Powerplant Wanted

Now that the chassis is assembled I need to find a motor that will push it over 100mph. Electric motors have come a long way in a short period of time, and that makes my project significantly easier.

I am by no means an expert in RC or motors, but I will try to provide a brief description of what I have found out (please feel free to add to this in the comments if you feel compelled to do so).

For a long time the remote controlled car was powered by the brushed motor, this motor offered speed and affordability, but the performance could not meet that of a nitro motor. Also the brushed motor has miniature brushes that need to be replaced periodically that adds to cost and downtime. The brushed motor kept RC cars stuck at a certain ceiling of performance and durability for a long time. I think it should be noted that there have been several 100mph passes made with brushed motors in the past, so the limits on performance are not absolute, but 100mph runs were defiantly the exceptions.

Along came the brushless motor into model aircraft. This motor offers durability and high performance that could compare with some nitro engines. The brushless motors are essentially turned inside out so that the magnets rotate inside of the motor, instead of the fixed magnets in a brushed motor. This configuration allows the car builder to forgo the necessary rebuilds, and set the limits higher that previously restricted electric motor performance.

This wikipedia article sums it better than I can so you can get the idea
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brushless_DC_electric_motor

I think Its easy to see why I chose a brushless motor for my car project. In my search for the perfect powerplant I considered 3 different brushless motors and electronic speed controller combinations.


Neu motors – These are model airplane engines. They come in a wide range of RPMs, shapes, and electrical parameters. The current RC world record holder of 134mph used a Neu motor for his car. The drawback in one of these is the cost, and the fact that they don’t come matched to an ESC. In fact the cost of the engine alone is more than many of the motor + ESC combinations that I’m considering for this project. http://www.neumotors.com/20061222/Welcome.html


Novak Motors – Novak offers a High Voltage brushless motor and ESC combination. This would allow me to run several LiPo(See future article) batteries, so generate sustained RPMs that are needed to run at high speeds. The motor and ESC combination is cheaper than the NEU motor, but seems to have less performance capabilities also. This is still an expensive combination, and seems limited in its capabilities. At the World speed record challenge there was a car that used this setup to make several 100mph passes. http://www.teamnovak.com/products/brushless/hv4.5_system/index.html


Castle Creations – The mamba line from Castle creations seems to be very popular among the drag racing crowd, so it immediately grabbed my attention. The recent release of the 1/10 Mamba Max seems to be very popular right now. These motors are capable of the ~60,000rpms that are needed to go over 100mph. They also come packaged with an ESC that is programmable from a laptop. This means that you can adjust different parameters that control aspects of the motors performance from your laptop. The best feature of this motor is the price. Of the 3 I reviewed it has the lowest price tag, and the ceiling of performance is yet to be determined. http://www.castlecreations.com/products/mamba_max.html


I think that any of the 3 above motors will propel my dragster to the desired speed. Check back later this weekend and ill photos of the winning combination.