rcslsafut

they both have pro's and con's!!
can you imagine a silent dragster going down the drag strip at 200 plus mph?
IT'S JUST NOT THE SAME!!! The stands dont shake ,The smell of racing fuel being
burnt!! You get my drift!! Im not saying by any means that nitro is better.
but there IS NO COMPARISION to an engine that SCREAMS out LOOK AT ME!!!!
im screaming at 30,000 plus rpm's!!!the smell of the fuel being expelled .
ya sure, they can be fussy ,but they sure are fun!!!
how many of you guys that have both,can tell me you have had anywhere near
as much attention payed to you when you got out the electric?No matter how fast
it is!!!if you have both you know what i am talking about!

HJJFFFAA

I prefer less attention.

rcslsafut

To each thier own!
Im with you and prefer less attention .Thats not the point i was making!!

john01374

The real cost savings in Electric is the batteries and motors. Once you have your equipment you're done spending. The average Brushless motor will last a couple of hundred runs before requiring bearings as long as it's not over heated. My Slash has way more than 200 runs on the VXl system and it's never been out. When it does need bearings i'm looking at $20 max to get going again. I don't remember how many runs I got before I had to rebuild the nitro motor but I'm sure it was less than 200 runs and as I recall the parts where fairly expensive.

A Lipo is good for 300+ cycles. I have some that have way more than that on them. The new 5000+ Mah packs last 40+ mins per pack. Again. I don't remember the exact number of runs I got from a gallon but I know it wasn't 300 (40 maybe). I'm pretty sure 1 gallon cost more than my 3S Lipo's as well.

Then there's things like Plugs, After run oil, etc etc. Electric doesn't have any of that. These are all things that need to be considered when adding up costs.

Again. Not bashing the guys that run Nitro. I was one of you many years ago. At the end of the day Nitro is more expensive.

Access

This is a perfect example of what I mean by aesthetics. A practical person perfers function over form. But of course not everyone is a practical person. Especially when it comes to hobbies.

There will always be people out there who go for the more carnal, the more awe-inspiring and attention-drawing stuff. I am just not one of those people.

And honestly the only way you can go wrong is if you get drawn into a debate that isn't worth debating.

SyCo_VeNoM

I know what you mean man. Take my electrics out ppl look at me like I'm playing with a toy. Take nitro out I've had people stop in cars and go around the block to ask me about it and where they can get one.

silverman1

Comparing nitro to electric is like comparing an american muscle car to a high end mercedes. The muscle car is more visceral more alive, tolerated in many a quiet town because every man wants to own one to tune one, to feel the vibration of its power. On the other hand you got the mercedes, super sneaky ultra fast, quiet, they go unnoticed, but watch the muscle car dude's mouth drop when that mercedes eats him for lunch.

Its a man thing, like comparing a harely to a valkrie. The harely boys in my town can run what they want pipe wise, because they are on a harely. Now if you have a rice rocket with pipes on the cops, the neighbors, everyone will be hunting your ass right now!! It doesn't matter if the technology is light years ahead of the harely.

To sum it up I watched a 1/8 nitro buggy and an associated b4 all wheel drive buggy on a race track, that little electric buggy was breathing fire up his ass.

Electric- simple sweet, charge your batteries go like hell, but very expensive.

Nitro- A little troubling but seeing the end results of your tuning and hearing that engine scream when tuned right is priceless, and also a lot cheaper for now. When electric prices drop I will start buying electric brushless with lipos

Access

But should that make a difference? What other people think when they look at you as you're practicing your hobby? The idea of a hobby is that you're having fun.

And electric is not that expensive anymore, really. People need to get out of the past, today you have $25. LiPos and all that. An equivalent electric setup is only marginally more than a nitro if you shop around.

SyCo_VeNoM

ACTUALLY
I just blew $103 for 2 2S lipos and a charger/ballancer
another $120 on a BL setup.
going to buy a container to store my lipos which should be about $10 (army ammo box) + the lipo bag for charging. to make sure I don't burn my house down...
and $35 on materials to try to build the buggy a new chassis seeing the BL one snapped the rear end off from the motors torque, and totaled a gear in the rear diff... (not counting this below in my total)
That is after shopping around.

Looks kinda expensive to me (thats actually what I put out in the past month). I spent about $120 on my current savage engine and the other $100 or so would have got me 3 gallons of gas (went through 1.5 gallons last summer) Now if you race day in and day out there might be a savings in Lipos after what would use 5 gallons in nitro. But if the persons like me and drives casually, and doesn't need the blistering speed and torque of BL and lipo, nitro is cheaper.

Access I like Nitro over electric. I find it more fun and exhilarating than the electrics. I also find it fun the way people look and comment on my nitros, none of which I get with electrics. So in a way it does count in my eyes. I'm also am the kind of person that likes muscle cars and Harleys though, and royally distaste for the ricers and the crotch rockets that other people like. So in all to each their own.

Devils-Reject

My Feedback: (8)

you all have stated very good points on both.
what it all comes down to is matter of liking.
i feel that if i drive an elec. car outside people will think its a toy. and a nitro people are always like wow.

i know you should not care what others think. but i will own 90% nitro and only 10% elec.

quietnas1

I must say this the most civilized electric vs nitro thread I have ever seen. My personal preferance since I started 15yrs ago has been nitro. I'm a grease monkey so working on engines no matter how small has always been my thing.

asupervee72

i have nitro and elec, i prefer electric, for pretty much the same reasons already mentioned, you plug in the batteries and the motor runs the same regardless of temperature or altitude. Plus i run boats as well and it would be a pain to recover a nitro ever time it stalled out or ran out of fuel, with electric i have a low volt cut off that lets me know when batts are getting low, only time i've ever had to recover the electric is when i flip it or if something breaks ( i've broke one $20 part after 2 seasons). Honestly i can't stand my nitro trucks anymore i have a tmaxx and a jato and i don't play with either of them now, the weather changes daily where i live and maybe i'm not the greatest tuner but i don't like spending the first tank tuning and then getting to go actually play. nitro's collect dirt and lots of it, sometimes it can be fun to take everything off the chasis to get things clean but for the most part i'm not really into doing that and i don't think an air compressor really gets everything off. Oh yeah i've never waited for an air filter to dry on my electrics. As to the cost issue, electrics can be more expensive if you mess around with nihm cells and then decide to get lipo later cause then you're talking about a new charger too if you don't have one that can charge both. A lot of the electric stuff made in the states is substantially more then things from china and imo not really that much better, I bought lipo make in us and the packs i got from overseas were cheaper and out preformed the packs i bought in the states. We already established to each his own but electrics really do excel over nitro at the current time. As for sound. i love the sounds from my electric boat not to mention i even get some complaints with that noise i couldn't imagine trying to run a nitro. Plus when i play with my rc's i want to play with them not give a course on what to buy, where to get them, how much the cost, how long i've had it and the other assortment of questions i get when playing with my rc's. For me my electrics grab just as much attention as the nitro. As for gas, i have yet to try it but for now i'm hooked on brushless efficiency and lipo power.

10x8

Yes it is very civil, totally agree.

Now, this is just a thought: I think everyone should be grateful that you have electric and nitro and gas r/c, and internet and computers.

Many a person out there don't even know about r/c, let alone brushless, lipo, .21, 50% etc. It is our job to educate them!

There has been a few, mine is better because posts, but disguised in poetic verse.

Rant over.

cumquat

i have owned electrics and nitros and i prefer nitro. i agree electric is cheaper but from what i have access to nitro is better. i cant order online because we dont have a credit card. any thing i get comes from the lhs's and one of them gets me stuff from great plains (tower) and going by those brices nitro is cheaper than bl amd lipo. the only way electric is remotely cheaper is brushed and nickel based battery packs. i also love fiddling with the engines, the smell of coconut scented fuel aditive, the scream that tells you where it is if you cant see it and tells you if something is wrong, the fact that because it doesnt have peake torque at 0 rpm means that the truck isnt going to sit there for a few seconds waiting to get the traction to move foward that usually ends up going sideways and the capability to run for 3 hours streight without stopping the engine.

ThunderbirdJunkie

My Feedback: (3)

Still trying to figure out how electric is cheaper.
the "instant on" power is MUCH harder on parts.

cumquat

5000 mah 6 cell venom nimh= $40
rustler xl-5= $160 or so
onyx 220= $40-50
total= $250

nitro rustler= $300-330
1 gal. fuel= $20-35
1500 nicad+charger= $20-30
total= $395

the brushed version is cheaper but the nitro version is better. given, the bl version costs the same as the nitro and will go faster but a decent charger alone will make it more expensive. all these prices are from tower.

OvalRacer99

Like I stated, I am a racer and don't do any bashing, so I can run my electrics year round.
That muscle car vs Mercedes anology is like compairing apples to oranges. You have a muscle car from the late 60's and early 70's vs a car made today. The technology is so far advanced that yea, the Merc will be faster.
I prefer the good american made muscle.

ThunderbirdJunkie

My Feedback: (3)

What's the fun in not bashing?

Just curious...the racing aspect has always been a secondary thing to ThunderbirdJunkie and he has never understood the mindset of only racing. Could you enlighten him in his thirst for knowledge, OvalRacer?

asupervee72

you can program the torque curve on esc's so it's not instant on but rolls on. why electric is cheaper. i don't know electric buggie or car prices so im gonna use boats,
new brushless sv27- $250, 2 2s 3700mah 25c packs - $50, lipo capable charger $40, using the batteries 300+ times and never tuning an engine- priceless
new nitro supervee27- $250, a gallon of 30% nitro fuel - $40. so total the electric set up is $340 to get going and the nitro is is $290. so wait why are people saying electric is cheaper??? because two more gallons of fuel = $80 making the total for nitro $370 while the electric is still using the same initial power supply. In addition to that there is no time spent tuning or doing much maintenance and since the saying goes "time is money" you are saving money by not spending the time it would take to properly tune a nitro motor. So initially nitro may be cheaper but long run it ends up being more. This example does not take into any problems that may arise with the equipment in either the nitro or electric

cumquat

one way no body can argue that nitro is cheaper: a full electric meltdown. the reciver shorts and fries everything pluged into it. on a nitro thats up to 5 servos, say averaging $20 each thats $100. same sit. on an electric, you just fried 1 or 2 servos, an esc and smoked the motor. say the servos are the same $20, the motor was bl so around $60 and the esc was 100 but they where a set and priced at $140. thats $160 total, not to mention the battery pack(s) that may or may not have been ruined (the nitro was on alkaline).


i am well aware that the likelyhood of a full electrical meltdown is very low but it could happen if you run in water without waterproofing.

HJJFFFAA

This makes no sense and will never happen.

piddlefoot

l drive every week.Both nitro and electric.
Electric is more fun.Because its so much faster, and more of a challenge to drive, because the speeds are so much higher in general, everywhere.
Because sometimes when you really drive on the edge of the envolope , you can get butterflies in the belly, its so fast, and so easy to totally right off. l love that feeling, cant get it from nitro driving, to slow, its just not the same. Getting a rush from driving, love it.
Our brushless LIPO, blow nitro drivers and fuelie drivers away every week.
People that pull over, [because its on the esplanade ] cannot believe the raw speed of brushless LIPO trucks across that paddock, and no nitro can even come close to keeping up. Its makes you all warm and fuzzy inside ! hahaha
Almost every nitro driver who has a drive of one, erm, wants one ! And how couldnt you ! ? ! ? ! ?
l had a LIPO brushless car 2 days after l saw one run ! How impatient is that ! A dude flogged my nitro assosiated, l was frekin amazed at its speed and well just had to have one !</p>

theRCreverend.

WHy are we talking airplanes now?Airplanes are the only nitro items I have that are in the 5 servo range.

I own over 30 nitro vehicles, and with the exception of two of them that have reverse, all of them have only 2 servos (throttle and steering). The trucks with reverse have a 3rd servo to operate the reverse.

theRCreverend.

That's interesting. I also drive every week, both nitro and BLelectrics
Nitro is more fun.

So which one of us is right? The answer is neither.

This whole nitro vs. electric argument is such a waste of energy. We are all different, some things that excite you may bore the hell out of me, and this is how it is when it comes to nitro and electric.</p>

Devils-Reject

My Feedback: (8)

Yea I was only asking personal opinion and not trying to start a huge argument.
that why there is so many religion wars in this world to many people trying to force their opinion on others.
matter of individual liking