Meaty Drivetrain recommendations (aside from Speed 900's)

Yeah you're bang on it's about 6kg wet through lol. It needs 14.4V and taking up to 13kg, what you say makes perfect sense.

Is there anything say, higher than a speed 900 (like a speed 1000 or whatever?) that's higher torque and lower RPM? Suppose it'd be better to have an even lower reduction, I'm fairly sure there'd be some in use if there were, but I thought I'd ask!

Also, is there any way of figuring out wattage to horsepower and how much you'd need in a machine to actually be able to drive it etc?

I think 900’s was as big as that motor range ever went but don’t quote me lol. I have a feeling about 750Watt is equivalent to 1HP, but I think if you need to be precise it’s something random like 746Watts. No doubt someone will be able to confirm that.

As per the drive train options above, does anyone know where one may be able to obtain a belt and pulley setup that would give the right drive pulleys to fit a Torpedo 800?

Gears are more compact and generally favoured for single stage reductions. It's common practice to take a belt off the gear stage to form a second stage, though.

I have been using http://www.beltingonline.com/, they have a huge range and good prices. If you're looking at using belts, go for the HTD range of belts and pulleys. HTD5 is used often, with very good results, outperforming other profiles.

As for motors of the style we're used to that are bigger than S900s, I'm not sure. There are one or two which are physically bigger, but not necessarily better performing. The Dewalts are the next step up, and going for more grunt than two of these (they're over 1hp each!) is kind of pointless as the power will never be put down without magnets. You can get huge torque and very low revs from scooter motors, but they're generally always 24v+ and big and bulky.

If you fancy a trip into the unknown have a look at this on the Aussie site

http://robowars.org/forum/viewtopic....=asc&start=615

We are using Trackstar ESC's and motors for our 6kg robot, paired up with the GR02 planetary. The amount of push it has is scary for such little motors.

Fan motors are low RPM high torque, but we had all sort of issues with them due to their low inductance.

I know someone one here has recently built a machine with Scooter motor drive? They didn't seem to have the same issues we did with fan motors.

One of the Dutch robots uses 2 motors from electric Kick scooters. The do the job quite well.
http://www.eped.nl/powerboard/elektr...oard_afb03.jpg

They all look dead good. I'll end up with gear motors of some sort, either banebots, dewalt, or some over volted drill motors I think. The only way to get big power cheap is to build your own drive train but I won't manage that. I will have a look at the banebots stuff or something similar :)

only other option i can think of is these or something similar
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Makita-628...item51b41896f5

you get twice the nm torque of a cheap drill and 15mph ish with a 100mm wheel on the fastest speed setting, im gonna be using them i another robot im building and i know that there used in endeavours (team jeopardy)