Limitless Nice To Finally See Someone Speed Running a Max4!!

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate
links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Agreed, it is good to see someone make a solid run with one of these. That is a clean-looking rig with all the carbon fiber.
I would think having the best of the best lipo is less important when you have higher voltage and the ESC cannot support high amps like Castle.
 
Anyone know what the "actual" max amps are for the max4? Wonder how many amps he's pulling. Even if you were to be pulling 600amps (random number) on 8s in that setup with an xlx2, theoretically you should be only pulling around 400amps on 12s and running cooler. Interesting trade offs!
 
Anyone know what the "actual" max amps are for the max4? Wonder how many amps he's pulling. Even if you were to be pulling 600amps (random number) on 8s in that setup with an xlx2, theoretically you should be only pulling around 400amps on 12s and running cooler. Interesting trade offs!
They advertise 300a cont.

No idea what voltage sage looks like on 12s, but here is a theoretical:

Max4:
300a*44v= 13,200 watts

XLX2:
650a * 27v = 17,550 watts
 
Anyone know what the "actual" max amps are for the max4? Wonder how many amps he's pulling. Even if you were to be pulling 600amps (random number) on 8s in that setup with an xlx2, theoretically you should be only pulling around 400amps on 12s and running cooler. Interesting trade offs!
Officially the Max4 is rated for 300A continuous and, I wanna say, 1200A peak? Feel free to fact check me on the peak value. Interesting tradeoffs indeed though.
 
Officially the Max4 is rated for 300A continuous and, I wanna say, 1200A peak? Feel free to fact check me on the peak value. Interesting tradeoffs indeed though.
Seems a little low since my 6S HW max 8g2 will peak 1050Amp.

Edit for reference:

D43AFD70-4478-4564-A272-99A6EB2C5754.jpeg
 
Last edited:
Seems a little low since my 6S HW max 8g2 will peak 1050Amp.
I was just going on memory, I could be off by a few hundred amps (maybe it was 2000A...a quick Google search would surely answer the questions but I feel compelled to write about my uncertainty rather than punch the question into Google...don't ask me why). The thing is, peak values aren't really relevant in this arena as the peak values are too short to be of any value to speed running. With HW ESCs, a slow trigger pull has always been more relevant that it has been with Castle ESCs. That's been my understanding anyways and, from everything I've seen, HW ESCs are prone to cutting out due to high load.
 
They advertise 300a cont.

No idea what voltage sage looks like on 12s, but here is a theoretical:

Max4:
300a*44v= 13,200 watts

XLX2:
650a * 27v = 17,550 watts
Agreed, continuous published amps are 300a. Not sure what kind of tolerances you could expect on that 300a (+/- 5%? +/- 20%?). Obviously it won't shut down if you pull 301a for 0.001 seconds, so the question is: how much time can you pull more than 300a? It will depend on hobbywing's internal circuitry/algorithm. If your trigger squeeze for the application is short enough to dupe the circuitry into thinking you're doing a "peak" pull instead of a "continuous" pull, then you could likely pull out more amperage than 300a for a short period of time.

Example 1; lets say the polling period of the circuitry reviews the past 5 seconds of amperage and determines if 300a has been exceeded and then shuts down. For the first 7 seconds of your pull you are pulling the following amps: 100, 200, 350, 500, 650, 500, 300. So the 300a hasn't yet been exceeded for the set period of time to shut 'er down.

Example 2; the polling is cumulative, and adds up the monitored amperage over the last 5 seconds to determine if greater than peak (2000a). If this were the case, then the example 7 seconds above wouldn't exceed the 2000a peak either (worst 5 seconds are 200+350+500+650+300 = 2000a).

This is all just speculation of course. Just curious how hobbywing manages the continous vs peak amperage. I wouldn't claim the max4 would be superior than the xlx2 (which will basically destroy itself), but with 50% extra voltage, it could certainly give it a run for the money in some cases.
 
Agreed, continuous published amps are 300a. Not sure what kind of tolerances you could expect on that 300a (+/- 5%? +/- 20%?). Obviously it won't shut down if you pull 301a for 0.001 seconds, so the question is: how much time can you pull more than 300a? It will depend on hobbywing's internal circuitry/algorithm. If your trigger squeeze for the application is short enough to dupe the circuitry into thinking you're doing a "peak" pull instead of a "continuous" pull, then you could likely pull out more amperage than 300a for a short period of time.

Example 1; lets say the polling period of the circuitry reviews the past 5 seconds of amperage and determines if 300a has been exceeded and then shuts down. For the first 7 seconds of your pull you are pulling the following amps: 100, 200, 350, 500, 650, 500, 300. So the 300a hasn't yet been exceeded for the set period of time to shut 'er down.

Example 2; the polling is cumulative, and adds up the monitored amperage over the last 5 seconds to determine if greater than peak (2000a). If this were the case, then the example 7 seconds above wouldn't exceed the 2000a peak either (worst 5 seconds are 200+350+500+650+300 = 2000a).

This is all just speculation of course. Just curious how hobbywing manages the continous vs peak amperage. I wouldn't claim the max4 would be superior than the xlx2 (which will basically destroy itself), but with 50% extra voltage, it could certainly give it a run for the money in some cases.
I was wondering too how the cutoff scales between continuous and max amp values. I'm not sure how long they could maintain max current but, for the sake of argument, let's say it's one second. Does it scale linearly from infinity to one second once you cross the 300A threshold? Surely not, as scaling anything from infinity is a ludicrous proposition, so we'd have to know how long it can maintain 305A or 310A before shutting down so we'd at least have a reference frame. From there it could be a linear or logarithmic scaling to max current. I wish they'd give a bit more insight into how their ESCs deal with this gray area between continuous and max current...much like I wish Castle would give amp values for their ESCs at all.
 
I was wondering too how the cutoff scales between continuous and max amp values. I'm not sure how long they could maintain max current but, for the sake of argument, let's say it's one second. Does it scale linearly from infinity to one second once you cross the 300A threshold? Surely not, as scaling anything from infinity is a ludicrous proposition, so we'd have to know how long it can maintain 305A or 310A before shutting down so we'd at least have a reference frame. From there it could be a linear or logarithmic scaling to max current. I wish they'd give a bit more insight into how their ESCs deal with this gray area between continuous and max current...much like I wish Castle would give amp values for their ESCs at all.
As much as I love my Castle ESC’s I hate how they corner the market with speed running. Competition leads to innovation. Not that Castle isn’t innovative but you know what I mean. Hobbywing makes good stuff. At least give us data logging to start. I’m sure their engineers could make a competing speed run ESC. My guess is they don’t want to deal with the warranty or replacement issues, which castle has been really good at.
 
They advertise 300a cont.

No idea what voltage sage looks like on 12s, but here is a theoretical:

Max4:
300a*44v= 13,200 watts

XLX2:
650a * 27v = 17,550 watts
Are those the real numbers on amps?
I stupid question but I never owned any of the 2.
 
Agreed, continuous published amps are 300a. Not sure what kind of tolerances you could expect on that 300a (+/- 5%? +/- 20%?). Obviously it won't shut down if you pull 301a for 0.001 seconds, so the question is: how much time can you pull more than 300a? It will depend on hobbywing's internal circuitry/algorithm. If your trigger squeeze for the application is short enough to dupe the circuitry into thinking you're doing a "peak" pull instead of a "continuous" pull, then you could likely pull out more amperage than 300a for a short period of time.

Example 1; lets say the polling period of the circuitry reviews the past 5 seconds of amperage and determines if 300a has been exceeded and then shuts down. For the first 7 seconds of your pull you are pulling the following amps: 100, 200, 350, 500, 650, 500, 300. So the 300a hasn't yet been exceeded for the set period of time to shut 'er down.

Example 2; the polling is cumulative, and adds up the monitored amperage over the last 5 seconds to determine if greater than peak (2000a). If this were the case, then the example 7 seconds above wouldn't exceed the 2000a peak either (worst 5 seconds are 200+350+500+650+300 = 2000a).

This is all just speculation of course. Just curious how hobbywing manages the continous vs peak amperage. I wouldn't claim the max4 would be superior than the xlx2 (which will basically destroy itself), but with 50% extra voltage, it could certainly give it a run for the money in some cases.

From what I have seen historically on the Max5 when I would speed run that ESC.... it basically cuts and the run will plateau there.
I have always held the belief that HW overrates their amperage ratings if Castles numbers are to be believed and is the comparison.

I once talked with a guy that claimed to have found a way to connect the HW ESC to a computer and use some sort of text file or possibly it was a program card to get into the ESC settings. He said he was able to eliminate the amperage limiting or turn it way up. He passed away unexpectedly and took that secret to his grave. Never will know if that was true or not. I know Castle locks their software down, but I always felt HW was more basic.
Are those the real numbers on amps?
I stupid question but I never owned any of the 2.

I have taken the XLX2 into the Mid 600's a friend took his to 720 or 740 amps. I forget the actual numbers, but it is quite insane.
 
As much as I love my Castle ESC’s I hate how they corner the market with speed running. Competition leads to innovation. Not that Castle isn’t innovative but you know what I mean. Hobbywing makes good stuff. At least give us data logging to start. I’m sure their engineers could make a competing speed run ESC. My guess is they don’t want to deal with the warranty or replacement issues, which castle has been really good at.
I'm totally with you bro, competition is the lifeblood of better products. I'd love to see a serious battle for speed run supremacy in the ESC market. No matter which ESC comes out on top, it's the consumer that wins.
 
I'm totally with you bro, competition is the lifeblood of better products. I'd love to see a serious battle for speed run supremacy in the ESC market. No matter which ESC comes out on top, it's the consumer that wins.
The problem here is any new company has to compete with years of developing the product, manufacturing, support, and software. Catching up to Castle is a massive up hill battle.
I hear MGM escs are painful to use when it comes to tuning/setup and logs.
 
The problem here is any new company has to compete with years of developing the product, manufacturing, support, and software. Catching up to Castle is a massive up hill battle.
I hear MGM escs are painful to use when it comes to tuning/setup and logs.
Maybe someone with a strong history expanding into this part of the market. Tekin, for example.
 
I think hobbywing has a strong entry to the competition of high powered escs with the max4, but they like typical, restrict amperage to a more reasonable level whether to 1) increase reliability and thus product reception, 2) hide the fact that if they pushed them too hard all of the max escs would start blowing up, or 3) like liketysplit said, I think they just don't want to corner themselves in that market and then have unrestricted escs blowing up and the expectation to do something about it.

Not too mention, what percent of the markets are speed runners? I bet the marketing goons at hobbywing know how prevalent they are. And I bet you they aren't the dominant market sector.
 
The problem here is any new company has to compete with years of developing the product, manufacturing, support, and software. Catching up to Castle is a massive up hill battle.
I hear MGM escs are painful to use when it comes to tuning/setup and logs.
I'm totally retarded when it comes to electrical engineering so I really have no frame of reference when it comes to these things so, may I be forgiven for asking retarded questions. Is it really that much of a heavy lift to get from a Max4 that can do 300A continuous to something that can do 400-500A for 5-6 seconds? Drop the nonsensical 2000A peak current that no one needs and focus the "bandwidth" or "powerband" (or however you want to term it) and heat dissipation (as I'm sure this is of primary concern in this sort of use case) down to well below 750A but retain the 12S voltage spec? My totally unqualified gut instinct tells me that it isn't far away from being able to do something around those figures, if not outright. I get it, their focus has been reliability over brute force output. But here's a banal example of HW ESCs being able to do more than their spec sheet says.

The Max6 and Max5 can both be hacked pretty easily to run on 10S & 12S right out of the box. So my speculation is that the controller in the Max4 is possibly/probably just the Max5 core in a bigger enclosure for better heat dissipation. Is the 2000A peak current of the Max4 a spec because that's just what the components happen to be able to handle at max, or is this programmed into the firmware? I presume the latter, so just drop the max ceiling to 750A and reprogram the curve along which the ESC decides to shut down regulated by current over time (I don't know if this is how HW ESCs actually work I'm, again, just speculating).

I know this is just totally non-academic, academic theorizing on something I know nothing about, all of which would hinge on Hobbywing's desire to even play in that arena (and there aren't any signs whatsoever that they do). ESCs are probably way more complicated than I think and my ideas of what to do is, more than likely, hopelessly naive and anyone who actually knows anything about how they work is probably laughing at this...which is fine. I'm just brain-storming (or brain-farting as the case may be). While I've had no reason to need more than what the XLX2 offers, there's just part of me that really wishes there were more of a mainstream battle for the best high performance ESC. Yeah, I've heard the same about MGM and their non-intuitive interface but to me the bigger issue is their price. The ESC I'd get for speed running would be around 936€ plus, because I live in the EU, an additional 21% VAT. That's 1132,56€...for an ESC?! I'm sure they're great and all but dude...that's mental.
I think hobbywing has a strong entry to the competition of high powered escs with the max4, but they like typical, restrict amperage to a more reasonable level whether to 1) increase reliability and thus product reception, 2) hide the fact that if they pushed them too hard all of the max escs would start blowing up, or 3) like liketysplit said, I think they just don't want to corner themselves in that market and then have unrestricted escs blowing up and the expectation to do something about it.

Not too mention, what percent of the markets are speed runners? I bet the marketing goons at hobbywing know how prevalent they are. And I bet you they aren't the dominant market sector.
I think it's well established that speed runners are but a niche of the RC surface market...but they do tend to consist largely of people willing to pay quite a lot of money for the pursuit of higher speeds and the fact that there is such a burgeoning aftermarket industry and at least one ESC manufacturer who, while not specifically catering to the speed running sector, do produce at least one product that was designed and built with speed runners in mind, speaks to the recognition many manufacturers all the way from the solo entrepreneur to mid-sized outfits, who invest quite a lot into R&D and CNC machining, that this is a profitable "niche" that's worth investing in. I think the speed running scene, more than any other sub-genre of RC cars, has really pushed the development of lipos (or at least of what can be accomplished with existing technologies) over the last 12-24 months with a few of the consumers branching off into development and distribution to better service speed runners and their needs. Don't get it twisted, I'm not saying that there's anything special about that in and of itself as there's an even larger appendage attached to the bashing scene, but the fact that so many products are available that cater to this small group of velocity enthusiasts, does say something as to its disproportionate import. I might be wrong...but that's how I read the tea leaves. YMMV :)
 
I'm totally retarded when it comes to electrical engineering so I really have no frame of reference when it comes to these things so, may I be forgiven for asking retarded questions. Is it really that much of a heavy lift to get from a Max4 that can do 300A continuous to something that can do 400-500A for 5-6 seconds? Drop the nonsensical 2000A peak current that no one needs and focus the "bandwidth" or "powerband" (or however you want to term it) and heat dissipation (as I'm sure this is of primary concern in this sort of use case) down to well below 750A but retain the 12S voltage spec? My totally unqualified gut instinct tells me that it isn't far away from being able to do something around those figures, if not outright. I get it, their focus has been reliability over brute force output. But here's a banal example of HW ESCs being able to do more than their spec sheet says.

The Max6 and Max5 can both be hacked pretty easily to run on 10S & 12S right out of the box. So my speculation is that the controller in the Max4 is possibly/probably just the Max5 core in a bigger enclosure for better heat dissipation. Is the 2000A peak current of the Max4 a spec because that's just what the components happen to be able to handle at max, or is this programmed into the firmware? I presume the latter, so just drop the max ceiling to 750A and reprogram the curve along which the ESC decides to shut down regulated by current over time (I don't know if this is how HW ESCs actually work I'm, again, just speculating).

I know this is just totally non-academic, academic theorizing on something I know nothing about, all of which would hinge on Hobbywing's desire to even play in that arena (and there aren't any signs whatsoever that they do). ESCs are probably way more complicated than I think and my ideas of what to do is, more than likely, hopelessly naive and anyone who actually knows anything about how they work is probably laughing at this...which is fine. I'm just brain-storming (or brain-farting as the case may be). While I've had no reason to need more than what the XLX2 offers, there's just part of me that really wishes there were more of a mainstream battle for the best high performance ESC. Yeah, I've heard the same about MGM and their non-intuitive interface but to me the bigger issue is their price. The ESC I'd get for speed running would be around 936€ plus, because I live in the EU, an additional 21% VAT. That's 1132,56€...for an ESC?! I'm sure they're great and all but dude...that's mental.

I think it's well established that speed runners are but a niche of the RC surface market...but they do tend to consist largely of people willing to pay quite a lot of money for the pursuit of higher speeds and the fact that there is such a burgeoning aftermarket industry and at least one ESC manufacturer who, while not specifically catering to the speed running sector, do produce at least one product that was designed and built with speed runners in mind, speaks to the recognition many manufacturers all the way from the solo entrepreneur to mid-sized outfits, who invest quite a lot into R&D and CNC machining, that this is a profitable "niche" that's worth investing in. I think the speed running scene, more than any other sub-genre of RC cars, has really pushed the development of lipos (or at least of what can be accomplished with existing technologies) over the last 12-24 months with a few of the consumers branching off into development and distribution to better service speed runners and their needs. Don't get it twisted, I'm not saying that there's anything special about that in and of itself as there's an even larger appendage attached to the bashing scene, but the fact that so many products are available that cater to this small group of velocity enthusiasts, does say something as to its disproportionate import. I might be wrong...but that's how I read the tea leaves. YMMV :)

Agreed, even if Hobby wing could turn it up a little bit with a special edition speed runner model that would be nice. Even just 400a vs 300a would be a big improvement.

Regarding MGM no one has ever done anything impressive with them and there ard a handful out there that have the money to burn and tried them. Until I see something proving its worth I will never try one.

I keep hearing whispers/rumors of the XLX3 would be a 12s or higher ESC. While that likely would be the next big thing do we really need more power at this point? It seems with the dual 40mm motor setups we can go way past 200 mph and blow the tires off the wheels.
 
Back
Top