ArancioC5

I have one thing to remind people of.... if you are not into electric right now, then be prepared to drop an extra $5-600(or wayyy more pending on brands) on top of the kit price the day it arrives for max performance. I am talking about Lipo packs and PROPER charger. After that, it isnt so bad besides having to charge batteries before you leave the house. Brushless is nice, but you will need to buy at least 4 5000 mah packs (to get nitro run times)which will run $150 per pack minimum for a good brand. Cheap Lipo = go boom

With that said, for you current owners I'd suggest considering the switch by collecting all of the things you will need for the switch overtime when your nitro dies. It really is a huge investment right out of the gate for first time Lipo users. If you are not brand new, it is still an expense but not nearly as bad. In the end, it will be cheaper then using Nitro fuel. At $30 a gallon that is 4 1/2 gallons of fuel per pack needed to purchase - or - you will see the investment return about the same time it takes a picco to die. Oh, that is just for 2 Lipo packs rated at 5000 mah.

Wait till prices of Lipo goes down some and also the chargers. Till then run your nitros.

ArancioC5

....oh and I'm not talking bad of the truck... I will do it to mine one day but $200 Lipo packs when your truck requires 2 of them and you need 4 to have fun for a little while is hard to imagine to invest into a $600.00 truck all at once. Thats Baja 5b-t money plus alot of fuel and hop ups.

t9dragon

My Feedback: (11)

You really know how to burst people's bubbles...........LMAO

But can you imagine a Savage with no oily mess................

wingedwheel-0420

i was under the impression that electrics were for women and real men drive nitro's.can some one clarify this for me.

rcnitrohead

Clarification complete, the first two posters have women undercarriages[8D]

wingedwheel-0420

LMAO,good 1 nitrohead. lol

hpibasher2

I just need a balancer and I'm all set... I guess I should say "haha"? I don't even need that. My Venom's have been through 20+ cycles each and all charge to 4.18-4.20 volts per cell (checked with a DMM). Again, HAHA!

t9dragon

My Feedback: (11)

I bet you would like to see my undercarriage..........................

LAMO....................

Yub, yub, cmdr!

Yeah. My Orion Advantage Advanced only charges 2 cell LiPos, so that charger I spent $160 on two years ago is now useless for more cells.

MadManAndrew

I'm still excited...I'v got a Dynamite Peak Charger from years ago when I started out with my e-maxx, and a 6-cell 5000mah battery from [link=http://www.cheapbatterypacks.com/tstuff/v7/buildcustompack.asp?sid=1402491#]cheapbatterypacks.com[/link] is only 40 dollars.

I'v got a X 4.6 right now, and I love it, but have you seen the torque that flux has, and the speeds it hits? I'm probably gonna be gettin one next christmas.

rclugnut10

My Feedback: (1)

yeah thats why i got a LIPO zaper, and u dont NEED LIPO's my any means at all the battery boxes can hold 2 8 cell NIHM's if they're good matched packs that are peaked properly they can exceepd 15 volts, i have a friend who's peaked some 6 cell trinity EP 4600's at over 14 volts 2x thier rated voltage, lots of people dont think about the nominal votage of a pack just the rated, big differance, my 6 cells hardly ever hit 7.2v, what i'm saying is that 2 8 cell packs of high quality that can be found for about $55 5000mha can have similar preformance of an LIPO, check out [link=http://www.cheapbatterypacks.com]here[/link] for the batteries i speak of, just use the custom pack builder, last i check a 6 cell flatt, upgraded ran for $40.25 and each extra cell runs for 5.75 so not even $55, just proving you don't need lipo's to get to 60 MPH,

the lug

MadManAndrew

The link in my post above is the custom pack builder.

rclugnut10

My Feedback: (1)

sorry bout that, i've been known to skipp over stuff, and i just typed in the home page cuz i had that memorized, and i think i got up to do stuff half way thru my post and u may've gotten yours in before mine, its happened, i've spent upwards of 3 hours typing less than my above post... but yeah LIPO isn't nessasary by any means

the lug

MadManAndrew

lol

bzinfinity

Thats the reason I will not run electric MT's.

I will not debate the fact that a brushless Savage will destroy my current Savage. I will not debate the fact that brushless makes bashing easier in almost every regard, especially in cleanup and start up time.

The only point I really am able to debate is the fact that even though I might eventually recover the money spent on LiPo's by not having to buy gas, I can buy Nitro 1 gallon at a time. <30$

I spend a lot of money on RC, but it's usually spread out or saved up over a long period of time. If I was gonna spend 1000$ on a truck, I would consider what a few posts back mentioned and look at a Baja 5B/T.

400$ for batteries the day I buy the truck? I'll buy a Savage XL and something else for the same or similar price and have just as much fun with two trucks =/.

I'd love to have a brushless MT, but the cost and lack of continuous runtime will probably keep me out of the market forever.

I should add also - despite how strange or odd this may sound.

Half the fun I have with my Nitros is the wrenching and cleaning afterwards. I take a lot of pride in my stuff and how I keep it, and I love to work on them almost as much as I love to drive them, maybe even more so.

I love to bash but I like for all of my trucks to look like shelf queens when they go back into the house.

Getting out a can of air duster and blowing off a brushless truck just doesn't have the same appeal to me.

rcnitrohead

BZ, I agree 100% with you. The only difference is that for the last few months, I've been slacking off at cleaning my truck and running it like a crazy son of a gun

Tom.

rclugnut10

My Feedback: (1)

granted that you buy really really high end stuff as most of us do cuz we drive savages, by really really high end stuff i mean top notch namebrand LIPO's that are the 35C's over the 25C's and are 5000mha 11.1V, yeah u could easily blow 400 to get it running i'm not dening the fact but you can get great prefomace from the truck and spend only 200 dollars on batts if you go with some quality NIHM's, well yeah i just made that whole argument so i find no need to say much more,

on the cleaning thing and such when i clean my savage, it's not because i have half a gallon of nitro acumulated on it, its cuz it is coated in soo much crap that it hurts the preformace of the truck all around, same with my electrics, i don't find i spend nearly as much time dealing with nitro only cleaning as i do general, and if you think you won't get your e-savvy flux dirty because you don't wanna kill the electronics, IME if it gets coated in snow it can stay coated in snow, it just need to be removed before it melts, same with mud and other stuff, electrics can go thru just as much crap as nitro and roll out fine, esecailly if you take the time to make a small box to protect it from flying mud outa like 1/8 in balsa even, and just silicone it over the esc and motor easy and protected, and it can still get just as muddy

as for run time, on my 4200 mha batteries with a 4600k motor (almost 2x what is in the savage) i can get about 25 min granted its a 540 motor not whats in the savage, but still 25 min of constant run time is pretty good for an electric, with 2 sets of batts thats amost an hour of go time and with a charger such as the MRC 977 which runs for $95-100 you can charge both packs at once giving you 30 min of downtime tops after an hour of running, sounds pretty good to me, so for a $300 dollar power set up ($200 for four 5000mha 8 cell packs and $100 for a mrc super brain 977) its a pretty solid setup, so what i'm getting at is, electric is just about on par with nitro these days....

the lug

MadManAndrew

high quality 5000mah batt for $40...HELLO-Thats $80 for a set of batteries.

black mamba

Exactly. You don't *need* lipos for awesome performance. Those two 8 cells it accepts will *probably* give it enough performance to beat a stock nitro Savage. If you've got an extra $600-700 laying around and want to embarass any nitro Savage, by all means go for the 2S or 3S lipos. I'm sure Max Amps is assembling nimh and lipo battery/charger combo packs for the Flux as we type.

ArancioC5

oh stop with the nitro manhood debate...we play with toy cars lol.

What is the point of getting brushless without Lipo? I dont know if you guys have experience with brushless but I do and nimh packs are useless. It is like putting 87 octane into a ferrari enzo. keep the nitro untill you can swing 4 lipo 5000 mah hard case packs. Do you know it might be the difference of a pound in weight? Go strap 16 ounces to your savage and se the performance difference. Why buy a $600.00 truck if you do not intend to run it the way it is designed for? 2 5000 mah lipo packs 2s will possibly grant you 20 minutes run time if you arent too economical.

TRUE while your buddy is tuning his truck you can have already been off bashing BUT, what happens when he is still topping off his tank and you are done before he burns through his 3rd tank? I'm just saying...

ThunderbirdJunkie

My Feedback: (3)

Arancio...you are definitely the Debbie Downer of the HPI MT forum.

Why so negative all the time?

rhylsadar

hi

i run several converted brushless savages for the last five years. many different setups, some quite similar to the mmm set the flux comes with etc. until 2007 i run them with nimh batteries.
sure you can run nimh batteries on brushless setups. for a truck like the savage you need at least 14c to 16c nimh of very high quality.

performance with 16c and the bl set included in the flux will be ok. however the voltage of nimh batteries drops massively under load. there are over 100A loads for short times in such applications. you can check eagle tree data sheets of people running brushless monsters/truggies in different forums. good lipo batteries hold voltage better under load. furthermore they are lighter and offer much higher "real" capacities. just as an example: with 14c gp 3700mAh i run a bl e maxx for about 10-15minutes bashing in the pit. with trakpower 4900mAh the runtimes doubles. hence eventhough the "nominal" capacity is only around 30% more the real runtime is around 100% more. 14c and 4s lipos give you about the same performance.

16c nimh will not give the same performance like 6s in the flux. you would need 18c nimh, but then the battery holder will need modifications. btw you can not compare the runtimes in a 1/10th scale truck (like the stampede e.g.) with and a mm setup with nimh to a 8th scale MT like the flux. i can run my brushless stampede easily 20min with good nimh batts. but the average amp draw is much lower than in the bigger trucks.

so i would suggest that for adequate runtimes and nice performance 6s will be good in the flux. imho you will need at least 3 sets of batteries. the question if you really need the super quality high priced lipos. my experience so far tells me that for instance the zippy R 4800 mAh 6s don't have a problem to deliver the amps for a power brushless set in a monster truck. they cost 59$ a piece. unfortunately they are not listed on hobbycity anymore. will see if there will be a good substitute. lipos are bout to come down in price.

so the flux will show the typical cost curves like ohter electrics. quite an investment in the beginning with low current costs. quite the opposite of nitros. so it depends very much on the time scale of your perspective if you think electric is more expensive or not.

bye
rhylsadar

black mamba

The biggest misconception with brushless is that you have to run lipo or nothing at all. As mentioned, that is just not true. [8D]

HerrSavage

With more companies coming out with trucks like this, lipos are sure to come down in price. Meanwhile nitro is getting more expensive..

But still, for me electric whatever is like watching an action movie on mute.

rclugnut10

My Feedback: (1)

yeah, i personally run nihm's with my bl system and i've had very few issues all of them from whippy tranny parts and crazy old radio gear that when using somewhat new stuff sloved the problems... yeah lipo's are great and do run better but i don't mind getting less than 90% or closer to max of the power availible thats why i run 20% nitro and 6 cell packs that are probally like 9 and 8C and thats plenty of tire roasting wheelie ripping dirtspitting power, stupid speed for me....

the lug