Month: December 2019

You might think that with brushless motors dominating RC cars, boats, and planes, brushed 540 motors would be long gone. Yet, somehow, these old-school workhorses are still going strong—and for good reasons. First off, simplicity is king. Brushed motors are dead-simple to wire up: just connect them to a battery or ESC, and they run. There’s […]

Ball Diffs are usually pretty durable. However, the long thin screw that holds the 2 halves together may break upon excessive acceleration. It is quite uneasy to find a replacement. For onroad use, a quick fix would be to glue the 2 halves together. In other word, no more differential at the front. It does […]

Holes on the Tamiya plastic parts strip quickly. The plastic body parts are too weak to withstand frequent screw and unscrew operations. When there is a stripped screw hole, the best thing to do would be to insert a small toothpick into it prior to tightening the screw. I learned this trick from those who […]

Flexibility is lacking when it comes to motor mounting on Tamiya TT01. If you need finer tuning so to accommodate different gear combinations, replace the stock one with an after market aluminum mount. The way the Tamiya one works is a bit confusing. Installation also requires a lot of trials and errors.

IN THEORY, the higher the number of turns, greater is the torque that can be generated (and often with less heat).  When you are using a brushed motor, a lower turn motor should be equipped with a smaller pinion. The photo shows a 23T motor with a 29T pinion. The motor failed during the first […]

The problem with brushed system is that it is no longer cost effective to run and maintain. For a brushed system to run really fast, you need a 9T motor minimum. A motor this power hungry requires the support of a real expensive brushed ESC. The current draw can go beyond 320A. Brushed ESCs rarely […]

We are talking about those standard Tamiya RC cars not the TRF ones. If you are to use BL system on any of these cars, do not attempt to go for anything too aggressive. Something on the line of 13.5T or 17.5T would be just fine. The one shown here is a Team Power 6.5 […]

Modern  brushless systems often allow you to set a cutoff voltage. When the value is set too high, an early or premature cutoff may result.  

When your brushless motor and ESC combination is too strong for your car (too much punch and torque), your plastic spur gear may strip pretty fast. To restrict the power so to avoid gear stripping, you may want to adjust the TH Trim value as well as the TH EPA H/L values. A lower value […]

Sometimes you may find these wires sharing the exact same color. Keep in mind, having the same wire color doesn’t mean you can swap the wire connections at will. Be very careful when dealing with the wires!