Originally Posted by
mister-e-meat
idk about 4 stroke being the future with the current wave of brushless technology and the batteries to go with them its only going to get more powerful lighter and cheaper. granted it will get more powerful before cheaper. but imo it is the future of our hobby. dont get me wrong i love the sound and smell of internal combustion engines. but if you compare engine lifetime,power and ease of maintenance electric wins at least in my book but look at it like this.
bl motor system=330$+or- a few $$$
racing nitro mill=300+$ +extra$$$ for the better u go
bl motor lasts lets say 3 seasons before you inspect the bearings and relube 3$ for some 3in1 oil.
nitro mill=1 maybe 2 seasons before it has to be replaced or rebuilt.which can be big$$$ depending on motor.
400$+or- for 4 batteries again depending on the batteries you go with.
10 gallons of nitro at 24.00$ a gallon=240$=1 season
but the catch there is the batteries you will have for multiple seasons and the nitro will be there for just the one season.
this is just my perspective on this matter the prices where all from the top of my head and a generalization on price from what ive seen in catalogs,magazines and msrp prices. please feel free to give me your thoughts aon this matter would love to hear them.
If you asked me about 6 months ago i would agree with you 100% man but i have just made the switch back to nitro from 1/8 electric, have had 2x expensive batteries swell up and they were balanced everytime, never run to low etc. looked after very carefully and still no luck, the bearing in the motors dont last very long, tires wear very fast, the cars break easier due to the power ( i was only running 1900kv on 4S ) and the motors and ESC`s although internally well made wont handle the nature of 1/8 off road, have had fans break and the cases break, wires nearly worn through even when cable tied well, just from the flex and hard hits the cars take, I would consider myself a very experience driver/racer and am very smooth and dont crash much but i still copped a lot of pain... i went electric to try and save myself some wrenching time, cost wasnt an issue and i bought the best of everything to go electric but i am not sold on the idea of it unfortunately, i might be only one in 100 that will feel this way but for me nitro is easier, i spend just as much time changing motor bearings, esc fans, making sure the electrics were all in good shape and clean, keeping the wires organized etc. and thats on top of the normal maintenance which was more frequent anyway due to the high power level. Was just as time consuming cleaning and oiling a motor and flushing out the tank after the days running....
Its much of a muchness, nitro is here to stay for a long while yet, i cant see them being taken over by electric, they run both electric and nitro in the on road circles, i think we will see 1/8 off road in both power plants, much like 1/10 truck nitro and electric back in the day, it was very popular and if not were my old RC10GT and OS 12 CV i wouldnt have had a good nitro experience, not much out there at the time was as reliable as that combo and it gave me faith to continue!!