Servo, ESC, and Motor matching

[PleaseW84myRX8]

New to the concept of swapping out electronics. The motor I have is fine, but is showing signs of wear. I have a Tamiya CC-01 Wrangler that I'm rebuilding into a crawler.

What I'd like to do is get a new motor, battery, servo, and ESC that allows for longer run time while I take my rig on long hikes. Or at least, get a working servo that will run with either this motor and a new motor that will eventually go in.

I am not understanding how to match these parts together. How do I know what ESC/speed controller/motor/servo works well together? Some come with some little resister or something model number RX30. No idea what that's for.

I recognize how to match a battery to a motor. So I was looking at getting Zeee 7.4V Lipo Battery 2S 50C 5200mAh Lipos and matching that to a specific motor. But then, how do I match the motor to an ESC/Speed controller/servo?

I currently have a TLU-01 LED unit that works great. Has 8 connectors for all the mods and such I've been using. I have a dedicated power cable that plugged into the battery directly via an adaptor, then split that power to a speed controller (TEU-104BK), which than sends power to the motor and ESC (R203GF).

Is there a way to not replace any of these and just get a good servo with ~220 oz/in? If I have to/should replace all of this, can someone help me match all these parts together and explain how I know they work well with each other?

[Stollenritter]

Hello and welcome to the forum!

It is not to hard to match components, as you do not have to find an exact 1:1 match. Most components will give you a good range of matching partners. Nevertheless we have to look at each components specification to prevent letting the magic smoke out.

As you have already addressed, a powerful steering servo (~20kg), a high turn or 5-pole Crawlermotor, a sensitive ESC (with a reasonable BEC) and a good LiPo battery will be a huge step forward.

Starting with the battery: if you go to Lipos, you will be confronted with a new plug system, as the Tamiya plugs and Lipos don`t go together. XT60 plugs are all around. If you are familiar with soldering, you can change plugs by yourself, if not, we have to find matching partners. As you are running the Tamiya TLU-01 LED unit, which runs direct off the the 7.2 volt Tamiya packs, you have to find adapters for that as well as being limited to 2S Lipo batteries (which was your plan, right?). I would recommend a battery not to big, go instead for a spare battery or two. Smaller batteries will have less weight, which is good for performance.

A stronger steering servo will pull more Amps than a weaker standard servo. Servo power comes from the ESC (precisely from the inbuild BEC / battery eleminating circuit, which is a switching power supply, reducing the 7.2 volt from the battery to 6 volt for the receiver and servos).
A good all around ESC for brushed motors is the Hobbywing WP-1080, which has powerful inbuild BEC (3Amp) for powering you steering servo. The WP-1080 comes with a XT60 plug, but without motor connectors.

There is a wide range of Motors available. 3-Pole motors from 35 to 55 turn or 5-pole motors from 16 to 20 turn are a good starting point. The higher the amount of turns, the smoother the start up but the less the max rpm.
As the CC-01 is high geared, you will want to go with higher turn motors for crawling.

Anyway, as most motors come without connectors (unlike Tamiya motors), and as you want to keep your LED unit, there will be some soldering involved. So if you don`t have the tools and skills, you have to find someone (a friend, co-worker or hobbyshop) to help you.

Hope this helps to give you some orientation.
Keep your questions comming!

[ferp420]

you have some old parts there the best thing to do would be replace all the electronics just to make it easyer but you dont have too
the new electronics would be simpler to hook up and most hobby grade parts are pretty standered these days so mixing and matching is easy

there is a section on this forum juzt for the cc01 thats were to look for motor and esc combos that will work for your rig

but juzt to toss out a recamendation i would say holms hobbies revolver with a brz mini esc and holms servo but that set up costs a arm and a leg but itz probaly the best set up for almozt any rig lol
and you probably are gona want a new radio aswell
if you dont know how to solder look up hayok he makes all the cool goodies to run all your power accesories and premade plugs to easily conect everything

[ferp420]

the problem with just replacing the servo is your old power management system the new servos use alot more power than older ones but you can still find older servos and servos that dont use alot of power and would probably plug right in with no other changes but you wont get any improvements in performance

the simplest way to upgrade would be a direct powered servo there not cheap but there strong as hay and dont require alot of extra wireing or a new bec
you could just replace the servo

if you go with a standerd high torque metal gear servo you probably need a external bec to power the new servo but there cheap about $5 and then wire it in to the system then you can run cheap servos too with out issue

tamiya is saying the esc your using dose not have a bec they say the bec is in the reciver i perzonaly have never zeen that the problem there is if you fry that reciver your gona have a hard time replacing it
although the new radios are way better than the old ones and would make a good upgrade anyway its a extra exspence

the best thing to do is upgrade everything cause adapting every plug and rewireing everything is gona cost money and take time to get all the special adaptors and plugs and controlers together and if your outsorcing everything the time and money go way up and your still using old out of date electronics that most likely wont last much longer anyway

[PleaseW84myRX8]

Thanks for the responses. I found these:

https://www.amainhobbies.com/protek-...qeqsyqgzqxactz
https://www.amainhobbies.com/hobbywi...RoCKWcQAvD_BwE

Would those work?

[HumboldtEF]

That ESC and Motor combo is brushless, I would highly recommend you DO NOT put those in CC01 as it wont hold up to the power for long. The KV of that motor is also way too high considering how fast the CC01 is already, you'll want to slow it down considerably if you want it to crawl.

I'd recommend you stick with brushed motors for the sake of not destroying parts, Holmes hobbies makes great motors and they have a few budget options (their sport motors) the 55T should be the best of those options as its the slowest, Stick to a 540 size the 550 is likely too long to fit https://www.amainhobbies.com/holmes-...avqzrqlbzxactz
Here's all of the sport motors at Amain: https://www.amainhobbies.com/holmes-...t&fb=743&lg=fb

The ESC I recommend for a brushed setup is the hobbywing 1080, Its a great budget option thats widely used and liked and it performs well: https://www.amainhobbies.com/hobbywi...aqq2qqtcqxactz
And I'd also recommend sticking with the XT60 battery connector on that ESC since you WILL want to get away from the Tamiya molex connector, its a terrible connector. Then whatever battery you look for just get one that uses XT60 which is pretty common. Definitely stick to 2S lipo max for the CC01, 3S will break parts with ease. You'll probably also want a shorty (or a few) like these: https://www.amainhobbies.com/search?...horty+gens+ace
If you dont want to solder on new connectors you can grab these XT60 leads (meant to fit 4mm bullet connectors) https://www.amainhobbies.com/team-in...axtaeqybzxactz
NOTE: you will need to square up the battery tray opening to fit a lipo as they are square and not rounded over like Nimh batteries. I did this and can fit up to a 46mm wide battery, height limit is about 25mm unless you modify the opening more, length limit is around 120mm though I would try to use a shorty lipo.


That servo will work though its pretty weak in terms of torque, Personally I'd want at least 350 oz in out of any servo, though this is a CC01 so that may suffice (since the steering is terrible already).
I'd recommend this servo for $20 more you get 330-400 depending on the voltage you run it at: https://www.amainhobbies.com/ecopowe...acq2uq7z2xactz


I'll aslo add that I too started out will a Tamiya CC01, it was fun and it definitely got me into the hobby.... but I dumped way more money into than I should have. I wish I had left it alone mostly and just went for another more modern crawler to highly modify.
Best mod on the CC01 for me was a gear reduction unit or GRU, though that requires you to cut up the tub to fit a much longer motor and relocate the battery. these bolt onto the motor and essentially make them longer https://www.amainhobbies.com/rc4wd-4...qeqatqgmzcqctz

[DRED805]

I had a whole thing typed out, then saw Humboldt's post when I previewed mine... haha

I essentially said to save money and go brushed, and put that savings toward a better servo.

1080esc
reedy 5 slot 16t motor
130t protek servo (next step up from the one you posted)

[Stollenritter]

Originally Posted by DRED805

I had a whole thing typed out, then saw Humboldt's post when I previewed mine... haha

I essentially said to save money and go brushed, and put that savings toward a better servo.

1080esc
reedy 5 slot 16t motor
130t protek servo (next step up from the one you posted)

Maybe the 20 turn variant of the reedy motor (considering the high gearing).
... and some grippy crawler tyres next

[PleaseW84myRX8]

I can order those recommended above. But questions on batteries wiring. I'd like to get the longest lasting battery available.

The batteries look good. This is what I saw from the list. https://www.amainhobbies.com/gens-ac...acqarqnm2xactz
Do they make one at 6000mah? Will I need a dean to XT60 adaptor?
https://www.amazon.com/KCRTEK-Connec.../dp/B07BHJ7NDK
or
https://www.amainhobbies.com/protek-...qxtswqgmzxactz
Or just get the banana leads you recommended and remove the dean plug all together?

How do I get the speed controller attached to the motor? Do the blue and yellow wires just get soldered onto the motor? Or is there a connector at the ends there? I'm good with soldering if that's required.

The length of the old motor is ~57mm. Is this new motor ok for dimensions? And will that motor handle water? I ran through tons of puddles and such with the old motor with no issues. Will this do ok, too?

One last question on the motor, how fast will it go if I run at full throttle? I do jog on my hikes on some straights and want it to keep up with me.

[HumboldtEF]

If you buy that motor directly from Holmes they offer the option to solder on leads for $7 (they will use 4mm bullets) https://holmeshobbies.com/motors/bru...t-540-55t.html

You can pick up some wires and 4mm bullet connectors and solder it yourself https://www.amainhobbies.com/castle-...qwtayq7zxxactz
https://www.amainhobbies.com/crc-sup...avqstqnm2xactz

Or you can directly solder the motor wires from the ESC to the motor. I usually only do this when I'm pretty sure I'll stick to a specific motor and after I've confirmed the motor direction is correct (swap the wires if the motor spins the wrong direction, this only works on brushed motors BTW). Using 4mm bullets makes swapping motors easy.

Adapters are only for those who cant or dont want to solder. You dont need to use any adapters if you dont want to and can solder on the correct connectors. Every connection point is a potential point of failure so the less the better. If you can solder I'd recommend skipping the adapters.

You dont need a adapter for the battery if you get this lead with an XT60. (one caveat, it must be the kind of battery with separate leads that plug into the battery) https://www.amainhobbies.com/team-in...axtaeqybzxactz
or you can buy some XT60 connectors, cut the deans plug off of the supplied lead and solder the XT60 in. You'll need to do this if the battery you get has leads that are not separate (soldered in place)

The list of batteries I linked was just a small selection of 2S/ Gens Ace/ in the shorty size (I was trying to make it easier to browse). If you really do want a huge battery there are other options, though I'll just throw it out there again, I recommend a small battery and just getting a few over one single huge high capacity battery. I just went out yesterday with two 1400 mah batteries and got 3+ hour out of it, it only drained one battery fully and the other probably had about 30-45 minutes of run time left when I stopped.

Here's 6 pages of 2s lipos, you'll find many more with higher capacity. Just check the dimensions to ensure they will fit in your battery tray and look at the battery plug type (if you dont want to solder on new plugs) and where the wires exit the battery as this effects fitment into the battery tray
https://www.amainhobbies.com/search?s=2s+lipo

Personally I stick to Gens Ace as I've had good luck with their batteries.

Motor length on the Holmes sport 540 is 57mm ( I just measured one I have), only thing that might be required is bending the negative and positive tabs to the side or soldering the wires to the tabs so they come off at 90 degrees.
These motors can take water (all brushed motors can), its recommended that you rinse it with clean water to get and dirt out and then re-lube the motor bearings/bushings on the ends of the motor.

[PleaseW84myRX8]

Gotcha. Thanks. Just placed the order. Looking forward to the new fun.

[OSRC]

Note: Not sure which motor you ended up with, but if you are picking up a Holmes motor with a torque ring around the can, it won't sit in the 16t pinion slot. The torque ring will have to be removed from the motor. No biggie, it comes right off.

The higher turn Crawlmasters should do great in a CC, I haven't tried one yet per-se, but they do very well in my other Tamiya crawler conversions.

[XanderBolanos]

You need to find a local track and find a Yoda and learn. Just saying it will serve you better in the end

[MOguy]

Don't go 2s, 3s minimal. Depending on how hard you drives, everything else equal in theory a 3s should last longer than a 2s and a 4s should last longer than a 3s.

Get a direct power servo. Power straight from the battery and the control goes to the receiver. No BEC issues.

If you don't need a real powerful one the 3 Bros G11 is only about $50. If you need more power I have the 3 Bros G13 or 14, a couple Holmes hobbies and an NSDRC. All work great, I recommend what ever ships the fastest.

I like Castle ESC because of the Flexibility.
The MambaX is up to 6S, on the fly drag brake, can run brushed, brushless sensored and brushless nonsensored.

The copper head is 4S I beleive no on the fly drag brake, can run brushed, brushless sensored and brushless nonsensored.

The SW4 3S and can run brushed and brushless nonsensored.

These ESC can are all very programable.