Novak ESC bad for modern racing?

[soniccj5]

At the track yesterday for some testing/tuning and was having trouble clearing the triple. Had a couple times when I thought my frontend would be dangling, but this car can take a hit!!

B5M
Vulcan 17.5
Novak GTB3
31/69

Went out front to speak with some racers/workers to see what I could do to help. My car was setup the same as most racers there and they said the Vulcan motor was a beast. Recommended going to a 33/69, but I already tried that and the 31/69 was able to clear it when I got a perfect run at it.

Another racer mentioned it could be my Novak speed controller not providing enough power to the motor.

So my question is could the speed controller be limiting the power, or is it just my bad driving?

[jwscab]

the new brushless ESC's have quite a bit of tuning available. it's certainly possible the timing isn't right or some other setting is hampering it's performance.

other than that, I'm not sure how well those esc's run in general.

[RC10th]

How many were running Novak at the track? I think Novak has fallen off the pointy end when it comes to race gear but I don't think that would cause the issues you have. Was it intermittent? Did it just not have the power to clear the double?

[alien3t]

i know at my track i run 33/69 on a b5m and motor is still cool. have you checked what everyone is charging at. the new game with 17.5 class is charging batteries at 30-40 amos and discharging them at 40amops. Giving a 40amo charge just before the race. battery is warm. its at 8.4 volts. but seam to punch better.

[bully]

Had something similar last year and it was batteries that were getting old and I blamed esc/motor at first...

[soniccj5]

Charging at 3AMPs(charger only does 10A anyway) afraid I might blow something up if I go higher.

Two of my batteries are a couple years old, but I have a brand new 100C 2800mAh. Although the new battery might have a bad connection inside. My last run with it it kept shutting down and it was minutes after pulling it off the charger.

No one else at the track runs Novak that I know of.

[integra22t]

im running a novak gtb with 21.5 and 16.5 in my rc10 and tc4 and it works great for blinky class .. but if i run mod and want the punch then i would goto a diffrent speedcontrol as there is no timming or boost with the gtb

[bully]

I had the trouble with the novak havoc and it was just me holding onto batteries too long.. Took me awhile to figure it out at first I played with gearing thinking it was getting hot an losing grunt somehow.. My experience was exactly as you describe, an inability to clear some jumps even with the same lines as previous successful jumps... I don't think the novak is the problem

[RC10th]

2800 is quite a small battery. What is your lipo cut off set to, 3.2v? In 4wd short course many were experiencing similar problems. Under heavy load it was pulling the battery voltage down enough to hit cut off, the battery recovers and viola, your off again till the voltage drops again. Setting the cut off to 3.0v is about the best you can do.

Technically your battery on paper can support a 280amp discharge (constant or burst depending on what spec is 100c) Also the max charge rate should be 2.8amps unless the battery can be charged higher then 1c.

On a side note the C rating is pretty bogus in my opinion. A friend big into quads bought some fancy data logging gear to test battery C ratings and loads and every battery tested fell short of the advertised C ratings.

[jwscab]

yeah, C rating is really going to be a guideline PER cell, once they are in a pack, you will have copper losses and cell to cell variation. I would bet you could use an 75-80% figure as a more accurate representation.

[mikea96]

I had a gtb2 in my b4.1 worlds with 13.5 reedy sonic and my kid was kicking my ass with old tekin 17.5 and lrp esc and was told it's the crappy novak esc. We had same batteries.

[bully]

Up until this year Ray Munday was novak and it didn't hurt him at all,my old SC10 had the havoc 2s and was very quick compared to others... I even had the 10.5 with no timing versus all the mod style 10.5 motors others were using... Our SC motor limit is 10.5...

[soniccj5]

Raced two classes yesterday to get more track time, mod and 17.5 buggy. Gearing was 69/31 with Proline Primes and the track had plenty of traction.

Followed one of the fast locals through the section leading up to the triple giving me trouble and found that he was going slower around the corner before the table top leading up to the triple. I did the same and with my car hooking up I was able to clear the tripe with ease.

Looks like the Novak isn't so bad after all.

Now that I have my car dialed and going wherever I point it, I need to work on my concentration.

[JK Racing]

I still have a few Novak speedos in use. It isnt the speedo, its batteries, motor, gearing, traction, run-up/line you take, etc...as you found. I still run old 17.5 motors with no timing adjustments

All kinds of factors can lead into 'that' jump that kicks you in the butt.

and sometimes....it could be the speedo (if it has been abused and is on its way out).