Finally got some nice weather in this weird fall season we have had so far, so I took the Pro-2 Eliminator outside and grabbed a handful of throttle! I only have about 30 minutes of drive time on this car so far and I still have a lot of tuning to do to make it launch straight and consistent, but the cold temperatures are definitely making my job a lot harder. After some not-so-successful test hits, I made some changes to the suspension and got the car to launch straight, although I don’t think it’s very fast due to wheel spin. I still need a sway bar and I’ll figure something out sooner or later! Looking forward to more tuning in warm weather for sure, but there is at least still something we can do with it until then; top speed.
SPEED RUNS
The Pro2 5800kV motor I decided to try out first is definitely not an ideal top speed motor. In fact, it may not be great for drag racing period, but I had to try it out. It is a torque monster and honestly a bit hard to tame down enough on the slippery road I’ve got to work with. Geared 27/86 and throwing 47° of Timing Boost at it*, I managed to hit 62mph using a GPS speedometer app on my phone. Not too bad, but I think it’s time to swap in a 4.5T motor to compare to.
*I do not recommend throwing this much timing at a 4-pole motor like the Pro2. In fact, I don’t recommend running 4-pole motors in sensored-only mode as it just increases heat, amp draw and overall load on the system.
I can say, it’s a really fun car to drive. The speed now is impressive and definitely faster than I thought it would be! Hoping we can hit 70mph with a different motor choice and there will be less risk of damaging the ESC due to mis-firing at high RPMs. Just like the big cars, you CAN break things by tuning too aggressively, so I recommend adjusting things in small steps and really watching everything when tuning. Use the Data Logging feature to record runs and make sure that everything is in safe zones while making changes!
Stay tuned for the next episode, I will cover swapping in the 4.5T motor, go over some of the suspension changes I made and hopefully keep the car out of the ditch!