Novak the Chevy 350 of brushless.

It may not be ground breaking technology,but it gets the job done,It may not have the most power,but it's generally fast enough.It's affordable,easy,and imo may be the best option out.Here's why. So in the last few months I have come full circle in my brushless choice.I started with My Novak hv 4.5 from my Stampede.Kept hearing about how much better the 8xl mm combo would be,so I got it.Never could keep it to run cooler then the Novak,and the Novak was faster.So I ordered a Medusa 36-60-2000 ,got a Quark 80 (just temporary till I got a MMM, lol ) did the modds and got an Erevo.It was fun to run higher cell count,but that really does get old.45 is fast enough,.So the Novak went back in the Stampede,the 8xl in the Maxx and the Quark in the Erevo.The MM fried ,later found out it took bec and servos with it,or the bec fried which took the esc,not sure.Then the CCbec failed in my Erevo taking the servos. I needed to run so I slapped the 4.5 in the Erevo.No bec needed all plug and play,good to go.Ran it for about a week,no temp problems performed flawless.But I got ansy and decided the Quark/medusa needed to go back in with a receiver pack.It worked fine,but the esc does overheat briefly on occasion.I ran it on 5s for a kick,but really can't use the extra speed except on pavement.I felt the Novak all and all was the better system.It's now in my Erevo and I plan to keep it there.I have an original 5800ss system and 1 of the ss+ ,both of which have never given me any problems in the years that they have seen action.I have never seen a Novak catch fire,or burn up another component.They are not bulletproof as I have had a couple that I have had to get replaced,but I must accept partial resposibility for both times :) they can overheat,but have good built in protection. Point : Why do I see so many people bad mouth them?I see it all the time,they're old technolgy,they run hot,they only do 4s,they're to high of kv,which is what sent me out looking for something else. YES, sometimes, but they work good.I see people all the time say gear for 40,well if thats what you want these work excellent.Surely I'm not the only person happy with it I'd love to hear some more positives from people.

[BL_RV0]

Medusa > Novak...
I think most can agree with that complicated math.

I think you missed the point. :) While I agree that the Medusa motor is probably better,as a system the Novak rules :)

i have beat the hell out of my 6.5 system. i did have to return it once due to a stuck rotor (it was my fault i geared up) other than that it has worked fine. they work awesome if you use only the recommended gearing (it does seem slow to me now though) i have that medusa motor w/mmm 5s that is way faster:)

[TexasSP]

I will respectfully disagree with you about the novak asheck and leave it there with the exception of one note. If it suits your needs and pleases you, then it IS the correct setup for you regardless of what anyone else thinks.

[JThiessen]

I dont think you will ever get BL-RVO to say anything good about Novak.

That being said, I have to agree with the fairly reliable plug and play aspect of the Novak systems. I've had trouble with just about everything I have ever owned related to RC, but at any given point, if one were to go into my garage, the only thing running was a Novak.

40mph in a MT is definitely fast enough off road. In fact, the speed I get out of the 4.5 is more than the Revo can withstand on a daily basis (harder impacts). And they accelerate so hard, its tough to keep them straight - I cant imagine trying to keep something with more power under control.

I also agree that for the price they are a very good value.

[E-Revonut]

I can somewhat agree. A NOVAK HV 4.5 system got me into brushless and it was pretty good. My problem came because of the roller that I had bought had all kinds of messed up gearing in it and cobbed together. I was playing with gearing and found what worked. Then I putted a G1 tranny in and didn't change the pinion accordingly. I fried the esc. Motor worked flawlessly still even on a MM. While waiting for the return of my MMM I actually thought about getting that system up and running again. It had acceptable speed and the power was more controlled than more powerful setups. What kept me away is the lack of programibility and lvc, both problems are addressed with their new systems. Only other problem I had was snapping the 3mm shaft and waiting for the release of the 5mm, which has also been addressed in the new systems. All said and done though I'm pretty happy with my Tekno Neu and MMM, but if that MMM gives me more problems I may get the replacement, sell it, sell the Neu, and then I could but the HV pro and some more lipos.....But I hope that doesn't happen!!!

Yeah I think the 4.5 is quite a bit faster then the 6.5.Mine runs about 47 geared 14/68.No doubt if you want to go over 50 then 5s on the Medusa would be better,or perhaps a working MMM would make the difference,but I really don't want to go there. The 5.5 pro system with 5mm shaft imo looks pretty darn good.It should have close to the output of the older 4.5 but run cooler with lower kv.

[MetalMan]

One problem with the HV that will pretty much always steer me away from it: the BEC operates off of only one of your two battery packs. This means it drains that pack faster, which essentially removes the possiblity of charging both packs together without heavy cell equalizing from the balancer.

I haven't looked into it, but I suppose you could bypass this by plugging both packs (or a single large pack) into the non-BEC side, and powering the ESC with a RX pack or UBEC. But even still, I'd much rather spend my money elsewhere...

[crazyjr]

Originally Posted by asheck

It may not be ground breaking technology,but it gets the job done,It may not have the most power,but it's generally fast enough.It's affordable,easy,and imo may be the best option out.Here's why. So in the last few months I have come full circle in my brushless choice.I started with My Novak hv 4.5 from my Stampede.Kept hearing about how much better the 8xl mm combo would be,so I got it.Never could keep it to run cooler then the Novak,and the Novak was faster.So I ordered a Medusa 36-60-2000 ,got a Quark 80 (just temporary till I got a MMM, lol ) did the modds and got an Erevo.It was fun to run higher cell count,but that really does get old.45 is fast enough,.So the Novak went back in the Stampede,the 8xl in the Maxx and the Quark in the Erevo.The MM fried ,later found out it took bec and servos with it,or the bec fried which took the esc,not sure.Then the CCbec failed in my Erevo taking the servos. I needed to run so I slapped the 4.5 in the Erevo.No bec needed all plug and play,good to go.Ran it for about a week,no temp problems performed flawless.But I got ansy and decided the Quark/medusa needed to go back in with a receiver pack.It worked fine,but the esc does overheat briefly on occasion.I ran it on 5s for a kick,but really can't use the extra speed except on pavement.I felt the Novak all and all was the better system.It's now in my Erevo and I plan to keep it there.I have an original 5800ss system and 1 of the ss+ ,both of which have never given me any problems in the years that they have seen action.I have never seen a Novak catch fire,or burn up another component.They are not bulletproof as I have had a couple that I have had to get replaced,but I must accept partial resposibility for both times :) they can overheat,but have good built in protection. Point : Why do I see so many people bad mouth them?I see it all the time,they're old technolgy,they run hot,they only do 4s,they're to high of kv,which is what sent me out looking for something else. YES, sometimes, but they work good.I see people all the time say gear for 40,well if thats what you want these work excellent.Surely I'm not the only person happy with it I'd love to hear some more positives from people.

I might not agree with the 350 comment, But Novak is the gateway to brushless. I started with novak because i was familar with the programming, I had many of novaks brushed esc's and was very familar with them. It made the transition to brushless easier, Also the novak HV seems to match the nitro's for speed and acceleration. That makes the learning curve and handling the extreme power of brushless easier. To me at least

[Sammus]

I don't really have much input or say, but you I did see (can't find it now) a thread where someone had multiple novak hv escs burn down in shulzesque brilliance without running them beyond spec. It's the only example I've seen I must admit, which leads me to believe it was probably human error.

[BrianG]

I've never owned or run a Novak, but from what I've read, they work well for their purposes. I suppose it's nice to open a box and install something without having to worry about choosing the right combinations of parts, but for some, that's half the fun!

[JThiessen]

Originally Posted by MetalMan

One problem with the HV that will pretty much always steer me away from it: the BEC operates off of only one of your two battery packs. This means it drains that pack faster, which essentially removes the possiblity of charging both packs together without heavy cell equalizing from the balancer.

I haven't looked into it, but I suppose you could bypass this by plugging both packs (or a single large pack) into the non-BEC side, and powering the ESC with a RX pack or UBEC. But even still, I'd much rather spend my money elsewhere...

That is probably my only complaint about them. I continually see one of my packs drained dangerously close to failure - but it doesnt appear to be consistent to any one side (but I still need to do more testing to determine this). I really think this is why I killed a couple of my new A123 packs, and a couple of my NiMH packs. I now have to pull my packs the second I notice any drop in performance from 100%. "Charlie" at Novak once told me that the HV system was really hard on NiMH packs, but didnt elaborate on why - I wonder if this was the reason.

The reason they are hard on nihm packs is the current they need.A good sxs pack does fine.It seems to me that I normally end up with about 300 mah difference,over 5000 mah discharge.Whether running a lvc or not it's always a good idea to stop the instant you notice any drop in performance.

[REVO-DADDY]

I tend to agree my Novak system is simple, reliable, and makes good power. Thats enough for me....