Controllers JUST go up in smoke for nothing.. Ask schulze..

http://rc.stuurmijmail.nl/BurnedSchulze/index.html

mmm k.


I do agree with schulze statement. I am the reason for half the shulze "don'ts" on thier list.

Well the esc should protect itself. It is a human made device and can malfunction.
If you keep an eye on temps you can adjust with out thermal.
Are you sure the esc fried because it was above the thermal range.
Anything can happen at any time. Of course if you take a temp after it fries
it will probably be above the thermal point as well.

Preventing a thermal shutdown is better than having one, no doubt.. My advice is to use a tempgun and measure the temp of the setup.. (motor/batteries and speedo) and use the rule of thumbs on temperature in the FAQ made by Batfish.

I agree 100% that it should protect itself, but they dont. None of them should smoke, but we know thats not the case. Yes coolhand, we know for a fact that was the case...we had laptops monitoring everything on the truck so we had a good feel of what was happening...not just a guess.

The problem is, the sensor doesnt monitor every part in the esc. When they heat up very quickly, the sensor is still reading a normal temp and by that time, smoke is out. If you bring one to thermal temps slowly, its easily going to shut down. As a matter of fact, I smoked two ESC's lately running a dually, one came unplugged from Rx , so I was running one way overgeared motor. Ran for about 2 seconds before smoke cloud. I didnt have time to let off when the power dropped, it happened that quickly....twice. Also did it with an Aveox. So thats 5 times I have personally done it when it should have thermalled but didnt. :028:

'The problem is, the sensor doesn't monitor every part in the esc.'

Nope, that's a fact. an immediate temperature rise isn't coming from over gearing though.. many other factors might give an immediate rise in temperature.

I drove my schulze 18.97 with bigmaxx on 16 cells geared for 115 km/h.. guess what.. No thermal, and no burned esc.. (surprising, since schulze jumps every occasion it can to burn..) With brushless you never know..

Best way to monitor your system is by observing the amps it takes, the temp of the speedo, batteries and motor..

But Hippie; i personally think it's either your esc or your receiver that is giving you your head-ache..

It will cause an imediate increase in temperature from overgearing. LOL.

Tell me your setup you are currently running Serum, the highest voltage system you have right now thats ready to run. Tell me your current gearing, I will tell you the gearing to run and run one pack through it. If you are correct, everything will be fine and you will get a thermal. This will be an excellent test, please get video as well. This will end all question.

My personal tests ( to compare to your results)
1.Aveox -overgeared, 6 cells, no thermal, smoked. Regeared for replacement, ran excellent.
2. Hacker- overgeared, 12 cells, thermalled several times, smoked
3. Shulze 88ce, 10 cells, thermalled dozens of times, never smoked.(BEC overheated)
4. Hacker- battery bar broke on dually, single motor overgeared, smoked
5. Mtronik truck- Rx wire unplugged on dually, single motor overgeared, smoked
6. Mtronik truck- Rx wire unplugged on dually, single motor overgeared, smoked
7. CC Barracuda- overgeared, ran 2 minutes, smoked
8. BK 3095- overgeared, burnt high end FETs, wouldnt get full throttle over it overheated, melted shrink wrap, never thermalled.

I don't know what your point is bomb, but i don't like your approach nor your attitude. (this is my opinion, judged on other posts you made, and this last one)

I won't bother going into this useless discussion with you. (with you it's more of a monologue IMO) To remind you; I told you that preventing an overgearing is better than running it. But there is a difference in OVER gearing and overgearing.

BrianG has made a neat calcultor to help you preventing overgearing. (if you used it, you probably could have saved quite some of the controllers you listed) (it also includes a neat warning feature if your motor is running at a high RPM)

But in this movie i had my savage geared 26/47 on 16 cells. (115 km/h) Guess what, the controller survived.

The reason why controllers burn, due to overgearing is because they current it needs to handle is too big. It doesn't overheat, it simple hasn't got time for it; it's just used beyond specification. if a fet is pushed beyond it's specification. Another problem with fetts and the earlier controllers, is that when they where rated at a 20 degree C temperature. If you take a look at the datasheets of most fetts, you'll see a drop in current it can handle when the temperature goes up. if a fett does 50A at 20 degree, it's not odd it does a 15 at 60-70 degree C or such.

As far as i can see, the setups you used aren't very capable of high currents.

I am sure that if i used 2P 16S GP3300's on that setup (bigmaxx/18.97) it would have burned.. No doubt..

If you would have came here in the first place and asked what gearing you needed for the listed vehicles many others, including me, would have helped you with picking the right motor and the right gearing.

Now, if i ever need help in ruining a controller, i know who to contact now.

this is a nice guideline to determine if you are on the right track.

Its quite easy to take a off the shelf vehicle and a proven combination(such as a castle motor/esc combo) and make it work, and find gearing that works.
However, when you build a custom vehicle from scratch, you have nothing to go by. You can ballpark it, and judge weight and get close. But, most of these were smoked before anyone was running brushless, in any ground vehicles. In 1999, you couldnt go on a forum and ask what gearing to run. We had to start somewhere. Chances are most of you guys wouldnt be running brushless had we not spent all the R&D for the various companies. We brought the cheaper Feigao motors to the market. Before that, you couldnt buy a brushless motor below $150. We have been pushing the limits to push the industry further. We are the reason ultramaxxed gears came to be, we did the R&D for them and we gave the specs of what they needed to be.

I agree, try to avoid a thermal at all cost to prevent a failure. But you are giving false information reguardless if you believe it or not.

I dont know you from Joe Schmoe, I dont have a thing in the world against you, or anyone here. I see some good info you give, and some that I know are false...and this one will cost some kid hundreds of dollars if he trusts your theory. So I felt the need to correct it. Sorry to get off track Hippie.

As far as saying I need help gearing....I am sure HiAmplidude,305997,EmaxxJeremy and Promod need the same advice. We have all smoked similar systems at about the same time. We did get an e-maxx to 40,50,60, and 70mph before anyone else though.

I don't think the information was false. You know Hippie too, it's not his first BBQ either. and that was the person i was talking to in this thread, and putting your false information down that if it's overgeared, it will burn.. It's not like that.

His gearing is not completely wrong, or too high.

One thing i want to get straight; if a UBEC fails, it doesn't mean it will start glitching 100 percent sure. (and that's exactly what you say, which is plain rubbish/false information) and obviously, you feel too experienced to take anything from anyone else. And that's exactly my point.

Now back on-topic, because this is something we won't get over anyway, and it's not helping Hippie in what way ever.

My goal is to help others when they have got a problem, and i hope you have got that same intention.

these words passed here before, this forum is not about bragging about what you achieved, or bragging with your knowledge, it's about helping others out.

if you change the frame on a vehicle, i don't call it 'built a custom vehicle from scratch' it's just a conversion, and if you look around here, you will see many, many others have converted an awful lot of vehicles with great success.

The guidelines that Batfish wrote in the FAQ offer great help, as well as the experience of many other users.

I'm getting sick and tired of this 'look at me, look what i did' attitude. Act normal, please..

It was not a conversion. A gmaxx is a conversion. My revo is a conversion. You know I know better than this. When I say custom vehicle from scratch, thats what I mean.

Hippie, give us an update so we can see where we are at.

you said it wont. I know for a fact it will 100%. I didnt say 100% of the time, but I know 100% that it does happen and that was a side effect on my application.

You know what guys?

You are too busy arguing to see that you aren't really that far apart i swhat you are saying.

BP says it's overgearing that smokes a controller...

Serum says it's not gearing, but the current that kills.

Pretty much the same thing... except one is the cause and one is the effect.

Overgearing causes a massive amp increase... so you are both right.

And both wrong in being so absolute about it....

Which is what I tried to say a while ago :) :)

Cant we all just get along :005: .


Okay here i go my first setup was as follows MM controller with 7XL with 14 3800 cells & a 13/46 gear or a ( 3.6) ratio with ubec. & fan. After about 5-6 min of running it would just stop. By the time i got of the drivers stand & got my car back to the pit table & temped the speedo it was 140 & was working again.

Set up #2 was same as above except for the ubec was replaced with a reciver pack. It did the same thing.

My MBX4 buggy that rene owns know used a 7XL on the same cells but had a 12/51 gear or a (4.25) ratio & a warrior 9920 had know issues what so ever.

After talking to leroy & jeremy on the phone i think it's over geared.

Jeremy orderd some century haredned pinions from tower for his crawler. He's going to let me borrow the 11t pinion so i can try it in my buggy to see if it is the gearing causing the issues im having. This pinion will give me a ( 4.1 ratio) which is a lot closer the ( 4.2 ratio) i had in my mbx 4 with the same motor.

That's strange... With that gearing you are looking at about 40mph or so, which I wouldn't think would be enough to cause the MM to thermal. Do you have a fan to try out? I was having the same problem with my MM in my Revo with a 7XL (5s2p A123), and a fan fixed it.

Yes it has a fan, but you guys have to remember im carring almost 2 pounds of batteries :005: .

Rene that video is cool you gave that dog a good work out LOL. Is he or she a jack russel ?.

Keep us posted hippie.

Yeah Hippie, that's a Jack Russel.. these dogs are hyper-active.. In fact, it's one of the few dogs that isn't scared of the car..

One thing i can tell you about that 7XL, is if you use the KV values of wanderer (under load that is) speed will be higher;

I calculated the 7XL on the MBX4 with 14 cells; it should go about 60 or 62 km/h. But it did a 71 km/h. that's quite a difference, something i have yet to experience with another motor.

So would that affect my gearing choice ?.

What happens if you put a 6xl in the calculator rene?
Does that match up better? Could you have a 6xl instead?

I just got back from the track. I dropped the pinion from 46-13 to 46- 11 & it still stopped. So i called castle creations & talked to JOE FORD he was very helpful. He told me to try the following i order #1 when the car stops go to neutural immedaitly then pull the trigger to full throttle if it lurchs foward then stops reapete if it does it again then this means the LVC kicks in. He said even with the LVC turned it will still cut the power at 2.5v. He also said to drop my gear even lower. I dropped it by two teeth already & did'nt notice ant loss in speed. He said it sounds like it still might be overgeard, sinice i did'nt notice any loss in speed when dropping from 46-13 to 46-11. So i guess i'll have to get mike to make a adapter for my mugen diff.

Here ia a update

I got my OFNA gear adapter from mike yesterday & installed it. Went out to test my new gear ratio 11/51 or a 4.6 ratio, to see if it solves my thermeling problem. Well i was running up & down the street & a screw that holds the adapter on backed out & locked up against the diff mount & stripped the spur. So i have a new spur & diff cup on order. So i'll keep you updated.

Thanks for the update! Sorry to hear about the stripped spur. Hopefully once its fixed it will run a full run without thermalling.

Here's another update.

I just ran my mbx5 with 7xl & MM on a 11/51 or 4.6 ratio. I disconected the fan for this test i got about 8 1/2 plus minutes before thermal. I temped the controller it was about 175- 180. I then connected the fan & the temps dropped to 120 in less than a minute. What do you guys think ?. I could go lower on the pinion but i would loose to much speed

I take it you're running 4s? That's a pretty good total gear ratio (15.3:1) considering it's a buggy. Ratios in the range of 9:1 to 11:1 are more common so it's not a gearing issue. It sounds like the 7xl is simply pulling enough average current to heat up the ESC quickly. Can't forget the MM is a 10th scale ESC meant for lighter duty use and smaller motors, so you might just be stuck using a fan or adding more heatsink area.

Brian thank's for your repliy. I purposly did not use a fan for this test to see how long i could get, & i got about 8 1/2 plus minutes. Know i will hook up the fan & see how long i get . I'm running 14 cells. If it's the motor What fiego motor would you suggest ?.

Someone else with experience on using the MM on a heavier truck will have to chime in here, but I think anything under a 9XL will thermal eventually, but that'll probably be too slow. Gearing up to compensate for speed will just take you back where you started temp-wise due to the added load. If you're handy, you can try to fab an added heatsink if you don't want to use a fan. Just my $0.02.

Using a fan is not a problem at all. I just disconected for testing purposes. I have a 9L motor would that better if not what would you suggest motor wise for 14 cells ?.

LOL, the problem with using a smaller motor is that it will be loaded more and still draw the current to heat the ESC. It's really the mass of the truck that's the problem IMO. It takes power to get the truck moving. You'd have more motor options if the ESC handled more than 4s safely. If you don't mind using a fan, I'd stick to what you have and just use the fan and/or more heatsink area.

You might also try to reduce the timing and/or "start power" to the lowest setting. That will ease the burden somewhat and should help temps.

This is a mugen mbx5 buggy not a truck.

Yeah, I knew that. I don't know why I said "truck"; maybe just easier to type...

:005: LOL Im going to try it know with a fan. Is there any other fiego motor you might recomend to use with the MM on 14 cells ?.

How heavy is the "truck" ;)? If 10lbs or less, you might be able to go with an L size motor, but I'd see what the experts say (Squee, MM, CHC, etc). :)

Just as a reference... I have had a MM over 200 without a thermal. I believe they aren't supposed to thermal till the sinks hit about 210-220ish. The internal temps is what counts of course, but 180 or so shouldn't trip it. Mine hits that all the time in my XX4/7700.

Personally, I think an 8XL might be a better option, but it could still possble be an ESC problem. I would stick with an XL for sure. Perhaps you can gear even lower? Try the Century 9T pinion. Let us know how the fan helps!

Squee & glass doctor thank's for the repliy. If i stick with the 7xl i really could'nt go to a 10t pinion because i would loose to much speed. Why would a 8XL be better in your opinion ?. I do plan on using the fan in my next testing session.

The 8XL will pull less amps. Simply as that. So the ESC will heat up less. It's like running a 10L instead of a 9L. Also, it will allow you to gear up as well.

Do you have one you would like to trade foar a 7XL ?.

Unfortunately I don't. I only have a 10XL.

How would that motor do on 14 cells in my setup ?.