
I'm running a Corrally redline heavily geared in 13.5 blinky and take out 1900mHa a race with a full size pack and 1500mha out of a shorty pack with the car weighing 100 grams less. So are you really getting extra noticeable power out of a pack having a quarter more taken out of it but only having one fifth the extra capacity to begin with? Really i think the only time you will start to notice a shorty pack is when you start getting down to 8'5 turn motors or lower that are drawing serious amounts of current. 21.5 /17.5 / 13.5t i really can't see benefiting from say a 50C to a 60C park either, the motors just are not capable of drawing these kind of currents. They are limited buy the thickness of wire used to make them and controlled by Roar/BRCA/IFMAR rules.