Electric Vs Nitro
 

Hey what do you guys prefer electric or nitro rc cars? it seems most people nowadays prefer electric for some reason maybe because they're faster?
I prefer nitro because I like the noisy engine and smoke it just just feels so much better in my opinion

I personally prefer nitro and gas. Love tuning, the sound, smell, and the realism of it all.

You can actually get them to go equally fast. It's all in the setup, the gearing and the weight. Of course there will always be a difference between vehicles but it's like putting a modified honda against a corvette. Can it be done? Sure. Will it be done, I don't know. It all depends on the setup.

I don't want to mess with tuning an engine just because the Earth is always rotating...:confused::p:cool:

I used to have a huge desire for nitro. It's too late for me...I'm spoiled now.

One exception to all of this. If neighbor behind me decides to sell off the land around me, than I'm all in. I'm gonna make lots of noise; let the smoke, and dust fly all hours of the day. Sorry, I shouldn't be that way. Please forgive me.

Nitro, fuel - is more alive, it responds like a dog not a like a machine. But eventually perhaps - you'll appreciate the comfort and continuity of the electric motor. My condolences when that happens.

this thread has got me thinking, remembering back in the day VS today.

electric was 7 minute run times and 30mph speeds so we use to want nitro because it was easier to go fast (40+ mph) and run times were virtually endless (just keep squeezing fuel into it) we didn't mind the extra work back in the day. cleaning wasn't an issue and tuning was easy enough to learn. fuel was cheap, i remember buying my first gallon of nitro for $20. glow plugs were like $3. even for a teenager paying out of his own pocket, it was doable. the mechanicalness of nitro had a cool factor to it. it made noise which had a cool factor. plus 1/8 buggies were nitro and those were something to dream about. $400 RTR basher buggies didn't really exist, at that time, they were race cars and they were expensive. going from 1/10 scale stadium trucks to 1/8 buggies was a whole nother bigger meaner animal, like a chimp to King Kong. giant RTR's didn't really exist outside of entree level 1/10 scale (mainly traxxas). the nitro MT craze hadn't fully kicked in yet.

looking at today. RTR everything. brushless electric everything. the cars have gotten bigger. nitro has actually gotten easier, a modern nitro engine makes more power and is easier to tune. but the people can't be bothered. they don't want to learn to tune it, they don't want to have to clean it all the time. minor necessities are so inconvenient that they can't be dealt with. electric matches or exceeds HP and has become idiot proof plug and play and forget about it. its become a convenient toy instead of a hobby. back in the day a hobby was part of life. today people put life on hold to check texts and social media every 30 seconds, nitro can't compete with that. things have just gotten lazier.


on a side note. i remember a lot of debate back in the day as to what was cheaper. back in the day it was claimed that electric cost to much because you had to buy a charger and batteries. today people say nitro is more expensive because you have to keep buying fuel. as somebody who's been running both sense about 1998, long term ownership is about break even. it was like that back in the day. its still like that today. nothings changed but public opinion. its a weird thing.

For me, it's pretty simple: Electric is boring.

I don't care about the 'BL is more powerful' argument. My NTC3 is already packing so much power that the tires give up even attempting to grip in if I have more than 40% throttle called for. I don't deny that any random high-quality brushless conversion would provide more power and more torque, but I already can't put down more than a fraction of the power I have, so getting even more is irrelevant.

I don't care about the 'BL is quieter' argument. My nearest neighbor lives a quarter mile away. My pickup truck has not had a muffler since 2008. If nobody's complained about my F150 in the past 9 years then nobody's going to whinge about my NTC3.

I don't care about the 'BL is cleaner' argument. 98% of the schmoo clinging to my cars when I'm done running them is going to be clinging to an electric run in the same environment at the same time. I'm not cleaning nitro goo off my cars, I'm cleaning mud, leaves, twigs, other associated types of debris off my cars. Running brushless isn't going to magically prevent some of that good ol' Tennessee loam from clogging up the works.

I don't care about the 'BL is easier' argument. I find myself having to tinker with the carb on my pickup truck more often than the carb on my NTC3. Hell, just today, I ran that thing for the first time in 4 to 6 years. All I had to do to the carb? Thin out the low speed mix a bit. That was it. A fresh glow plug and fresh fuel rounded out the 'wake up call' parts and the engine ran better today than it did the last time I ran it before it sat for so long!

I don't care about the 'BL is more convenient' argument. I honestly find it less convenient to muck about with lipos and chargers and whatnot. I mean, sure, I can. I have a charger capable of charging anything from a single NiCD cell to a 6s LiPO pack. I bought it because I am using a 2s LiFE Rx pack in my touring car, and because I was needing something to charge my 1/35th RC tank models, which are too small to use an actual engine. But I don't want to be messing with it every time I run something.

What I do care about is smile factor. And for me, smile factor stems most from having an actual, honest to goodness, engine in my model. Smile factor comes from having exotic fuels going through it, the smoke, the sound, the way the model moves, how it has to be started before itt'l go anywhere. I love all the aspects of having an engine in my model that electric is incapable of replicating. And that means any model large enough to contain an engine needs to contain one if it's going to be in my stash. If money was no object I'd be building a glow powered quad, just to see if it could be done. I'd be putting a glow engine in a trail rig(Prolly the RC4wd 6x6 Beast II, given it's got plenty of room to mount one and a plenty strong enough powertrain to handle it).

This is a large part of why I'm so indifferent to drones, why I've never had any interest in crawlers, why my interest in trail rigs has been mostly focused on watching them on YouTube rather than actually owning one. The amount of money I'd have to sink into a trail rig before I could be happy with it is at least two decimal places farther to the right than my income will support.

I won't deny that electric models can outperform glow models without even trying, and I'm not going to say that nobody should run them. You do you. But in my RC garage? If it ain't being pushed by at least one piston it better be too small to have one...

378! dude, what is up? haven't heard any of your hardass opinions sense we were both banned from RCCA forum like 7 years ago. man we had some EPIC debates back in the day. good times. good to know you're still a nitro nazi lol

378? AND suburban_hooligan? It's a party now, folks!


BTW, I finally know what your avatar is from, 378. "That Spy is not one of ours!"

I agree! I find electric so much easier to maintain.

I like them both, just like the compound and crossbow. Each one has its purpose. The electric is great for that quick fix. I can run a pack or two in 15-20 and be done, but on those nice days when everyone is running electric and I bust out the old GT2, sheet gets real...

One fuel source not in thread title...Gas. I was really upset for a bit that I didn't win a couple of eBay auctions that involved Losi's gas engine 1/8 scale 8ight/8ight-T platforms. Horizon was dumping them quick. I was holding out with low bids, and missed out by ten~twenty dollars on many, many listings. But, that's the name of the game when bidding. From what I remember reading, the engines weren't quite "there" yet. It's been a few years since I seen any progress with small RC gas engines from any manufacturer.

all the problems i ever heard were about the damn ignition box thing. they just didn't hold up/work properly. it was to much hassle for today's "hobbyist". if this were 2000-2001 we would have fought with them and liked it. im hoping that the 1/8 scale gas cars make a comeback at some point

OS has invented a glow plug that works on bog standard 87 octane mixed with bog standard two cycle oil, currently only used in a couple of glow ignition, gasoline burning aircraft engines of 10 and 15CC displacements. No ignition box, start it exactly as one would start a glow engine with the same exact 1.5v glow starter already in our pit boxes, but it burns pump gasoline. And the videos I've watched of them on YT show them to run in typical OS fashion: Reliable as the sun itself and plenty of power, easily comparable to any similarly sized sport usage glow engine. They have a funky carb and, apparently, feel low on compression, but they can still be easily flip started so they shouldn't be much of a problem in that regard.

Isn't even a prototype, you can buy the plugs and the engines on Tower, AMain, eBay, all your usual getting spots. They're in mass production right now.

OS should spit out a big block and a small block car engine using these plugs. I would totally put one in my SC10GT and my Mad Crusher GP!

hell if that's the case gas should make a comeback at some point.
sounds like it would be no different than a nitro car, only with much lower fuel costs

i wonder how that would work in a buggy/truggy or MT?

i like nitro on road but off road i don't care