dhyde79

without it turning into a flame war, what's realistically the better way to go, nitro or electric?

I've got a Savage so I'm familiar with the nitro drawbacks as well as benefits, I've not got an electric car or truck, (do have a Blade CX2, but, I never fly it cause I'm tired of replacing blades every time I do) so, while I've heard plenty of opinionated "electric's better" or "Nitro's best" I've not played with both to try them.

also, what're some decent cars for a reasonable amount of money?(read as, I'm not spending more than $350 to get it running)

I'm going to check at the LHS and see what they carry in house that I could have easy parts access with as well. and will report back with what they've got.

slayerphonics

Honestly man its a mentality,

I see distinct personality traits of nitroers vs electrics.. or on-road vs off-road or air vs ground

What appeals to you? if the techy electric appeals to you go with it, if they hit-em hard nitro appeals to you go with it

dhyde79

well, I think, because it's going to be more of a toy than something to mess with trying to race and make uber fast and all of that crap, I'm leaning more towards electric.....LHS has a used Losi XXX-S with 14T mod motor and aftermarket ESC, new body in mint condition, everything looks sharp except for the tires which obviously need replaced, for $120 I think, I've already got a 3300mah stick pack that I can slap in it and then getting a servo for it (puts me at about $150) and will be adding my second RX unit from my DX3.0 for my savage to it....

good deal, bad deal, what do you think?

FPV racer wilo

You can't go wrong with an electric losi good quality but check out HPI sprint2 drift car and the YOKOMO drift cars they are good to look at and reliable.
Good luck Brett.

dhyde79

well, after much debate, I got the XXX-S (ended up being a XXX-S G+) and dropped a mamba max 5700 brushless setup in it, some 3mm offset HPI TE37 wheels and the HPI M compound low profile tires too....and then, got a used TC3 for the wife, which will be getting a 14T brushed motor for now, with a Tazer 12T ESC on it, it'll get the same tires, probably different wheels though, hoping that they'll both be a lot of fun.....I know already that I love the Losi, sticks to whatever line I point it at like a mad man, and the wheels I got, are definitely helpful for my "point & shoot" driving style on it....

Specialzed

My Feedback: (2)

This is how it pretty much all sums up, If you want performance nitro will never beat electric in that category, Also electrics will always be faster and jump higher than nitros. If you like the smell and sound of nitro thats reason enough to get one.

dhyde79

that sir, is bait to start the flame war I above stated I don't want started.

However, I'll humor your post.

BRUSHLESS electric has POTENTIAL to beat nitro.
If you put a considerable amount of funds into big bad LiPo packs and chargers, and brushless ESC/Motor kits.

However, dollar for dollar, electric of any sort can't compete with Nitro for run time.
In my nitro truck, if I'm out of gas, I put another tank in, and my fuel is less than $30 a gallon, which is a few days worth of running.
In my electric touring car, to get 15 minutes of run time on my OLD setup (14T brushed motor and Tazer 12T ESC) I had to pop $40 batteries in, which, take a little under an hour on any decent charger to re-charge.
I can go for bigger packs, at more expense to get a slight increase in run time, but, electric won't ever match my run times on nitro.

That being said, I went electric for the "convenience and no tuning" angle, not because it outweighed nitro by loads, also because I can run electric in the house without the wife murdering me.

The Hedgehog

A good quality lipo pack will give you 200-400 runs for lets say about 100 dollars. Lets say 15 tanks for a gallon of nitro. It would cost 600 dollars for the same runtime as a lipo battery. You can get away with 3 lipo packs as they last 20-30 minutes.

I just state the facts since all the nitro guys say lipo and brushless is more expensive than nitro? My mitros cost way more in fuel alone.

Specialzed

My Feedback: (2)

Im talking about performance I never said dollar to dollar, and im not an electric fanboy either my next rc is a nitro.

calvino

good point, but also with a brushless lipo system you need the motor unit, ESC... but for onroad cars the engines can get expensive fast.... so it comes down to a matter of cost, time to use it, and location to use it
if your neighbors can't stand loud stuff go electric
if you don't have much time to drive after work or stuff, go electric
if your neighbors are a bunch of rap blastin tweens, then get a ntiro
if you got a reasonable amount of time to tune the engine. and do after run/clean up get a nitro
it comes down to those factors[8D], personally, if you are considering racing, check out the local track and find out the most popular class so if you do decide to try your hand at racing then you can have somethin to use[8D],

Longhair

I clicked on this thread because I thought it was about Drift/Touring Car not Nitro vs. Electric [sm=tired.gif]

The Hedgehog

Nitros need engines too about = in cost to brushless/esc nowadays. But in the end I love my nitros and electrics.

Anway back to the original poster, electrics will get you drifting for a cheaper cost than nitros. Their instant torque is awesome for drifting, I can drift my onroad nitro, but I need plenty of room and the drifts dont look as pretty.

magnat

Can we all agree to disagree and end it there...
Nitro owners will never believe what electric owners say and Electric owners will never believe what the Nitro guys do..

How ever, in saying that... in the 1:10th Scale : The world record for Speed belongs to an electric on a Nitro Chassis...

Out of the Box, Nitro's do have the upper hand for the moment
Running costs how ever are in favour of the Electrics...

Longhair

How does that work for people that owned both Nitro & Electric?

The Hedgehog

I drive both and like both, however in driving both I am going to recommend electric for drifting. You get 100% of the torque at zero RPM, making it perfect for swinging the rear out.

The best thing about drifting is you do not need a high end touring car at all. I recommend the TT-01D or TB-02D from Tamiya as a drifter. You can get those up and running for about 200 bucks, well worh the price.

dhyde79

I've got a brushless TC (mamba max 5700 in a XXX-S) a brushed TC (14T in a TC3), and a nitro MT (Savage that's a mutt of generations from Savage 25 through X-SS)

as far as the nitro vs electric arguement: my nitro needs 4 AA's and a full tank of gas, a glow plug ignitor and a $10 6 cell stick pack for the roto-start (smallest mah is fine because it only gets run a couple seconds at a time) and runs until the AA's go dead, multiple days, for $27 (that's what I pay for my O'Donnell 30% Fuel).

my Triple X-S with the mamba, I get about 18-20 minutes on a 4200mah 6 cell pack, so, to run for an hour of hitting it hard (or until I clip something solid and get to go replace parts) I need 3 packs, Venom 4200 packs list at $52.99 at Tower Hobbies, which means that the 3 packs to run, cost me about $110, now, they're rechargable (charger cost me $80, puts out 4A max, and is AC/DC so it's not an inconvenience that I'm going to plug it in and let it run while I do other things), so it's not a $110 every time I go out, but, neither is that fuel. I've had my nitro truck for about 7 months, and have put a grand total of 4 gallons of fuel through it (which means I've JUST spent as much in fuel as I did on 3 battery packs instead of having to drop it up front).

my TC3, I run on 3300 mah packs, and get about 10-15 minutes at best on them, @ tower, $32.99, have 3, need 4 to make the hour mark, way over the $100 mark to run for the hour, uses the same charger as above.

now, if I want to go to say....5000mah LiPo packs on both, sticking to Tower, and going for Venom packs, they're $99.99 each, but, have traxxas plugs, so I get to order some deans connectors too and re-solder connectors on, in addition, I've got to buy a new charger, great, now, thankfully, Venom's balancing LiPo charger is only $23.99, but wait, that only pushes .75A, so, lets see, that 5000mah pack now takes almost 7 hours to charge? IF it'll charge from that charger at all? wow, ok, lets find a charger with a bit more beef, Duratrax Intellipeak ICE....it'll do up to 8A off of DC, no AC, but, 8A, means that I can have that 5000mah pack back up in about 37.5 minutes, so, now I only need 3 packs per car ($600 in batteries), and to run both cars, I'll likely need 2 chargers going at the same time ($250 in chargers), and can run one, charge one, and let one cool, with minimal time between unless actually racing, then I'll need to add 2 more packs to complete that cycle, one charged, one in the car, one charging, one cooling. Now, I'd compare cost to take those to AC as well, but, I can't find a DC to AC adaptor on tower without digging a buttload, so, we'll just say I go down to my local parts store and buy a $50 car battery, and a $50 charger for that car battery to keep it charged up, so now, to go LiPo, it's $800 in batteries, $250 in chargers, plus an extra $100+ to get the chargers running when I'm not sitting at my car, so, $1150 on top of my cost of cars, motors, and everything else? that'll buy me a lifetime supply of AA batteries, and more fuel than I could possibly run in a few years....


now, I will agree, my mamba lays a HELL of a lot more power down than what my LRP Z.28R Spec 3 in my Savage does....at least, it lays more down percieved. My savage has no trouble breaking all 4 tires loose from pavement, with street designed tires on it, my mamba on the Triple-X-S lost that designation, unless it's SLICK pavement, the tires it's got on it (HPI M Compound Radials) hook up enough that it doesn't like to break them loose. When I was running Schumacher slicks on it, with the 14T motor that's now in the TC3, you couldn't keep traction. While I do think that the electric does get you much more potential, the cost is too much up front to make it as competitive. The motors aren't really a comparison, my LRP ran about $190, and that's about what the Mamba Max setups run, if I went to the other companies who claim they can beat up on everyone else (like they all do) the price shoots way up there too.....as is, I chose to support a company who's about 10-12 hours away from where I live, so if it were a total piece of crap and broke, my transit time replacing stuff is very minimal.

Electric does have quite a bit more variability and potential, I'll give it that, but, cheaper, it's certainly not, not in the short run, and at least for me, not in the long run, it'd take an exceptionally long time for my nitro truck's fuel to require that much money. But, they're quiet, they're fun, and that's what it's all about in the end, cause if you spend $1500 to get the thing screaming and you enjoy it, you're no worse off than the guy who dropped $500 to get it running and drops $27 a month to keep the tank full. (unless of course you can't afford that $1500, and your wife finds out you spent it....then....well...you're on your own there, with your fun too)

Troopermanaic

My Feedback: (7)

Personally I go nitro because chargeing batteries actually get me mad, I hate just sitting there waiting for the batteries to charge up, sure you can charge it while you drive but the temps might ruin the batteries also if I get a friend to do it for me he always wants to drive the car too O.o

dhyde79

yeah, charging sucks, like I say, my biggest gripe about going electric (which I've done now) is the increased upfront cost, and now, after digging, I may have to slap a 5 cell hump pack on my touring cars too just to get 6V to my servo because the ESC's only push 5V to them? that's getting a bit rediculous......

The Hedgehog

I hate charging my glow plug igniter for 10 ish hours.

Not all esc's push 5 volts to the servos, the lower end ones do, yes.

dhyde79

that's why I use one that uses D cell batteries, or, the one like the hobby shop does and has the big block battery that's non-rechargable and the leads off of that

The Hedgehog

dhyde79, why bother to ask for an opinion if you are just pro nitro anyway?

All the professional drifters in the competitions use electrics, so you decide. Both can drift really.

dhyde79

I'm not pro nitro or pro electric, I just bought 2 electric touring cars to add along side my 1 nitro truck. I just don't like people that make it sound like nitro's crap because it's so expensive but electric's the best, without pointing out that while it may very clearly outperform, it'll cost you multiple times more money initially to get a setup that's that good.

magnat

dhyde79
Sure Out of the Box Costs, the Nitro's often win. but the costs of Brake shoes, Clutches, plugs, Tyres and fuel make nitro far more expensive to run.

A decently Set up Electric may cost a little more then a Nitro with starter kit, but you don't have the ongoing cost of the things listed above..(electrics are easier on tyres)


People who complain about "Waiting to recharge Batteries" don't have their electrics set up properly..
To sucessfully run an Electric non stop all day requires 3 Batteries and a Peak Charger rated at 4amps and I don't mean a charger thats worth $20...

I race and drift my Electrics and my 4200mah Batts last for 45 mins and I have minimum Down time due to the way I have things set up..
I have 4 Batteries.
You run 1, cool 1, Charge 1. and the final Battery is used just incase the Charger takes a little longer to peak then normal.

So you can run an Electric all day without any waiting time at all... Its all in how you set it up...
any down time you have, is usually required to cool the motor and esc down anyway..

So Yes, Electrics do cost more to get set up decently, but in saying the same a Nitro will cost more to remain more competitive as the engines you buy cost more..

a $60 Electric Motor VS a $180 Nitro Engine?

As with any RC Hobby, the Nitro VS Electric thing alway's causes heat... not necessarily flaming, but Heat..

rally drift

To dhyde79's post, Yeh I hated always charging my igniter for 8 hours+ but I recently bought the AA glow igniter off a main hobbies and have kodak rechargable AA's (4) and my charger for my oldddd xmod batteries charges the kodaks in less that 25 minutes so that puts me at about 25 minutes for 4 aa's.

dhyde79

magnat, very true, once you have the good ESC another motor for it is only $50-60....(though, if memory serves, the high end LRP brushless ones were over $150 a piece list price, which, is about what my LRP .28 in my savage cost me at the LHS)

as far as brushless being easier on tires, I don't know, I've not got a nitro TC or electric monster truck, but, I know my MT's not touched a set of tires yet, so, I don't really know that they play that big of a deal lol

as far as the 3 packs and a 4A charger, help me out and show me what I'm missing....a 4200mah battery, at 4A charge rate should take a few minutes over an hour for that pack from fully depleted, assuming 50% charge, it's 30 minutes....my 4200 packs don't get near that if I'm running the car hard....but, you're not the first person I've heard say that, so, please, elaborate for me so I can figure out what I need to do to get things running smoother.....