Having used my FTX Banzai a couple of times on it’s original brushed setup, I have been doing some of the upgrades to the car. I have recently done the carbon and aluminium upgrades which make the whole car look completely different and should make the car perform better. The next piece of the jigsaw is to replace the original brushed system with a brushless setup.
I decided to go for a Hobbywing Max10 combo. After spending some time wondering what kv motor I should go for, I eventually went for the 3300kv motor combo for the Max10. The reasons I decided to go for the 3300kv motor are explained further down, but I do believe I will have a great system running in the FTX Banzai with this. The particular Max10 combo I have gone for can be found here.
The first thing to do was to get the standard brushed motor and esc removed from the car. It was fairly straight forward, as all you have to do is remove the esc by prizing it from the chassis, as it is only secured by some double sided tape.
The Motor is held in by 2 cap head screws that go through the motor mount. Once they are removed the motor comes away. Be careful with this as obviously the pinion and spur are meshed at this point so I always remove the spur gear before undoing the motor mount screws just so I don’t catch or damage the spur or pinion gear.
Now begins the fun part and getting the brushless set up out and fitted on the car.
The reason I went for a 3300kv motor is due to me wanting to have a brushless motor that will be easy to control and give me a really good mix of acceleration and top speed. The problem I feel going for anything higher on the kv would have been a higher top speed, which sounds great, however seeing some of my colleagues struggling to keep their touring car chassis under control when going over 50mph on a higher kv motor (and different gearing on the spur and pinion) I didn’t want to have something that was hard to control when its getting quick. I do feel that with the 3300kv motor I have a really nice balance and will be very user friendly when I take the car out to use. With the low down torque too, it should also be able to power slide quite nicely too!
All that was needed then was to install the motor. Pretty simple to do, as I put the pinion gear on the motor shaft, and then got the motor secured (not too tight though) on the motor mount with the 2 cap screws. The reason for not tightening the screws fully yet is because you will need to mesh the pinion and spur gears. I followed the great and helpful guide by my colleague Steve that is also on our knowledge base, and once that was all meshed, I tightened the 2 cap screws for the motor mount to be in its final position.
After the motor was installed, the next stage is to check out the Max10 esc and get that fitted
The instructions that come with the esc are so easy to follow and explained really well that even the less confident people like myself are happy and comfortable to fit it. It’s always one thing to just take your time and not rush things though, no matter how easy it might seem!
First thing to do was plug the small plug into the back of the motor. It’s a small white plug and it’s the only socket on the end of the motor can. The next thing to do is plug the motor leads into the esc. As you can see from the above image, the motor has three leads coming out, each having its own reference letter (A,B and C). If you look at the esc next to it there is slots with the letters A,B and C. It really is that simple to plug A into A, B into B and C into C.
The next thing to do is place the on/off button where you want and secure it down on the car. I have put it on the top plate of the Banzia and in the middle too, as I will be putting the killerbody LED light control box towards the front of the top plate.
The last thing to do is plug the motor servo lead into the receiver, and then it is a case of turning the esc on and setting up the neutral, throttle and brake settings. The info on this is in the manual that comes with the esc and it is pretty simple and easy to follow, however by all means get in touch if you are struggling.
When it is all done, it should look something like the above! The one thing to note is the esc comes with XT60 connector on it, so if you don’t have a battery with XT60 connectors on, you will need to look at a converter lead. As my batteries have deans connectors on I had to get a deans to XT60 lead, and we stock plenty of different connector leads to XT60 on our website and in store.
So there we have it. A FTX Banzai that not only has all the Carbon and Aluminium mods on it, but now has a full brushless setup on it too! I’m really excited to get this out on the car park at work to see what a difference the car is now, which will be reported in a later article comparing the brushed to brushless and if the brushless conversion was worth it.
