Hey all you RC crawler builders: Have you used, or know of anyone who has used, 550 size motors on RC rock crawlers? It would seem to me that the additional torque would be welcome.
Good question John. Shortly after I got my SCX10 I replaced the motor pinion to slow it down. I did so mostly because the pesky grand kids seemed to love crashing into things more than crawling over them. Any way, the other result was more controlled power to crawl over things, no surprise there, but mine would now climb walls if you could make it stick. I think if I were to change any thing it would be to add wheel weights. Having said that, I'm a real newbie and I've never run or watched anyone else run any thing different other than in videos. It will be interesting to see what others think.
I have used just about every size and type to motivate a crawler in the past I think It all depends on what its in and what you want to do. I ran a lot of traxxas 550 motors in my scale trucks because they had decent speed and acceptable torque and were basically disposable after a fair amount of abuse. I played with some in my losi also and had mixed results in there. More bad comes from a 550 in there than its worth :-\. I have ran some 550 size puller motors before in my shafty comp trucks and had good results also. I even used a few larger size ones in my formula baja build. They were Kershaw 650 motors and I ran them on 4s and they were brutal fast and still crawled fair. What platform are you looking to drop one in?
I'm using a Traxxas 550 titan motor in my AX10 and it works pretty well. I'm thinking about putting my 55t back in because it's much smoother but the power is nice when you need it.
Depending on what esc you have I would take the 55t. The 55t with tallish 18/87 on 4s will blow the Titan away in every aspect and you will have decent drag brakes out of it also
I was thinking Novak Goat 3S ESCs and dual Novak 550 motors. It would be nice if Novak made a 550 25T, but maybe they would custom wind one since they do offer their "Hand Wound" series. I should measure if the XR10 axles have room for 550 motors, unless you already know.
You could possibly physically fit some in there but your link geo would be compromised to the point of not making it worth while. Im not even sure if you could come up with a bent enough link to clear on the motor sides. Just drop in some fxrs and a pair of Brood or holmes motors and you will have the top of the line best controlling truck possible. I hope you don't get sucked into buying a bunch of Novak crawler stuff man. I don't bash it because I simply don't like it I warn you because of the almost 100% failure rate I and others have had with their crawler related stuff. Couple that with they don't know how to program a controller properly to do what a crawler really needs and wants and there are way better options. I only warn you because I don't like seeing money wasted and people frustrated. Here is just a portion of burnt, ruined, malfunctioning Novak stuff I grabbed off the shelf. There is far more this is just to show I have tried more than most to give them a chance and a second and third and................................ :
I was thinking that 550 motors on the axles of a MOA would be great and the Novak 550 I have in my Hyper 10SC is pretty hefty. What if the system was geared down a lot? On the other hand it doesn't look like there are as many gearing options with the XR10 as compared to say a SC truck with all the pinion and spur gears available. I don't plan to compete with my XR10 either so I probably won't stress it as much as any serious crawler folks. I guess it is more of a experiment than anything else.
WOW! Why didn't you have them repaired? What is the typical failure mode you are seeing? [/quote] I have repaired multiple times different versions. I'm tired of paying for something that fails again or doesn't work as it should. I have had Cap failures, fet failures, fires, glitches , runaway trucks, control issues and on and on. Also the crawler setting just don't cut it and no good adjustment like castle or tekin make it a waste to spend more money on. I raced nothing but Novak all growing up and they were the best back then. I carried over my loyalty when I went to crawling about 10 years ago and they have done nothing but let me down.
