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Old 11-11-2008
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terry.sc terry.sc is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Stockport
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No one seems to have answered Marks questions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mark christopher View Post
how good shops would sell a car and incompatable cells?
None if they are a decent shop, which means nearly all shops will still sell nimhs with kit deals.
Quote:
how many joe bloggs do actually fit none standard parts?
Very few, just a tiny percentage. The vast majority of r/c buyers will run whatever car they have as standard, these days even taking it back to the shop to be repaired when a wishbone breaks.

Just remember that whatever is popular at your own club does not mean it's popular everywhere else.
Even amongst the average club racers very few cars are modified from standard, a quick survey of my local club shows only two cars out of thirty uses none standard parts, most of the others are as they come without any manufacturers option parts either. The two modified cars both had home made battery straps instead of taping the nimh batteries in place. Out of those 30 cars one ran Orion lipos and one bike racer was using a suitably protected soft case lipo, the rest ran nimh.
Quote:
how many joe bloggs would race at brca meetings let alone be a member?
Again very few. I think the number is something like only 5% actually race at all, with obviously an even smaller percentage taking part in BRCA meetings. This means battery packs such as the Trakpower ones which are outside the BRCA rules have almost as big a market as BRCA legal ones, including the majority of club racers.
Quote:
joe bloggs on the street can fit an 11 volt pack, as he aint bothered what rules are
Yes he can choose whatever he likes with no need to follow a BRCA list, except to capture some of this bigger market the battery pack needs to fit in the most popular cars such as the Tamiya TT-01. Outside of serious racers this is why the Yeah Racing pack seems to be the most popular and very few of them have ever heard of Trakpower.
It looks like the first lithium technology to reach the Joe Bloggs runners will actually be A123, Tamiya are releasing a 2200mah 6.6v pack at the end of the year.



It's obvious why this poll was started by Mark, to get some support to either try and persuade the BRCA to change the dimensions rules (not possible until it can be voted on at next years AGM), or get the EB to tweak the rules to get Trakpower saddle pack batteries legal for racing.

So far there has been no indication at all from the EB whether they will be allowing or not allowing the Trakpower packs, and we won't know the details until January. I presume any discussions on the matter will be made between the EFRA and BRCA committees, the EB and the various battery manufacturers, whish should include Trakpower, and for the EB to decide which batteries are legal, not a few people expressing their opinion on a board biased in favour of the Trakpower packs.
There are alternative saddle packs already available which are within the dimensions, but again until January we will not know whether those ones are on the EB list either.

If Trakpower want their batteries accepted Trakpower should be discussing this with the relevant people, not having their representative using forums to inflame the situation before we even know whether they are on the list or not. More importantly they should have made sure they had a spokesman at the the relevant discussions at the BRCA AGM, or became an Associate member of EFRA so the company can be involved in discussions at the EFRA AGM, both of which would have made sure the problem of saddle pack case size would have been discussed.

I know Mark was at the AGM but Trakpower should have
1) checked the proposals and made sure there was a proposal submitted beforehand with the bigger dimension
2) made sure there was someone representing them at the meeting, knowing Mark would not guaranteed to be available, that could have put their point across at the AGM. If the BRCA members there had voted for a proposal for a longer case length for saddle packs then none of these discussions would be taking place.
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