ASK Cub Reporter, 10.26.2011- You Have Questions, I Have Indigestion

How’s it going? I’m in need to send my Schuamcher Fusion to shop to have it looked over. I would like to know if you could advise any to me?

Located in North FL
thanks
T.C.

Cubby– Hey what’s up TC, and thanks for the email.

So you want to send your Schumacher car into a shop to get it looked over. I guess you didn’t get the memo, but this is a hobby where you actually work on your own cars. Seriously, we are playing with toy cars, if you really mess one up just throw it away and buy another one.

So…. bust out your owners manual and start tearing that beast down. Clean everything and look for anything broken or worn out. If you find items that need replacement I hear A-Main Hobbies is the best place in the states to get Schu parts right now. After receiving new parts, re-assemble and take’er for a test drive. If it’s still messed up you didn’t pay close enough achtung to your owners manual.

But… let’s say you aren’t very mechanically inclined, the kind of guy that can’t even change a roll of toilet paper. Here are your options.

1. Contact your local hobby shops and see if they repair used rc cars. So do, some don’t, but for those that do expect to pay around $20 an hour for labor.

2. Check Craigslist. In most larger metro areas there are guys advertising on CL that they fix broken cars. You’ll wanna be careful with these guys as most of them are working out of their house and they could very easily just keep your car and tell you to screw off.

3. Ship it to Wrench from BSRC. He’s the best there is at spin’n wrenches on an rc car, although his hourly rate is probably higher than what most new cars cost.

Okay, I’ll get straight to the chase…. on the charger shootout price page, there was a mistake. You said in the table that you used the Duratraxx Onyx
220 which you stated sold for $60. The 220 model only charges NiCd and NiMh, not LiPo. You used the 230, which sells for about $80 and charges LiPo batteries.

Also, I think it might be nice if you did a LiFe Battery shootout, just for fun. That and/or a 1/16 scale battery shootout, for the Traxxas 1/16 E Revo VXL (or other 1/16 traxxas models). The mini E Revo may be small, but in no way is it not for bashers. 🙂

Also, I stumbled upon some LiFe batteries while browsing the internet a week or so ago, and I’ve heard they’re much better than LiPo’s: They have more charges, they wont spontaneously combust if used improperly. 😀 But I haven’t found anything about the rate of charge for the batteries. Can you help me? I realize you are extremely busy, and I am in no way offended if you don’t respond to my newbie questions. 🙂

Thanks,
Ron

Cubby– Hey Ron, you are totally correct, we did shootout the Onyx 230 not the 220, thankfully I wasn’t the person that wrote that one up. 🙂 BTW, it has been fixed since you wrote in.

Not that I don’t make a lot of mistakes, I certainly do, it’s the fact Brian keeps hiring people based on their chest size instead of their prowess of the English language to check over what we write around here. You have to suffer through our mistakes while we get to stare at large mounds of eye candy every day. The more I think about it, the more I think that’s an even trade-off. 🙂

About a battery shootout- yes, we desperately need to do one, but… there is a good reason why we haven’t done one recently- lack of hours in the day. However… you will be seeing a full review of the new 2S Dynamite 5200 mah 50C Speedpack in the next couple of weeks. I know that’s no shootout, but we’ll be posting all the discharge curves off the West Mountain all the way up to 60 amps.

About the charge rate on your mystery lithium iron phosphate pack- you need to consult the manufacture. As a “rule of thumb” most lithium based packs we use in the rc industry were designed from the ground up for a 1C charge, but…. there are lots of other industries out there, industries with much different demands than ours, industries where the max charge rate may be well under 1C. That isn’t really typical of LiFePO4 cells (typical is between 1-5C for the cells we use in rc), but could be the case, and better safe than sorry when charging any type of battery.

There is one more stolen out of Brian’s email box, keep reading…

Brian-What ESC/Motor temps were you seeing with Castle SCT system you guys used in the Losi SCTE? I want to try it out in mine but wanted to get your input!CheersJON

Cubby– What’s up CheersJon?

We see the motor temps we want to see. Both myself and our “Pro Racer Guy” Tim run the Losi Ten SCTE’s on nearly a daily basis, we gear for how much performance we are looking for and for what kind of temps we want. At the iHobby expo for example- I was running a 1415 2400 in my SCTE while Tim was running the 1410 3800 kv model in his truck. I was running 3S and he was running 2, and both of us were geared fairly tall looking for maximum power to help us stick it in the rafters. Yes our motors and speedo’s were running pretty hot. For normal running on large outdoor tracks we both run the 1410’s on 15 tooth pinions on 2S, with that set-up we see around +40 over ambient during long runs with plenty of power to make the big jumps etc. The moral of this story is start with the smallest pinion you have, take temps, and work your way up. Ideally you don’t want to see motor temps over 140, well… unless you are trying to hit the rafters inside the Rosemont Convention Center, then its all about going big or going home.

We don’t normally measure speedo temps, as long as the speedo’s aren’t thermalling life is good. I will say that the Losi Ten SCTE does present quite a load to a power system, so I would recommend running at least a Max Pro or Max Pro SCT, not the lesser “Sidewinder” derived speedo’s.

That’s it for this week ya bunch of wacky bash-a-holics, send me your letters, answers, questions, rants, and verbose manifesto’s to Cubby at BigSquidRC dot com!

YOUR Cub Reporter