I beseech thee, oh Brushless Gods....

[Unsullied_Spy]

Originally Posted by BUSAFIED

very nice! This is definitely something to add to the bookmarks...I've been looking at a BL Villain, but I'm also curious to attempt to convert it to a single surface drive.

The "two of everything" route seems like it could get expensive rather quickly.

But I like what you did...it looks like a crudload of fun.

There were quite a few people telling me I should convert it to a single fixed outdrive with an independant rudder, but to me that's not a Villain. With my conversion I wanted to keep it a Villain, just trick it out so it's not so boring to drive.

Doubles sure does get pricey, that's why I started off with such cheap electronics in case it failed catastrophically. So far I've been quite impressed with the ESCs. They are very smooth, reliable, compact, run very cool, and are IMO the best ESCs for the money. I can't say the same about the motors, but I'm going to keep lubing up the bearings and get them some watercooling and run them until they literally fall apart then replace them with some Feigaos unless I can afford better.

[zeropointbug]

I have a Villain EX myself that I was thinking of converting to brushless... maybe some outrunner motors direct drive, no gear reduction?

It's pretty fast with a 5s A123 pack however and watercooling kit, maybe I'll get a video of it soon. I was going to try making a 6s pack for it, the EVX can barely handle the voltage though, when pack is fresh, it turns on and off for the first couple of trigger pulls... the voltage just has to come down a sprinkle.

Originally Posted by Unsullied_Spy

There were quite a few people telling me I should convert it to a single fixed outdrive with an independant rudder, but to me that's not a Villain. With my conversion I wanted to keep it a Villain, just trick it out so it's not so boring to drive.

Doubles sure does get pricey, that's why I started off with such cheap electronics in case it failed catastrophically. So far I've been quite impressed with the ESCs. They are very smooth, reliable, compact, run very cool, and are IMO the best ESCs for the money. I can't say the same about the motors, but I'm going to keep lubing up the bearings and get them some watercooling and run them until they literally fall apart then replace them with some Feigaos unless I can afford better.

Aah...I see. Perhaps I'll follow your lead on this one...and maybe I can squeeze a monster out of it.

[Unsullied_Spy]

Originally Posted by BUSAFIED

Aah...I see. Perhaps I'll follow your lead on this one...and maybe I can squeeze a monster out of it.

My way of doing it is rather simple, a guy could probably do it all in a night if he had all the parts ready. If you wanted to strip it down and go single outdrive why not buy a SuperVee or something else with a better hull that's designed to be run that way? I'm still shocked at how well it runs, I was expecting quite a few issues in the testing phase but it's rock solid which isn't bad considering I am using the cheapest motors I know of with ESCs that could have ended up being really bad. Water cooling and 3s lipos are soon to come, and then I should be seeing ~30 MPH. My goal is 35 (even with my turn fins the hull will probably struggle to keep control) which I think can be achieved by simply gearing it taller. I intend to keep these ESCs, they are 100x better than I was expecting, but the motors may be swapped out for a pair of VXLs/Feigao 10s (same motor) for a little extra grunt.