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Just curious if someone wanted to upgrade a classic Tamiya kit with brushless power and using strictly Tamiya parts, does Tamiya make something low-powered like this? I know they make brushless motors and ESCs now but I don't know what a brushless motor of similar performance to a silver-can or even Black 540 would be. Yes I know you could install pretty much anything you wanted to, but I'm thinking within the confines of a) being Tamiya-made, b) what a new young driver could handle, and c) what a relatively fragile and gearing-restricted Frog or Hornet drivetrain could deal with.

Odd question, I know. I have no plans on doing so, this is all purely hypothetical. I'm just wondering out loud what a modernized classic kit would be powered by out of the box.

Maybe a 17.5T and 35A ESC...any other suggestions?

i'd say closer to 21.5.

27turn is supposed to equal 17.5, but really only on the high end 27turn motors, the lowly silver can is closer to 21.5.

Using Tamiya only parts is easy to choose, but might be hard to find.

The kit 540 is slightly slower than 21.5T blinky, so the standard Tamiya TBLE-02 ESC with a Tamiya Transpeed 21.5T motor.

My 21.5T justock motor is faster than a 540. I'd say a 25.5T would be closest.

Thanks guys!

just bear in mind the huge difference in gearing requirements too if you're planning on running it. Most classic tamiya kits cant be geared correctly for 21.5 or 25.5

Delorean wrote:just bear in mind the huge difference in gearing requirements too if you're planning on running it. Most classic tamiya kits cant be geared correctly for 21.5 or 25.5

That's a good point!
I have a TL-01 with a 12T brushless, the gearing is just right and it is waaay faster than a 540.
If you put a 21.5T in there it might be about as fast as a 540, but it would be grossly under geared...


Perhaps this is the answer to a valid comparison of kV values between brushed and brushless motors???
If they are geared the same, the kV values would be an accurate comparison, but when you feed the bigger gears to the brushless motor it is much, much faster than an equivalent kV brushed motor.

interestingly a TL01 with the speed tuned gears is one of the only tamiyas that can be geared tall enough, especially in the buggy

the kv is still not the best way to compare. brushless has so much more torque, so even if they were geared the same and both motors produced the same rpm at a given voltage, the brushless will do it so much easier and accelerate much quicker. dont get me wrong, i dont know of a better way to compare them and match them. in our vintage racing in Australia people have asked for a brushless option, but its too hard to find an equivalent and a lot of cars cant be geared correctly so we keep it as brushed for our 540 and sport tuned classes

Good point about the kV rating of current motors...it gives you a ballpark, but the brushless motors indeed crank out a lot more torque, reaching that max kV almost instantly compared to old brushed motors. But the good thing is, with modern ESCs, you can manage that instant torque by changing the "Punch" setting. I put a very stout Tacon 11T / 3200 kV motor in one of my Optimas, which is a very powerful motor, but set the "Punch" to 4 (out of 9) if I remember correctly, which was just about perfect.

oh for sure you can turn the punch down, good point

i always come from the perspective of the racer so when looking for the equivalent for something, i assume its being run to its maximum