ROAR approval of non novak ESC's and Motors

[NovakTwo]

Originally Posted by TexasSP

I would like to see these questions answered as well.

I thought that I had addressed these questions in an earlier post.

i appreciate your response. Isnt Bob head of the committee?

as an active on-road racer i am interested in the advancement of the technology. the current spec requires everyone to exactly replicate/copy the novak motor design down to the colors of the wires. this is not required to keep the integrity of the inspection process.

this is an older design and frankly when you look at the motors you have listed they are basically identical. yes some of the OEM's have indeed If novskdone this but it isnt moving the sport forward and creating the environment to push the envelope. Why would they want to spend R&D to produce something with no differentiation other than the amount the brand can carry?

We should expect ROAR to go from one to the other. They desperately need to move to avoid becoming irrelevant. It hasnt happend because Novak chose to promote the older design which is all they have vs change to rpm/kv.

I suspect as soon as novak decides to produce such a design ROAR specs will change, not before then. This is very obvious to the racing community.

Bob is not now, nor has he ever been, head of the ROAR brushless motor committee.

The entire goal of the ROAR stock rules was to nail down the specs so that all motors sold for ROAR stock racing would have virtually the same performance. Any motor sellers, who want to offer motors for stock, have to follow these rules. So far, 8 companies have had their motors approved for Stock racing.

ROAR rules require the specific colors, and sequencing of the sensor wires.

If Novak designs a new motor, we would have to follow the ROAR guidelines for submitting a proposal to amend the existing rules. Then all members of the BL motor committee would have to vote in favor of amending the rules to accommodate our new proposal. Not very likely.

[wade7575]

I think if ROAR really cared they never should have asked Bob anything about designing a Brushless motor for ROAR and instead should have asked Bob and 3 to 4 other ESC and Motor maker's to sit in on the meeting and ROAR should have old them to all go away and don't come back until all of you can agree on a common design.If it would have been done this way then no one could be saying that one company and olny one is looking out for there own vested interest.But if you ask me the whole thing still stink's.

[SpEEdyBL]

Give Novak a break. There is an organization called ROAR that sanctions races, and they happen to have rules. If you don't want to follow their rules, then don't race in their races. How difficult can that be to understand?

Simple suggestion: get your local track to sanction a race and allow any motor.

Or, if you are really worked up, start your own organization with the hundreds of other angry racing and call it ANYTHING GOES or something like that.

My understanding is that novak was the company to step up and ended up being the first to submit a motor that the rules could be based around. Obviously nobody like castle or hacker intervened. They could have, but they didn't. And obviously, it was agreed upon by several companies.

I've owned plenty of motors and the the only real difference between the coreless wide rotor style motors that castle uses vs. the novak motors in performance is the feel. One isn't more powerful than the other. If you want a specific power, torque, speed combination, all you have to do is select the wind and the gearing. For practical use, there is no combination that one type of motor can do and the other cannot.

Yes, I mentioned the feel (or throttle response) of each type of motor is a bit differen't, but suppose ROAR rules were based on the castle motor instead and involved strict requirements. Then you have people who like whatever it is about the novak style motor complaining. And nope, you couldn't run a neu motor either because its wider. So no matter how you have it, plenty of motors are restricted and plenty of people complain.

[NovakTwo]

Originally Posted by wade7575

I think if ROAR really cared they never should have asked Bob anything about designing a Brushless motor for ROAR and instead should have asked Bob and 3 to 4 other ESC and Motor maker's to sit in on the meeting and

ROAR should have old them to all go away and don't come back until all of you can agree on a common design.If it would have been done this way then no one could be saying that one company and olny one is looking out for there own vested interest.But if you ask me the whole thing still stink's.

When Novak spent several years designing, prototyping, testing and investing in the tooling for our first BL motors (4300 and 5800), there was no guarantee that ROAR would ever consider our motors, or any other BL motors, for inclusion in racing. All the R&D and investment was a huge risk for the company.

None of the existing brush companies had shown any interest in developing BL motors, which Novak felt (early in this century) would be an enormous improvement over the existing brush motor designs. I'm still surprised that none of those companies made the investment in BL technology, but they didn't.

It was a huge, expensive risk for Novak---developing and promoting a product line for which we had never been known. We sold the earliest motors for a couple of years before ROAR and the racing community were even willing to consider adopting rules. And there was pressure from the sellers of brush motors who resisted any new rules which would threaten their sales of the existing brush motors.

We offered to OEM our motors to Associated/Reedy Modified, but they worked with LRP to tool up a motor based on Novak's original design. Once the LRP motors were available, ROAR then considered the earliest provisional rules for the new motors. The first rules were shepherded through the ROAR approval process by Mike Reedy(Associated/LRP), who was then President of IFMAR---the international racing sactioning organization.

[TexasSP]

I will give Novak the credit for the above. Heck trinity several years ago had a page on their website stating how "bad" brushless motors were and how they were not more efficient/faster/better/etcetera than brushed motors.

However there is no escaping the fact the the roar rules are very conveniently catered to the Novak design. roar itself needs to step out of the dark ages of old school bureaucracy and allow more free flow of ideas. roar ways only stifle the RC hobby. Thankfully the it's the heli/airplane/boat people that have been the driving force of electric advancement. Of course the governing bodies of the air/water hobbies are much more receptive to advancement.

I think the biggest issue most people have stated is the fact the is so obvious to all who look at it. Bob has an extreme amount of inlfuence on roar admit it or not.

[Arct1k]

I equate ROAR to the FIA running F1 - At the end of the day they are actually trying to constrain development to create a more level playing field.

They are trying to make it a driver driven hobby rather a kit driven hobby... It is interesting to see that the "hotest" car race at my local track is now "Stock Slash" - The only thing you can change is to the optional pinion!

[NovakTwo]

With the acceptance of BL motors and lipo batteries, a couple of the big problems of competition racing were solved, Big races had become a battery war, and to a lesser extent a motor war.

Those companies that could control batteries----by going through thousands of cells, to select the best for their factory drivers, had a deleterious effect on competition. Factories, who sent special motor "tuners" to races, also had an unfair advantage. After all, if some tuner invests hundreds of dollars of time in a $50.00 motor, chances are the motor will be superior to those "off the shelf" items.

So, for now, the playing field is more level than in many years. Not much can be done to the lipo packs. And the brushless motors don't yet offer much of an opportunity to cheat. So the factories can concentrate on what they really want to sell---kits.