5S gearing in a Savage Flux

[suicideneil]

There isnt any one-person with a magic answer, I think you're over complicating things because of all the conflicting opinions out there. Stick to one good forum and you'll find 99% of the guys with applicable knowledge & experience will agree on a suitable setup/ setups for any given application.

As for escs going FOOM, its generally down to a few simple things:-

1) noobs. They gear for 120mph and cover the esc with an airflow restricting dust filter, with massive tyres & then wonder why their esc went pop ( true story ). They also do poor solder jobs and use poor batts, which stress the esc and cause it to fail ( see: 'ripple current' ).
2) Dodgy component(s). These are impossible to detect & will only show up once you start using the esc in a real-world situation; as a general rule, if you survive the first session or two, then the esc is a good'un.
3) Exceding operational limits. If you take a wild guess at gearing & dont check/ ask if its a good setup for your needs, then you can potentially cause the esc to fail through over gearing or pushing it too hard- such as repeated speedruns without checking temps, or testing the setup by jamming it into forward-reverse-forwards repeatedly and/or doing repeated backflips > massive surges of current that will pop Fets and TVS devices.

Learn to trust the advice of gus who've been running their setup for while- if its anything like what you want to achieve, then it will be a good solid setup.

So, use the calculator ( you can trust that too- BrianG is a legend in his own right ), settle on the gearing that gives you your ( sensible ) desired speed with your setup, allow for ballooning & heavier than normal tyres or stretched chassis etc ( gear down a notch as such ), then go ou and buy the required pinions and spurs. Buying a selection of gears allows you to finetune your setup- a couple pinions say that are 2 or 3 teeth apart and a couple of the available spurs either side of the ideal sized one will allow you to gear up or down a bit, depending on the temps, ambient temps, and the terrain ( long grass or sand vs hard dirt and tarmac for example ).

I would gear for about 40-45mph with 5s, works great for me