RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Happy Saturday, friends...

I have a HL M1A2 TK 7.0, steel gears, all metal running gear with bearings, and have upgraded to the HL Red motors. Only using 7.2V NIMH batteries. Aside from the increased torque and a bit of speed there is a pretty good increase in heat output as well. Do you all worry about heat management at all? If so how do you mitigate the heat buildup in the closed hull? Any thoughts on installing a fan? I ditched the smoke unit (kinda cheesy on a turbine) and wonder if I can use that connection to power a fan?

I'm fairly new to this and won't pretend to understand the ins and outs of the boards installed in these tanks.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Yeah, connetion of the fan should work (better check output voltage with mulitmeter). Anyway only time I had a problem with heat were hot sunny days.

Gotcha… Thank you.

I would more worry about HL board than motors. Taigen boards have cooling fan already installed.

Yeah I'm less worried about the motors themselves than I am the heat they generate that is retained inside of the hull. There isn't a whole lot of room to work with unless I chop out the battery box and I'm not ready for that major surgery until I read up a bit more on the mods in this forum. My hope is that getting some air circulating in the interior might mitigate some of the heat build up? Of course that brings up the issue of venting the heat... I'm probably way overthinking the issue.

Good evening, how much do you estimate this heat level temperature? How long does it operate? And what type of terrain? is it a heat together inside, or on the electronic board?

Motors are most definitely very hot to the touch and the engine deck is noticeably hot. I’ve noticed the heat buildup on regular flat concrete surfaces as well as rolling terrain. I think that most of the heat is generated from the motors and in general just a high ambient temperature inside of the hull. I’ve notice no issues with the board.

I've run my tanks in over 100F degree Texas heat. The motors get pretty hot and never had an issue with them.

tankme wrote:I've run my tanks in over 100F degree Texas heat. The motors get pretty hot and never had an issue with them.

Thats good to hear. Sounding like I'm worried about a whole lot of nothing. Thanks!

It wouldn't hurt to put a fan in for peace of mind, you can get little one inch fans that you could plug into the unused smoker socket, even those very thin laptop fans could be a consideration, they are only a quarter inch thick. And open up those moulded mesh areas on the rear deck.
It could help keep the air temperature down around the MFU, providing it was able to draw cooler air in to flow over the MFU, it would be a bonus, rather than circulating the hot air.
Motors get hotter the more laboured they get, as in the more load put on them to turn, as in long grass and rough terrain etc.
It just depends on how much punishment you are going to put the tank through. Therefore it would be better to check how hot the MFU gets from delivering the motors requirements of maximum amps caused by the load, along with the generated motor heat.
After saying all that, most MFU's appear to cope quite well with what they're designed for, but a little cooling should help prolong their life.