Possible idea for bringing brushless to the pit party (as in racing)
 

I was reading a huge Electric over Nitro in racing thread, in another forum. A lot of the guys admitted that electric looks good, but there is a problem with battery changes. Long story short, i think that a bunch of smokers would jump to electric, if pits were possible without partial disassembly. As i was reading, i got to thinking of the threads on caps here and thought if we could get 10-12 minute runs with a 3 second charge, I think it could go a long way to bringing electric to the masses. I was thinking we could do it like a traxxas EZ start, hand held battery and just plug and push a button. I do not have the expertise to do this, but thought i'd throw the idea out to those who might can do it.

Would this be possible with current capacitor technology?

5 minutes of runtime and 5 sec recharge type of thing would be very cool but not possible with current technology that I know of.

I've been thinking a little about this "problem" with race length and pitting. If the smokers were not stuck on the idea that pitting is somehow a necessary part of a "real" race, we could push limiting the races to about 30 minutes and running bigger lipos like @8000mah. Then we don't need to mess with a battery swap and the headaches that go with it.

30 minutes is a long race. There are many that many races that are 45 minutes, and very few that are 60 minutes. Normally it's only nationals/worlds level events that do this, like the rcpro series finals and roar nats, etc.

I think the fast swap batteries serum was working on would be a good idea. Definitely achievable with current technology.

Only problem with using a capacitor to recharge a battery in a short amount of time is the current. If a 2000mah battery/capacitor would get you 5mins, it would take 1,440amps to recharge in 5sec., if I did my math right ( 5sec = 0.0013889 hours, 2Ah / 0.0013889 hours = 1,440amps). From my knowledge of what's currently out there, I'd say we're pretty far off from that.

yes I was thinking the same thing on the super high amp rate it would take.
seems like it would liquify the wires or something

A recharge is not the way with current technologies, A easy battery swap is the way to go. I find that swapping batteries is a irritant. A better system could benefit not just racers but the Hobby in general.


Highflier

my idea of a quick-swap would be like, you flip your car over, and take out 2 body clips from the bottom of the chassis, and once you pull those out, theres a big flap under the chassis hinged at one end that opens up, and pop! out slides your lipo when the flap is open, and this "popping" base would have a channel into it where you tuck your wires and connector for very easy and quick access. (like the open end of the base (when the flap is open) would have toyr connector there.) once you have your new battery in, you just shut the "hatch" and put the clips back on, and voila, your racing! all of this should take about 30 seconds. good? bad? only thing i see wrong with my design is that youd have to have very long esc wires. doesnt seem like too big of a problem tho

Serums quick swap idea would be good.. .. kinda like something that Tyco makes with the 6V and 9.6V.. .they swap pretty fast.. but if serum could make a case for the lipos.. and we'd only take a few seconds to swap batteries... put the batteries on bottom/top/side of the car.. who cares, use high impact plastic and water proof it... Serum.. Get her done bro.. :)

I agree - what Serum was posting was pretty sweet. If the details were ironed out it could be incredible. For example, I could see the body having some kind of hinge point on it to flip up for quick access to the battery. You could put a couple tabs of velcro on the body as well as on the chassis side mud guards to keep it in place while racing. Or you could have a small post coming out of the vertical portion of the mud guards that had a body clip on it. Something along those lines would be sweet and very quick. Does that make sense or is the picture I'm painting a Picasso? :lol:

Some of you guys missed the point, I was thinking of using the caps in the carand using the battery in the charger. I know lowering the race time is a way, but nobody here likes short races. they say the longer the better. I have 8000mah batteries, but if possible, i'd run my 4900 flightpower over them. I come from an electric background (slotcars) and really do not see a need for 30+minute races for any class

I just updated a bit of the thread guys, to give this a little boost..

This weekend i will finish her to include the plugs. (i spent quite some time on drawing the actual plug, reverse engineering can be a pain, you know.. )

here is the thread;
http://www.rc-monster.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8522

Wouldn't we have 3 or 4 minutes to change the battery while the nitro guy's work on getting up to the current lap? ;)

I think fuel cells are gonna be the way to go pretty soon. From what I've read its fairly simple to do now, given the right equipment.

I love run time, but I havn't driven long enough in one setting to justify anything more expensive than my lipo's. 45 minutes is a lot driving, do I realy need a car that will do 2-3 hours??? or more???

How hard would it be to get an 1/8th scale racer to do 60 minutes, at better than nitro speed? Or how about 30 minutes? (nitro pits 3 times in one hour, electric pits 1 time= three times as long to change your battery)

No need to worry about pit stops when these rigs will be running in their own class. :whistle:

i really doubt anything will be a problem, either there will be a brushless class and everyone will have slow pit stops, or we're waiting for the nitro guys to catch up, im sure we'll always have a 6-7 lap lead.:diablo:

Pit stops are the next step in E-1/8th racing. I hope some of the geniuses who frequent this forum can come up with a winning design. For the next few years I'd say E-1/8th will be run with Nitro, maybe when it starts to catch on, we can be in our own classes, until then we have to beat them at their own game. That means "race weight" and running for 30mins....

You'll only have to worry about the longer mains if you make the A......

Im running the kyosho race this weekend at Revelation Raceway in So cal with my electric buggy ( and the only electric buggy as far as i know )

i get about 18-20 min on a pack... a average nitro pit would be about 4-5 seconds and have to pit about 3 times... And i can swap a battery in about 20 seconds... So it should be comparable **** hopefully ****

:yipi:
Mark

Say hello to Lutz for me. He was the local wheel back here in Ohio before he got with Kyosho as the Team manager. I hear that some of the team guys will be showcasing their new RTR buggy. Good luck!

will do, but yeah alot of people will be there ( and parking sucks there )

Some big names are
Cavaleri (damn spelling)
Kortz
Lutz
Mayfield
Tebo (i think)
and as you can imagine most of the Kyosho drivers

+1
That's exactly what i think:yes:

Problem with pit stops and quick change batteries is that it means every racer will have to run similar battery setups to be fair. Similar capacities and similar wiring/mounting.

Zero pits and a dedicated electric class are the way to go IMHO...

True... that's an ideal situation. But for now most of us have to run with the nitros and play by their rules, so I'm working on a relatively quick-change battery tray for my car. This way I'm not stuck running a 8k pack if I don't want to. One pit with a pair of 5k packs would work for up to 45 min mains for me.

the idea of a seperate class is great, if electric has a good following. Here i feel like Gen. custer at Little Big Horn, being the only electric solder in all the smoke signals:lol:, I run nitro as well, but hate tuning sometimes. Would be easier to go all electric, if there was a following.

Thats why i thought about running caps on the car and using the battery to charge, if we could get 7-10 minutes and charge at 3-4 seconds, we could compete on an even level and run almost indefinately, using pits. My idea is using a slow discharge (probably large), fast charge capacitors. if we could keep it to around an average battery weight and keep the buggy close to a Nitro it would allow us to pit at the same time so there would be no advantage and no excuses

i think the way to go is like the airplane guys an use magnets to hold the body one. then you could take the body off really fast without having to mess with those body pins. if you use velcro for your packs like i do then you could pull them out an drop a freash one in in just a few seconds. i use to race 1/8th buggies an i know that pit times are fast. but hay the nitro guys need all the help they can get when they go up against us electric guys.