Originally Posted by billjacobs

I haven't read this thread in a few days and it is nice to not see the name calling and generalizations that seem to always accompany debate threads.

The move to change to brushless and lipo has encountered the following arguments against it:
1) brushless and lipo are too fast,
2) they are too expensive,
3) they will hurt hobby shop profitability
4) there are too many choices.

I fear that those that race and prefer brushed "stock" will not be happy until the novak 21.5 is the roar equivalent to "stock". These racers will accept brushless only after the brushless motor chosen stands no chance against a tuned stock. My simple question is how many racers will be running brushed motors in 2 years?

As some have mentioned, hobby shops should make money at their tracks by charging race and practice fees and by selling consumables such as tires, bodies and spare parts. After going to brushless and lipo, my motors and batteries are no longer consumables. There are few racers left that purchase all of their race gear at the local track/hobby shop. Why? Because it is too expensive. Especially, when someone can purchase many items used on rctech, or they purchase online and save $30 or $40 dollars. There have been threads on rctech covering how tracks can increase attendance and make more money. Unfortunately, it seems that many tracks rely on the racers to bring in more people, instead of promoting and advertising their own track.

Back to the b/l motor debate. The 13.5 is the accepted new "stock" motor at tracks around the country. All of the people that are saying the 13.5 is too fast for the poor newbies, where were all of these concerned racers as the brushed stock motors got faster and faster with each generation (every 1-2 years.) If there were 3 times as many racers in r/c as there are now, you could have the 17.5/13.5/10.5/open mod classes. At our track, you have 1 full heat of stock each weekend. How do you propose they be divided up?

If this debate was only about roar rules for sanctioned races, that is 1 thing, but the underlying purpose of this debate and the new rules is to set rules for club racing around the country. If the 17.5 is adopted as the new stock, all of the brushed racers will then complain that b/l racers should only use the 17.5 in the stock class.