This past Saturday we raced stock brushed s/k's at R/C Madness with one racer running 17.5 BL. I was very curious to see how they ran together.

The BL system won and TQ'd... To be fair it was close racing between the top 3 all day, and this racer has TQ'd and won many times with 27 turn as well. He was also racing "the fastest t-plate s/k car".

We run 4 min qualifiers and 125 lap features. I believe the top 3 qualified with the same amount of laps... In the feature the B/L car ran away, but then dumped hard and the top three were all within a lap or so.

So, from what I can see:
17.5 bl is a good speed for people used to 27 turn racing.
It can be mixed together while people make the switch at their own pace. I think what has stopped some people from switching has been the splitting of classes until everyone has made the switch.

I know this has been discussed before, but I am curious to hear other's thoughts on it.

I think it will depend on the size of the track. We' re open to testing it out on a weekly basis here at Turn 4. Running brushed and brushless seems to work on the shorter flat tracks but it is still unknown for our large banked track. For big events, point series, etc, we want to keep brushed seperate from brushless, atleast for the time being. Also, we are not allowing a track record set by a brushed motor to be broken by someone in the same class running a brushless motor.

Sounds like you have it all under control. Was this tested this past weekend at turn 4? I thought I read something about it.

To make it short....they are very close, but with people at the same level the BL prevails.

In short,
When a brushless 17.5 motor is geared correctly, I have seen it to be 1 to 1 1/2 laps faster then a 27 turn brushed motor.

One of the things we noticed in the limited testing of the 17.5/4 cell combo was that the B/L motor felt a lot flatter coming off the corners.

I'm supposing this in partly due to the lower RPM and high gearing...

The motor has a lot more pulling power in the corner, but to me it felt slower on the straights...but the overall speed was quicker....by a very small amount.

Looks like the NEOT will be running them together at Maximus in January. Should see some more difinitive results there.

We have had a chance to run these together on our track. And they seem fairly close. I have to agree with casperbase if the BL motor is in the right hands with the right gearing it could be better. This past weekend we ran 17.5 pancar and the lap times were 4.5's-6's and if you remember brushed stock times were similair to that last season. We still wont be mixing them together for any big events.

hi jon ,
last sunday mike m. broke the track record at maximus in 17.5 with 59 4.00 if im not mistaken the 27 turn record was 57. i belive you will see an advantige to the 17.5 but a great 27 turn chassis will still be close.just my .02
scott

wasnt that 57 on the old carpet?

yes ken i do believe you are correct.

It was 58 4:02 on the old carpet.

Well,
another interesting test for 27turn/17.5 running together. TQ after the first round of qualifiers was held by 17.5. But at the end of qualifying 27turn had tq. In the 125 lap main (8.5 minutes) 17.5 finished 2nd to a 27turn. This was on a 125' flat carpet oval.

Yea it was intresting I think I had more in the car and with a few little bobbles it could have turned either way I think, I am on the fence still as to what is faster on this type of track but I am no pro, true test is some pro needs to step in and show us how it realy is...