Is This REALLY FOC? 🤔 Testing the LDRC 18401 Pro! 1/18th Scale 4WD

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]We are out here testing the LDRC. It is finally a nice day and we're going to take a look and see is this actually FOC?

[00:00:10]Now, truthfully, I can't really know without taking it apart, but I've got some I've got some inklings of what this is.

[00:00:17]So, let's get it on the rocks.

[00:00:23]And I walked it to the rocks cuz it's so freaking tiny.

[00:00:27]So, on the topic of FOC, there's a lot of companies that are using it as a marketing term these days. There's only one company that I know of, and that is Hobbywing, that is actually doing FOC products. One way to tell, can you move it and have it go back to its original position? Well, this one just goes I can feel it rolling through.

[00:00:47]It's rolling. This It's not trying to go back to its original position. So, more than likely, it's not a dead giveaway, but it's maybe not FOC. The second thing is that FOC it matches the back EMF of the motor and it uses amp draw to do it as well. So, we are watching our phase amps. We are smoothly commutating our motor, and so you don't get any like of the motor at low speed like you would with let's say with a AM32, with any sensored motor, etc., etc. This one, which you probably can't hear out here, actually, you can probably hear that.

[00:01:27]That is actually at the exact same frequency of commutating the motor, which tells me it's probably being commutated by either a square wave or a approximated sine wave.

[00:01:40]I just don't think that this is FOC.

[00:01:45]Does it matter? No. It really doesn't matter. If it's six-step and they have just done a good job at it, then it it's fine. And honestly, driving it, from what I've done so far, it has a really good velocity loop control. Now, not much ground clearance.

[00:02:04]But it has a really good velocity loop on it. So, it acts like it's FOC.

[00:02:10]And and that's I think what most people are more concerned about is does it drive stout? Is it predictable?

[00:02:19]Does it have the drag brake that I want for my vehicle?

[00:02:22]And the answer to this one so far is yes.

[00:02:26]There we go.

[00:02:29]Yes, it has great velocity control. It has great torque. It has all the drag that this particular vehicle needs.

[00:02:37]So, is it FOC?

[00:02:41]Or does it even matter?

[00:02:45]Like I Like I said, it's it's uh All right, we don't have a whole lot of oomph in reverse, which means that trying to get uh oh trying to get out of that is tough.

[00:02:55]And How are the tires? The The tires are uh they're gripping. It's actually doing decent, but I'm going to have to do some serious rock stacking for this teeny little rig. My normal stack of rocks is is big.

[00:03:13]There we go.

[00:03:15]We'll try again. We'll try to climb again.

[00:03:17]We're going to We're going to scrape this body. I haven't put any of the accessories on the body yet.

[00:03:33]All right. All right. All right. All right.

[00:03:36]We'll take the easy path up. How about that?

[00:03:46]Uh steering radius on this isn't great.

[00:03:48]But for a 60 $5 brushless ready-to-run with a pretty scale looking body. I mean, that's I don't want to try to complain about it. That's You got to have a little bit of levity on what we bought versus what we should can expect.

[00:04:14]I mean, we can expect a little bit of touchy throttle. I really would prefer if we had more reverse, but I don't think that's going to be changeable on this guy cuz I can't I can't even get out of this. This is a scale rig.

[00:04:31]This isn't a performance SCX 30.

[00:04:37]I feel like the SCX 30 would do a little bit better cuz it's smaller and I could place it in between these.

[00:04:44]Uh Yeah, something happened there.

[00:04:48]I feel like our pinion mesh may have just moved or our pinion is slipping.

[00:04:53]I It don't sound good one way or another. So, well, I I'm just going to stop.

[00:05:02]Well, there's our on the rocks test.

[00:05:04]Maybe $65 is you get what you pay for on this. Now, let's see how hot is our {quote} {unquote} FOC.

[00:05:14]That's not too bad. And it's still warm, but they got this huge heat sink on there.

[00:05:22]That's I'm going to guess our motor came loose cuz look at that.

[00:05:29]It's It's uh A little bit of play. Yeah, a little bit of play. So, more than likely our pinion mesh went whack. And yeah, I'm going to have to take this all apart and put it back together to get it to work. So, uh c'est la vie.

[00:05:45]You say it.

[00:05:46]You la vie.

[00:05:49]La vie la vie la vie la vie da. What does LDRC stand for? Limited drive run?

[00:05:54]I have Limited drive time? Yeah. Let's see.

[00:05:58]What would LDRC? Yeah. Limited driving RC.

[00:06:02]Um we did our best. So Ah, is it turned off? It is turned off and I'll turn this off and All right. So the first thing you may want to do if you get one of these LDRCs is to make sure that your motor is tight on there and potentially apply some Loctite to it. Don't get it on plastic but metal to metal screw into metal face plate which it did have is a good spot.

[00:06:23]So there you go.

[00:06:24]Uh first impressions it seemed to do fine for the scale and big body of the rig until the motor came loose. So there you go. If you have any experience with this certainly leave your experience down below. We'd love to hear it and so would the other commenters. As always thanks for tuning in.

[00:06:41]Have a great day.

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