Nothing in this post is to be negative towards Castle, as their products are fantastic quality, and you can't go past their A/M service.

But you said Leopard Copied/Cloned your motors?

How is this so? I have a Leopard 5692 1340kv sitting here. ( The visual build quality is excellent - I'm yet to run it though. )

Castle doesn't produce a motor of this size (This motor has been around for awhile) and nothing close to it. So there is some obvious R&D being done with these Leopard motors and not blatant copying, as you guys have suggested.

I'd lean more towards them being Castle influenced

Just my 0.2c.

Welcome to rcm
 

First off welcome to RCM from the land down under. If you are in search of factual and honest info about our R/C hobby, then you have come to the right place. Not only do we have the pleasure of sharing info with some of the brightest and most experienced minds in the business, but also some of the top manufacturers as well stop in here and share their info with us as well.

With that said I am not sure why you would come here to defend the Leopard brand, but if you place their motors side by side with some of the CC motors it is painfully obvious that someone is cloning someone. CC has not only shared info with us about how their motors are made, but also where, and by who they are manufactured. There is nothing stopping Leopard or any of the other companies for that matter from stopping in on these R/C sites to share info with us (the consumers) in the hopes of supporting their products. Thats just good business sense. Of course this is a USA site and we support USA companies so there is a slight lean in the direction of American companies. Especially when they have one of the best customer support serivce oriented warranties in our hobby. Since Leopard does not visit with us here to share info for or against their motors any arguement on their behalf is somewhat mute. All are welcome here to share info or discuss anything R/C related, and we welcome facts on any discussion supporting claims. I hope you enjoy your time in here as many of us do. Have a great time and enjoy the hobby.

To begin with some facts, the leopard 5mm motors have smaller bearing than the Castle one, 5*4*13mm vs 5*6*16mm (I think)....
Just my small statement :lol:

Exactly.
 

Exactly. This is how companies avoid breaking copyright laws. All one has to do is change a couple small items like bearing size, and screw sizes, or screw mounting patterns, and no one can complain or file sute against them.

Make that heavily influenced- up until Castle released their 1515 there were pretty much zero other 4 pole motors to be had, besides Neu & Medusa- and both of those are American designed/ made motors too. Changing the length and diameter of a motor to acheive a desired power output and kv rating isnt that difficult, Castle did all the ground work as it were & the clone factories came along and exploited it, just like all the proper 1/8 scale escs from China that came along after the MMM and Tekin Rx8 were released...

A friend has a Leopard motor in his Hyper7 and Revo. I have to say that do perform very good. Temps are similar and power seems to be on par with Castle. Where I see a problem with the Leopard motors is what are you going to do if your motor craps it self? You will just have to buy another. What are you going to do if there is something wrong with the motor right from the box? You might be luck and the seller you bought it from will look after you but every chance they will tell you to go away.
If you buy Castle you get more than good quality product. You get support as well. Look at what the guys from Castle (and even the man him self Patrick) are doing here. Answering questions, offering advice and really looking after their brand and company image. That goes a long way in my books.

Still I have to confess. I do have a few Hobbywing ESC but they were cheap for my cheap cars and I know that they will go straight into the bin if anything goes wrong with them. My Castle gear is in my better cars and I know if anything happens to it Castle will be there to get me going again. If I was offered a Leopard motor for $30 I might take it but they go for around the $100 mark. I am not a gambling man and that isn't chump change to me.

As far as cloning goes I doubt that they didn't go over the Castle motor with a magnifying glass and a micron gauge. They are just way too similar to believe other ways.

IMO, the castle motor are better for the long term and intense use (more than 1 hour a day) because of their bigger bearings. Leopard and hobbywing motors use the same bearing brand (NMB), but the bearings are smaller.
So, correct me if I am wrong, but for the same quality, the bigger the bearing is and the longer it can hold. That's why Castle upgraded the NEU Motors bearings no ?
Anyway, if one day I have a bearing or rotor failure, I know I can replace it with the Castle repair kit.
All this reasons concern purely the reliability of the motor, but there is the support team too...

The Chinese people that build the CC motors I am sure care about making a quality product.Its kinda a rude statement to say that the same Chinese people build the Leopard motor dont give a shit and build a crappy product.I use the MMM and the MMP in my cars and a large selection of CC motors and have a few Leopard motors as well.As far as I can tell the Hobbywing line has used these same Leopard motors for a while.And ofcourse CC has great customer service 2nd to no one.And BTW China is still Communist.

i fell into the leopard trap... and for that, i am truely sorry...

Purchased this: http://www.rc-fans88.com/details.asp?prodid=2472

purely casue i thought i wasz gettign castle quality at pocket money prices...

4 pole's? good... kv perfect for crt.5? great!

or so i thought....

ran for the first time this weekend, geared for 40mph on 3s, (as its rated to 4s i thought, should run cool!)

Bring it in after a few minutes... notice a small amount of smoke comming from the front of it (using it with my mmp btw) so i thought nothing of it, just a bit of grass stuck in it, its working fine and not very hot (45*C)

stripped it down today to find a lovely 2 pole rotor....

yup... sold a crapper... no better than what i was running before... total waste of money....


will be preforming a charge back TODAY as it is a pos, not as described and unfit for purpose....

Scammers....

Now, I'm Castle creations for life... Strayed from the path to be brought back on with a bang... and a whisp of smoke...

just need to find a 4 pole 540 can 3500kv ish motor now ;)

thanks for all the work, reasearch and customer service that goes into all your products.

Just need to get the next batch of mmm's into england asap! got two on warranty return and the distributer is currently out of stock!

Joe --

The 3800Kv SCT motor is probably what you are looking for. :)

It's a 4 pole 540 can motor.

How can you tell it is a 2 pole?sorry dumb question

2 pole rotor is all one piece, just one large magnet bonded to the shaft, 4 poles are separated into 4 sections, usually wrapped in Kevlar or carbon

as far as i know?

Yup- you could do the piece of paper & iron filings trick too, just to be certain..

Sorry for offtopic guys... here i found this 6 pole 2560kv motor
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...dProduct=14632

Specs:
Size: 40-68
Kv: 2560
Poles: 6
Max Amps: 120A
Max Volts: 21v
Max Watts: 2200w
Idle Current: 5.0A
Resistance (Ri): 5.8
Shaft size: 5mm

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s.../4068-2560.jpg
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...068-2560-2.jpg

And it probably will perform pretty poorly. 5.0A no load, and 5.8milliohms resistance? Terrible...