The TITC inside line with Salton Dong – Day 2

While it was officially only Day 2 of racing at the TITC, for Hobbywing’s Salton Dong today (Friday) marked his seventh day in Thailand supporting drivers at the famous Bangkok race.  With the bulk of his heavy work done earlier in the week in terms of testing and getting optimal ESC & motor settings dialled in for racing, catching up with Salton for a run down of what he got up to today would led to him to shedding some interesting light on driver’s motor habits and the playing of mind games with motor timing.  In terms of dealing with any issues today, it was a massive crash in the top seeded heat third round qualifier of Open Brushless that had Salton busy at his work station located in the centre of the pits here at RC Addict.  With Game Mongkolphan’s Xpress coming to an unexpected sudden stop on track, unfortunately there was no time for first on the scene Lukas Ellerbrock to react leading to a massive impact that left both cars heavily damaged.  The aftermath gave the Awesomatix team 5-hours of work to completely rebuild Ellerbrock’s car for tomorrow’s final qualifier in which the overall TQ is still up for grabs.  With both drivers involved running Hobbywing, the crash triggered Salton into action to assess the electrics of both cars, in particular the motors.

Salton explained, ‘In a big crash like this we check everything.  With the ESC if there is no physical damage or no short circuit it will be fine but the motor is a physical part of the car so it is very important to check every part is not bent or not broken inside’.  He continued, ‘After getting the motor out of the car we look for any visual damage and manually rotate the rotor, if it feels normal we need to open it to further check if it has broken the magnet inside.  When we open the can we check the rotor, its physical state, the surface, everything.  If it is good we put it aside and then check the front end bell and the rear end bell to see if these are bent, then if everything is OK we put it back together and plug it into the Tunalyzer to test the rotation.  We then also compare the data with the motor’s standard data.  We will have a basic benchmark for each type of motor so if there is a big difference that means there is something wrong’.  Salton is keen to highlight this is something regular customers can also do themselves.  ‘If they buy a new motor they can initially record the amp draw and the rpm to save it for future comparison and after some runs, if like the motor has overheated several times the magnets might be fading, if they are the KV will increase and the amp will go down, so this is a tip to try.’

Asked what is the most common reason for a motor to deteriorate, Salton replied, ‘If they are looked after they will have a very long life.’  Following that up then with the question, does he feel racers do look after them, he laughed and replied with, ‘most drivers just give their motors to me to check over.’  On the differences between Modified and Stock drivers attitude to motors he said, ‘because Modified has more power than is needed motor maintenance is overlooked where as in Stock you are chasing marginal gains so there is a need to keep motors well maintained and for that reason they get more attention from Stock drivers.’  Highlighting how important it is for Modified drivers to regular check their motors he said, ‘We found when rebuilding modified drivers’ motors the wear is much more than Stock because of the very high RPM.  Normally the rotor shafts will show signs of wear, this is because of the super high RPM and this is why we have some basic rules on the FDR (final drive ratio) because we know the bearings highest RPM limit so we need to keep the motor in that RPM limit.  If the gear ratio is too high, the RPM will also be high and over the limit.’

Being very diplomatic and not disclosing any names when asked which team drivers do better or worse when it comes to looking after their motors, he did say, ‘Modified guys I think they need to be careful, they need to actually rebuild their motors often because we always think ah brushless motors are zero maintenance and you can use them a long time but actually it’s not like a real electric car that you don’t need to go to the service.  The bearing inside the motor usually has a max limit of 70,000 rpm but now in Modified Touring Car our motors are easily over 70,000 rpm so its already on the limit so that is why the shaft is sometimes wearing because it is rotating in the bearing and slipping.’

Asking Salton what is the most common thing customers come to him for, he said it is usually to do with setting the timing on the motor as many don’t feel confident in getting it right when it can be very critical.  This led him on to a point about having the fastest car on the straight not being the key to being fast.  ‘Lots of drivers will see a faster car on the straight and this gets into their head.  Then they come to us saying my car is not fast enough but actually this (outright speed) is not the only thing to being faster, the 5-minute average is the most important.  Our data is basically collected by team drivers.  They test it over lots of 5-minutes and overall we will find a balance on the perfect timing and also for different batteries and different driving style they will also bring different results.  So when a car passes you on the straight maybe it’s just one lap but it is the 5-minutes that counts.’  There are rumours that some drivers have played this mind game in testing here at the TITC, running 3-laps before pitting for a fresh battery for a second go at 3-laps to try get an impressive time on the board.  Salton said in many case when they have turned up the speed on motors, many drivers return to get it reduced again because while the lap time might go down it compromises their overall performance as it drops off over the run.

The TITC inside line with Salton Dong

Anyone who follows electric racing, either onroad or offroad, will know Salton Dong or if they haven’t yet met him in person they’ll recognise him from pit photos from the biggest races around the world.  Involved with Hobbywing from its very early days, he is the face of motor and ESC manufacturer.  As supporters of our TITC coverage for the last two years, we thought for this year we’d do a daily catch-up with Salton to see what kind of things he deals with in supporting team drivers and Hobbywing customers at races.  A huge fan of the TITC, one of the reason for that is Open Brushless which Salton’s says challenges his skill set in getting the best performance from the electronics, unlike modified which he says is far more straight forward in terms of set-up.  That said this year it was Modified that presented a very interesting issue that needed his input to solve – we’ll come back to that shortly!  On the challenge of Open Brushless, a class Hobbywing are the defending champions of, he explains that the power setting needs to be very accurate and coming to this year’s TITC with their new Bandit G4R motor they had to find new settings.  With help from team drivers, it took only 1-day to get the best setting that they could then share to customers, and they have a lot of those here with Salton pointing out that more than 70% are using their products.  As they say the proof is in the pudding and improvements mean the cars are even faster than last with Salton highlighting that they have recorded a top speed of 104kph here this year.

While everyone likes variety and a change now & then, the new track layout for the 21st edition of the TITC appears to have presented an extra element of strain that has become the straw that broke the camel’s back.  This year’s anti-clockwise track layout means the cars reach maximum speed on the main straight undergoing very heavy braking for what Salton described as performing a U-turn to continue the lap and this has been causing Mod driver spur gear failures.  He said the problem actually came to light with their star team driver Bruno Coelho who did seven runs and broke seven spur gears after only 1 or 2 laps each time.  At first they thought there was a problem with the spur gear material but on further investigation and walking around the track he realised that the defending TITC was not the only one having the issue, but a driver who likes everything on the limit it was effecting Bruno more than most.  Xray’s Alexander Hagberg also found himself having a similar issue.

Salton, who enjoys a very good working relationship with the long time Hobbywing team driver, said the main solution they came up with was switching Bruno’s prototype Infinity from 64 to 48 pitch gearing, adding that Michal Orlowski is also running that here.  Putting the failures down to high traction, high speed, plus heavy braking, and very quickly at that, Salton said this has never been seen before at TITC, the other direction on the track having always featured a sweeper meaning more gradual slowing of the cars.  While they don’t know the exact reason for the failures, he said it’s most likely a combination of elements but in response they had a temporary firmware update created remotely and within an hour ready to run on the car.  Reducing the initial brake response to try and reduce the speed more gradually, unfortunately rain yesterday (Wednesday) meant they couldn’t test the combined solutions ahead of today’s official Day 1 pf action so they arranged to travel across the city of Bangkok to the Huge RC indoor asphalt track that hosted last year’s Nitro Touring Car World Championship.  There they tested the new firmware together with the 48 pitch gearing and small strengthening that Bruno’s mechanic Francesco Martini added to the chassis.  On the high traction straight at Huge the test proved successful and as a result Bruno went the full distance in both of todays controlled practices and open qualifier.  We suspect Salton will be hoping for a less challenging day at the office tomorrow but we’ll checking in with him to find out.