The End of An Era: Novak Closing After 38 Years

Oh well, I've never rated their electrics anyway, I remember the very expensive (in its day) brushed esc I had about 10 years ago and it smoked the first time it had a battery connected, ever since then Ive steered well clear  

Ouch!  On a personal note where am I going to get Mod 1 hardened pinions delivered to my door for less than a fiver each?  

 

Always sad to see a firm like Novak go though.

1 hour ago, .AJ. said:

Oh well, I've never rated their electrics anyway, I remember the very expensive (in its day) brushed esc I had about 10 years ago and it smoked the first time it had a battery connected, ever since then Ive steered well clear  

 

I know someone who bought one of their ESCs from a shop in the US as no where in the UK sold it.

Took ages to turn up and went pop the first time they turned it on,I was warned away from them by him.

Oh well, chin up, at least Mrs Novak is hot!

Had loads of novak stuff when i was racing never any issues.  A mate got a broken one from a pro driver. He sent it to the US and got it fixed for about £15 lol

Sad to see more RC firms going, I used their rooster and super rooster esc's a lot they were great.

Seemed to go a lot quieter in the last 5 years or so, so I suppose something like this was on the cards.

 

Always liked their brushed ESC's.

 

Al.

Yeah, I used their Rooster ESCs as well. They were beasts! Took a ridiculous amount of power. Also, I still use their 40mhz receiver, in one of my cars. Doesn't use crystals, instead, you adjust dials on the face of the receiver, to match the crystal frequency of the transmitter. Pretty neat.

 

This news saddens me.

 

Goodbye, Novak!

I wonder if the havoc pro did them in   as i had the original havoc and it was better than a castle setup.  but the pro didn't seem to sell very well.

Novak had some great products but the problem was the key word "had". Quality and reliability seems to have gone down with each of their latest products. My old Novak crawler ESC has been perfect and it'll probably go on for years yet.

 

           John

when i first got into the hobby, this was a big name in the industry, never owned any products myself, so dont have any personal experience, but its always sad to hear another company shutting down

For me, their first 'failure' was the HV Maxx - kept blowing them up - cost me money!!

I did go for the 4.5, not the 5.5 as recommended for the E-Maxx ...

Never forget that 'I wonder how it revs' moment before I fitted the pinion, until I realised I was potentially making a 50k maximum revs motor go at 85k, so it shouldn't have been a surprise that it went 'pop'!!

 

I always used the Super Roosters - powering stop lights as well ... early days.

 

Still have a Mongoose on my 1/18 Raminator - goes fine.

 

Al.

At the time i think the HV motor had the fastest RPM

 

Back in the day i had the ESC's with the  regenerative braking  & torque limiter

Had a few of their HV systems, all vented. Shame, there weren't many large sensored systems available. I did always wonder if the orange colour scheme was there to disguise the inevitable flames? 

 

Still a shame though. 

Really sad to see them go. But in the business of RC, there are few small operations that can survive forever. Tekin went out of business many years ago but come back in recent years. In the 90s', Tekin and Novak basically monopolised the ESC scene with Reedy and Monster being the main power plants. I had the Novak 410-M5 and Tempest which were excellent and my Mongoose is still running strong. I guess it is difficult to compete with cheap electronics from China these days with disposable prices. We will miss those red little cases in our RC cars for certain.

Novak made some great receivers, and many iconic Escs (410 and Cyclone especially) but they never really got brushless right. Their Escs weren't reliable and the motors whilst effective were always a little different and hence not that popular. The old lite series brushless motors were great to drive but a pain when the (built in) sensor wire broke. Likewise the newer Vulcans with their swappable winds ended up expensive for a feature few used. Meanwhile 2.4ghz made there awesome 27 and 40mhz receivers obsolete and since they never made transmitters they couldn't enter this field.

 

A once great company that has died because it fell behind the times.

Novak IMO came across as one of the best in the late 90's & early to mid 2000's, my assumptions based on price and a lot of teams had them in their touring cars. Unfortunately, a little over priced for my requirements so I went with Reedy motors and LRP speedos.

 

Fair do's to Novak 

I loved this set up I had (not my pic)

Edited June 14, 2016 by Guns

I thought they went years ago to be fair! They just disappeared off the radar. I sometimes wonder how much of an impact the Chinese/Asian companies have had on the traditional RC companies - I mean, I buy most of my ESC's/motors/combo's etc from funshobby etc nowadays - just seems better VFM.

 

In my eyes Novak always targeted the racing scene - did they offer much for bashers?

They only made the definitive esc for twin motor monster trucks, plus a range of bashing Escs too. Over in the US most bashers used Novaks back in the day, but only the racing ones sold much over here.

It wasn't the rise of the Chinese brands killed them so much as the poor quality of recent products. 

Such a shame. I'm sure I still have some unused Novak stickers, somewhere.

Found some unused Novak stickers. 

Better hold onto them. You never know they could be worth 10p or 20p some day. 

 

                John

13 hours ago, Bigjimknickers said:

Oh well, chin up, at least Mrs Novak is hot!

both r........I use novak pinnys in my bl 1/8th`s....3x for 13-15 quid delivered from the usa...bargain!!

Edited June 14, 2016 by evssv

7 hours ago, evssv said:

both r........I use novak pinnys in my bl 1/8th`s....3x for 13-15 quid delivered from the usa...bargain!!

 

Link please Mike?  My usual supplier has hiked the price over the import limit... I need another set.

Ok..I'll  look  for em now... Although  I ain't bought any for a while