Stick with brushless, much more efficient so your battery will last longer than an equivalent brushed motor. I doubt you can make any saving with a brushed motor, a 40 amp speed controller on its own will be around 40 quid for a decent one.

The combo you’ve been recommended seems perfect to me, i use a very similar set up myself.

Charles.

Suggest you wait for more recommendations before spending money – there will be people out there with similar size boats who can comment on the power system they use.

The 683 brushed motor will probably be about 100w with a 3S LiPo, not a lot of power for a boat that size.

There are brushless motor/ESC packages out there of around the same power that can be had for around £15. They are intended for aircraft so you don’t get reverse. Get the cat some more pigeons! A search for “2212 and ESC” will likely find some. However, build quality of these can be variable.

My personal recommendation would be to go for the brushless Tornado/Shark combo, otherwise you may end up spending more money upgrading later.

Dave.

I would be inclined to go down the brushless route too. An MTB is meant to look like a MTB and not an overpowered canal boat!

Ashley has some experience in getting performance for good value, perhaps he has some suggestions.

Colin

I think the best advice is try to find someone with a similar size and shape hull and see what they have installed.  You can’t beat someone else’s experience.

Brushless.

We use cheap and cheerful 28mm outrunners at the pond. Most of them develop well over 120 watts on 12v (3s) and a motor/esc combo, unfortunately forward only, can be had for under £20. The motor will weigh about 1/3 the weight of a 600, a performance boost in itself.

For those that think a 28mm is too small, well a couple of mine (can’t remember make offhand) can develop 160 watts on a 3s and will spin an S40mm two blade prop all day, and 1Kg is not a heavy boat.

If a few extra quid can be found then obviously a 35mm motor would be better as there’s more turning effort to be had by a larger diameter motor and the best performance would likely be obtained with the recommended 35mm setup, but as usual it depends on how fast you want to go and how much you want to pay for that performance. The 28mm motors beat a 600 in almost every department.

A wattmeter is invaluable here. A very cheap addition to the toolkit and very useful for checking the load on a motor, and telling you how many watts it is producing so you don’t overload it.
<p style=”text-align: left;”>Just as an aside, the 1000Kv unbranded motors we use have shown they can turn an X50 prop with only a small overload on their maximum current draw, however you wouldn’t want to run one like this for fear of overheating, however a brushed 600 would simply melt I reckon with a load like that.</p>
Ashley