Crawler Canyon Quick(re)view: Hobbywing 1080 G2 (the new one!) 

The logistics of it is what's so difficult. It's like orchestrating that fly-over at the beginning of the Super Bowl, but EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. It's way up at the top of the list of "things I never noticed before I plugged in a microphone and started recording videos daily."

It had never occurred to me prior to this ESC that drag brake is effectively always on. Unless you're at WOT, there's some amount of "engine braking" taking place. It's REALLY noticeable when trying to ascend with drag brake switched off. I tried to put myself in the mindset of "one who has not done this before," but I'm not that good of a... pretender? I have too much muscle memory ingrained. I cannot rewire myself for "real car mode," and adjustable drag brake rate lives inside my left index finger. Like I said-- it's an incremental improvement, doodads aside.

That option is selectable 🤷‍♂️

You don't have to enable that gimmick. I'm gonna snip that wire off when I get one.

I simply cannot do it. Reverse is push-- always has been, always will be. The adjustable drag brake for trailing though-- useful.

Yeah, you're really not missing much. I have the G2 installed in Jake, and by now can't even detect that initial smoothness improvement that I did in testing. Feels exactly the same. And he can turn off drag brake... but I've never done it once.

I don't want to pooh-pooh the new features too much, as I think they might be of use to someone, somewhere. But yeah. Trigger discipline is so ingrained into me, I'm never going to be able to pull-for-reverse, and the oddity in throttle behavior when ascending when drag brake is disabled is just too noticeable. The upside for this, at least for me, is that the G2 didn't try to do to much. The core operation is that of a 1080WP, just a little bit smoother. So I'm fine with that. They also didn't crank up the pricepoint for the "new release," so kudos to HW for that.

The G2 is a bit smoother, and has a more powerful BEC (as you noted.) But any direct power servo negates the better BEC, and unless you're using a really nice motor, I honestly don't think you'll notice the difference between the G1 and the G2. It's really close-- I'm of course ignoring Real Car Mode and switchable drag brake. I never even remember that the drag brake function exists. The cheaper (older) one (should) also comes with a program card.

Yes, you'll be fine on 3S. A 5 slot 16T is roughly a 35T 3-slot.

In all my years, I've never had a comparably miserable experience with an electronic object of any sort (and the Hammerhead Karoo cycling computer is counted in this, whose release and update schedule I still classify as "a debacle") as I have with the ISDT ESC70. If you are having good fortune with it, I wish you nothing but the best. I continue to regard it as lackluster hardware and utterly incompetent firmware/software. I documented my tribulations thoroughly, and have less than zero desire to personally revisit the ESC70. Man, I guess I'm still pretty sore about that one.

@@CrawlerCanyon man I’ve heard of more than a few people having issues with those, I’ve had 5 or 6 of them at this point and I’ve never had any real issues with them. The only thing that frustrated me was with the first one I tried calibrating and tuning it out in the woods, with very crappy internet connection, so it fought me tooth and nail. After heading back to the house and getting back to a solid connection, everything worked great and has continued to work perfectly fine ever since. Maybe they are hit and miss and I’ve just been lucky enough to get all the good ones, who knows. The fact that I have had no issues thus far and the fact that I can program my own throttle curve will keep me coming back to them for cheap brushed esc’s, and the same for Castle when Ive got the money to go brushless.

@@drz_rc I was a VERY early adopter, and I'm pretty sure I got one of the earliest released models-- and the app/firmware to go with it. NOTHING worked. Mine will routinely lose calibration, and the only way to get it off of "motor output disabled" is to delete the ESC from the app, start fresh, and then voila! it works. Until I power it down, then a solid 50% of the time it forgets everything again. I gave up and it sits in it's box, most likely forever.

The point of my comment was to point out the lack of throttle curve option from Hobbywing. Definitely not trying to talk ya into trying the ESC70 again. Just wish HW would add the one option that it lacks, which happens to be the one single option that keeps me from buying their products.

@@CrawlerCanyon that would definitely leave a bad taste in the mouth for sure. I think the first one I got was just about a year ago and the last one was just a few weeks ago, so just solely based on what I’ve experienced, I’d say they’ve fixed quite a bit. Something else that is actually pretty cool is the option to change its PWF, you can make it dead silent. Now that’s something I definitely wish Castle would do!

I can genuinely see the utility of the Real Car Mode for racing, where reverse is usually banned. But I will never be able to retrain my brain to "pull for reverse." As far as my brain is concerned, this is the crawling equivalent of the backwards bicycle.

Been at it too long to ever be able to "rewire" to use real car mode. Reverse is trigger forward, to the point where it's instinctive-- I don't even think about it. While I appreciate a BEC going to 8.4V, it's almost lost on me, as with each build there's one less rig running steering off of the internal BEC. I wouldn't even say direct-power servos are the future, direct-power is the now.

@@CrawlerCanyon At near 55 years old I'm used to the same but I have a purely trail rig set up with it and is odd yeah but ill give it some time before I revert to usual set up. If nothing else the adjustable drag isn't a bad idea depending on rig also

Yeah, the old "reverse lockout" a holdover from racing classes with absolutely no reverse allowed. The G2 would honestly make a great pick for some kind of Spec class, so cars could have reverse enabled, but it would be more like (as in the name) "real" reverse. So I can see an application for it, just not in a crawler-- as we often need reverse like... RIGHT NOW.

@@CrawlerCanyon i think you nailed it. Its like race mode but also can reverse if really needed.

Yeah, I don't see it working in a crawler AT ALL. But I could definitely see it used in some kind of spec racing series, in place of full reverse lockout. If they started including the mode in say the 10BL120, I could see it as useful in drift cars, drag cars, etc. The functionality in brushed is seriously limited, IMO.

You sure can. The G2 just adds a couple of adjustable parameters that the G1 doesn't have (like real car mode, and a 3rd BEC setting.) Same exact card, though.

thank you sir👍👍

Amazon has any and every adapter your imagination can fathom…… and most are around $7 to $10

Here ya go: amzn.to/3Zj3ZdW

Any of the 25x25 fans, like the Hobbywing 2510 or 2507. Just be sure to note-- with a few exceptions, all of the cooling fans you'll find are basic 5V fans, so they can handle 2S-- if you're running 3S, the fan will get battery voltage and it won't be happy for long. HW does make a 12V version of the 2507, HW p/n 86080020

thank you sir..

If you have a 3D printer, you can print one from this file on Thingiverse (which is what I did) www.thingiverse.com/thing:3668792 If you don't have a printer, you can buy one off of Shapeways for about 20 bucks-- which seems steep to me, but , you know, IMO. www.shapeways.com/product/B56UKCCA9/crc1021-hobbywing-quicrun-1080-wp-esc-mount-v2

@@CrawlerCanyon kind of wish I had a 3d printer but also my laptop is super slow

@@TheMrhick92 not to sound like a salesman for 3D printers, but many (if not most) use a USB stick or SD card, so the computer isn’t really in the equation. I’m mostly too impatient for 3D printing, but you can make some really cool stuff.

@@CrawlerCanyon if there was one that's bluetooth that would be pretty nice

I sure can. I could have sworn I made a short about it, but I just spent awhile looking through my own uploads and couldn't find it. So, you know, 🤷‍♂️ I can put a community pic of it up tomorrow. I'm thinking about revamping it, just to make it bigger. I initially though, "oh, storage for like 12 sets of tires is plenty." I still have three bins of tires beyond what's on the rack, and the rack is jammed full.

@@CrawlerCanyon thanks that would be great