UPDATE - The Novak 4.5 HV Test
I finally got my butt in gear and started some testing. The results quite frankly pissed me off in more ways than one. I tracked Motor and ESC Temps, Motor RPM, Throttle Level, Voltage, and AMP draw using my with my Oracle Data Recorder.
My thought was that since the Novak HV 4.5R ripped it up pretty well on my E-Revo it should be able to handle a freaking buggy - that would be a big NO and a disappointment in so many ways. First the massive Novak motor heatsink had to be ground down on the mill to allow for driveshaft clearance and my rear support had to be moved to the other side of the driveshaft (that part was easy and required just a countersunk hole.) I fabricated a ESC mount to bolt up to the diff tower and mounted the GINORMOUS fan cooled Novak HV ESC. and spent the better part of an hour getting everything hooked up to the Oracle data recorder.
Basically I beat the hell out of the system until it thermaled and boy did it thermal a lot. Turns out that temp seems to be around 155 degrees however I would imagine if I could have mounted the temp probe inside the ESC instead of stuck in the heat sink that temp would have around 200 degrees (a typical termaling temp). RPM topped out at just over 10,000 RPM with the 3S 5000MH MaxAmps Lipo pack with current maxing at around 100 AMPs, and a 12.2V peak. The motor really wasn't the issue, it was that freaking decade old ESC. Come on, let's at least move into year 2000+ technology. It's fan cooled for God's sake, it can't even keep cool with a 1.5" fan blowing on it. The kicker was it was also pretty damn slow, not like I can gear the thing down a ton from the 16T pinion. I didn't have a GPS strapped on however, eyeballing it I would say in the high 30's.
I am going to gear down a bit if I have the clearance, otherwise I may give the 4.5R motor a spin with a Mamba Max or Tekin R1Pro and see what happens.