H&R Hawk Motor

[Mayberryman]

[urbanwarrior]

This is a very interesting and timely read for me. My club, which meets Tuesday's at an LHS, is currently running a pre 65 vintage series which encourages scratchbuilding and has an 18k motor limit. Now I knew going in that I may have wanted to make a 14k motor the spec motor but I opted for the 18k spec.
I have used many Hawk motors over the years and found them to be decent under $10 spec motors, but I must confess my preference and the one I always use is the Pioneer Typhoon 18k. I just find it a better, stronger and more consistent choice.
Finally to my point. There is a guy in my club who has been racing for 6 months or less and for a Scaley GT class before this and now this class the learning curve that usually takes much longer has seemingly skipped him. He is much faster than everyone else and has raised a few eyebrows. His motor of choice you ask??? A new H&R Hawk 18k. We don't do regular tech of the cars, it's kinda the honor system. However, we did finally tech my Typhoon that is wicked fast and his Hawk that is kicking all ours butts. The Typhoon tached at 17.8 just under the 18k spec. The Hawk tached at just over 20k. I feel that this is an obvious advantage for the Hawk motor, however, it's quite the contrary to what has been reported to be the under spec norm for the Hawk.
Just food for thought.....hmmmmmmm.......

[McLiams]

[mikeinclover]

[Oscar Racing]

[nhdungeonracer]

Around here, if you dealing with worms, you're going fishing.. :lol:

I've always understood the Hawk motors rev lower than most "18k" motors such as the Scalextric motors (most of which rev more than 20k). But the torque of the Hawk motors allow a lower gear ratio and will move the car along quite well. I have one in a Scaley Camaro that routinely beats the 20k motors that are allowed in our Historic class, some of which are quite modified. But it isn't just the motor that makes the car fast. The car needs to handle as well in order to be fast.

My experience is sometimes a lower revving motor is advantageous, especially if you're sending it out in the proxy world. Once it out of your hands and out in the proxy world, you have no control on who's going to be driving your car. If you have a "slow" motor, but the car handles well, you will place high at almost all of the different races. The only time you might not place in the top half is you have nothing but really good experienced racers racing all the cars in that class. I can tell you from experience, that doesn't happen very often. Most of the time, there are relatively new comers that will be racing your car, so if your car handles well and is not overpowered, it will rise to the top. :auto-layrubber:

[Audi1]

Yup, worms are for fishing where I live, too.

I agree with Dickie about the overall performance of a slot car; particularly in proxy situations and, frankly, I may have placed too much emphasis on the performance of the Hawk motor vs. the overall performance of the car. But since most of the motors that I test come in above rpm spec, it was, initially, disappointing to see this motor consistently coming in below rpm spec. The torque is what's always been the attractive part of the Hawk motor for me (I do like the color, though...... :D ) and, lower revving than spec or not, I plan to continue to use it in some of the cars that I build.

Allan

[Ky.Slot Racer]

I like them fine, I also like the pioneer 18k if I'm getting a motor that is under $10 it doesn't bother me if there is a variance of up to 1000 rpms. But that being said I don't race, but the Hawk does great on all of our home size tracks which is most likely what they were,/are intended for.
You can also pay twice or 3 times that much and get variances unit to unit. All of the M/T Racings line of motors have variances from 18, to 1000 rpms .

[Mayberryman]

[GoPro]

I have experienced similar results as the original post (significant loss in rpm) after performing a "break in" procedure with the hawk motor as well. I checked it before to get a baseline and then again after the procedure. It happened consecutively with 3 different new motors. I stopped doing the break in and just ran the motor. I just figured it didn't like being broke in like that and just running the car with the motor was sufficient enough for it.