andreazinno, I wouldn't cancel any orders just yet. There's got to be a good explanation for why it let go...
I've been going over and over this meltdown in my head (slept like crap last night).
I'm hoping that a talk with tech support and a thorough investigation of the dead XL will pinpoint the issue.

I decided to pull back the remaining plastic end cover, the one where the battery leads go in to have a closer look. Hands still smell bad from last night, yuck.
The fet board it completely separated and only held together by the capacitors :surprised: and it looks like several banks of the fets have exploded, others are fine.
I assume this means that one or more of them were not switching off properly.
The control/BEC board looks untouched on the top, and without disassembling it further I can't see the bottom side of it very well.
There does appear to be a lot more solder on the pad for the positive lead than there is on any of the other pads where the wires attach.
Makes me wounder if maybe the positive lead was able somehow to come into contact with a circuit on the control board due to a bad solder job???

I've got to think it's human error somewhere, a design flaw shouldn't have made it this long.

Any chance something caught between the pinion and spur? I have had that happen and it basically stops the motor dead, while the esc is trying to power the next phase. I have smoked a few escs that way. Just a thought.

Considered that linc, but I was in a swept parking lot (service station) and there's nothing floating around in the buggy. The motor and drivetrain seem just fine with the MMM plugged back in (4S instead of 8, but I've checked both packs).

Sorry to hear man!

Let us know how things work out and especially what the cause was...I think we are all kinda curious!

Well it must have been a fluke failure then. I will say the last MMM that burned up (fets) on me just went, I was not even running the car.

Not that i think Patrick won't take care of you but you were running out of spec.

That motor is only rated for 6s 25.2V...

Arct1k, the motor has a max rpm of 60K... At 25.2v it only spins 45k. Seems that it wouldn't be out of spec at 55k???

I agree. I think the spec of 25.2V on the CC site for the motor is based on its assumed use with the MMM.

Motor RPM stats have generally always been much higher than a motor has been specified to run at (I was going by what castle have on the web site). General rule of thumb used to be 35K rpm for 1/8th scale.

8S on a 1518 is a much higher switching rate than the ESC was intended to run at - You are switching at more than twice its intended switching rate.

It will be interesting to see if that is possible route cause...

WTF??? are you saying the XL's not intended to spin a 4 pole motor past 35k!?!?
I've never heard of anything like that with any of the big Castle ESC's...

:no:

If they state motor spins 60,000RPM max i/we do expect it to spin at that max. rate. Everbody including me are saying Castle Creation stuff is top notch...we expcet it to be so.
Why would CC state something that is not true?


Lets say he can not use warranty on XL esc, what is the repair cost?
MMM V3 is 70$...XL would be?

So nobody knows if Mamba Xl esc comes with bullets?
Or buyers need to buy set of 6,5mm bullets with XL esc?

Buy 6.5s for the XL, it does not come with any connectors. The 6.5s do fit the wires very nicely, and they are soon to start selling 8mm bullets as well.

DrKnow65 - thanks for answer..i will get 6,5 bullets just to connect motor to esc as i am using 6mm bullets on lipos and other RCs.
Keep us updated please, as i will too when i get it.

Really shouldn't be any issue... we routinely run 4 pole motors at greater than 60,000RPM.