Brushless Tornado – Team Orion Vortex BL ESC

When it comes to competition Electronic Speed Controls (ESC’s) for 1/10 scale cars, consumers are faced with an ever expanding range of offerings. One of the newest additions is the Team Orion Vortex BL sensored/less 100A speedo. It was introduced some time ago and is available now. Please do not mistake it for the KO Propo based Team Orion Vortex Race Spec ESC we introduced in our 2008 Electric On-Road Worlds coverage. We hope to bring you a review of the Race Spec version at a later date. But back to the Vortex BL 100A. It comes in a neat cardboard box together with a small but comprehensive manual and a small Team Orion sticker sheet.

Thick
After opening the box you will notice the very thick silicone covered wires for connecting the ESC to the battery and motor. All wires come in black colour except for the positive pole which should avoid any confusion during wiring. Since the solder tabs of the speedo are not marked the motor wires are stamped A, B and C. For additional clarity the endings of the wires are covered with coloured shrink wrap in orange, yellow and blue to help with identification. As usual with competition products no connectors are supplied so you can add your choice of high current connectors like 4mm Corally type gold plugs, Dean’s connectors or similar. Our plan was to use the ESC together with Team Orion’s 3800mAh Race-Spec LiPo battery so we used the battery supplied 4mm male gold connectors. On the motor side of things we direct soldered the wires to the motor tabs which is a bit of a task depending on the tabs as the cable cores have a large diameter of around 3 millimetres.

The Team Orion speedo is slightly larger in size compared to its main competitors from LRP and Novak with a footprint of 42 x 43 millimetres. That makes it more suitable for electric off-road 2WD and 4WD buggies rather than cramped touring cars. We used our example in a 2WD buggy and had no problem to find a suitable place. When seeking for a place to tape the ESC down you also have to consider the large capacitor which is comparable to the one found on Novak’s GTB offering. With around 150 millimetres, the power wires are of a practical length even for a 2WD buggy or monster truck. You will not have any problems to route them from the middle of the chassis to the back of the car. This is important because replacing the wires is impossible without detaching the speedo casing. As with nearly every modern ESC the wires are direct soldered to the board but in this instance the solder joints are hidden by a heat sink. Not much of a problem if you permanently mount the Vortex in only one car.

Part of the ESC is a top mounted fan that attaches to the heat sink with four screws. The height of the Vortex BL speed control is 31.5 millimetre with and 22 millimetres without fan. Thankfully the fan is plugged into the speedo with a small connector so you can detach it with no problem.