Motors

There’s two types of motors, brushed and brushless. I won’t go into much details on brushed motors, as they seem to be on their way to extinction… They are cheaper, but have more parts that wear out and need maintenance, and also have less power, everything else being equal. So they’re typically used in cheaper ready-to-run (RTR) kits, that are more oriented toward “bashing” (running your car non-competitively, in a park or backyard). Bashing is fine, running non-competitively is great fun, but maintenance and parts wearing out, that’s not fantastic. And we’d all like more power, yeah? So I’ll just forget that brushed motors even exist, from now on, and if you have an extra £10 kicking around, I’d suggest you do too. ;-)

Motors are rated by the number of turns in their coils. The lower the number, the faster the motor. For some reason, brushless motors have “half turns”, so they have ratings like 4.5T, 10.5T, 17.5T, and so on. Some “stock” racing classes will enforce a specific number of turns, usually 13.5T or 17.5T, to keep the speeds similar and easier to drive. So, check with your local club before buying a motor, to find out how many turns you should get.

There’s also two variants of brushless motors: sensored or sensorless. Sensorless motors are a way to cut costs, as they can run a bit rougher, and do not offer the same tuning possibilities as sensored ones do (they unable to have “boost”). The important bit when getting your kit is that not all ESCs (electronic speed controllers, the component driving the motor) support sensored or sensorless motors, so make sure to match up both components! Many ESCs will support both, but not all, so ask your hobby shop if you’re not sure.

One way to make sure you get this right is to buy a motor and ESC combo (possibly saving a bit of money too).