Quark Woes --- Need help please
 

Hey gang. The Quarks seem to give me a headache lately.
I built this other tuck for someone, with the good old 5S/Quark 125B/ 9XL setup.
The truck is rather heavy, 11 pounds I think, but the 5S should take care of this.

Now here's the problem: the truck keeps on cutting out after like 10 minutes of running. Believe me, I tried everything I could: different batteries, 2 different Quarks (same result, even though the second one I tried runs fine in my own 5S truck), all the gearings I could squeeze in there... always the same. Cuts out after a couple minutes. The temperatures seem to be fine.... there's the RCM heatsink and 2 fans on the Quark.

Now I have it down to 110 amp peaks (Eagletree), geared for 35mph, and it still cuts out. That sucks.

What could this be??

I need a solution quick, the truck is for a friend.

Thank you
DAF

I had the same problem. My controller went up in smoke and the new one I got doesn't do it.

Daf; the fact that two quarks have got the same problem on the truck, i think you can start to look at the receiver or the BEC. perhaps it's something thermal in the BEC that makes the voltage sweep, causing the esc to act weird, or not at all.

We already tried 2 receivers, 3 different locations.
But the UBEC is a good tip, charging up a RX pack as we speak :)

But perhaps Quark is getting back at you for replacing them with MM's..

LOL that'd be a good one. Maybe I should ask them. :)

Any news Daf?

Is this for a vehicle for Mark?

I bet you the quarks are sooo mad at you they wont even dignify your questions with any answers :005: :005: .

I guess that's the main reason why they where sitting on your shelves, turning their back on you.. and now their ultimate revenge is to play tricks with your mind..

I wouldn't be surprised if they found companion in the UBEC or the receiver, you know what traitors they are..

LOL

Daf, perhaps it is something with the motor? I know this is far fetched, but besides the UBEC and everything else, this is pretty much the only thing left.

I had this issue as well...found out it was my ubec...so i switched to the dimesnion sport one and havn't looked back...also I found out if you have the brake set to hard on the radio...it will cause it to stop...once ou hit brake...then you have to wait a sec and it continues.....adj. the brake on the radio and see how it does

Any chance its the LVC cutting out? The batteries start to heat up and the voltage drops?

When it cuts out does hitting reverese then forward again get it going?

different quarks and different batteries act the same way, so that kind of excludes the LVC i guess.

I thought the voltage will go up a bit when they warm up. That's what I notice with the A123's anyway, I can see Lipo's being the same... faster chemistry kinetics.

But hey, I had the same thing Dafi (as you know), mine was cutting out after a while just before the cap had blown. Do you have more than one Quark?

Can you read his opening post again?

Looks like i have a same problem. i just made a reciever pack and will see when it happens tomorrow on the track i will disconnect UBEC and connect the pack.

Had no chance of trying the RX pack today, it was raining all day long.

The Eagletree said the voltage was okay. (3.5V under 110amp spikes) So I think it's not a LVC thing.

It almost feels like thermal cut-outs, but they run fine in another truck with the same voltage/motor and without fans. Temps on the outside of the ESC never went above 60°C.

I hope it was the UBEC, that would be easy.

Thank you for all the input.

Daf

Wow, this is weird. Just got back from the races and was having similar issues. Except my steering would also momentarily lock up. The steering would come back fairly quick, but the controller took a couple of seconds longer. Temps were perfectly fine on motor, ESC, and lipos. I suspect my BEC or the receiver, but am leaning toward a BEC problem.

brian, your problem sounds like the BEC for sure. The steering comes back as soon as the bec starts back up and the esc takes a few seconds longer to"reboot" before the power comes back.

what ubec where you using brian?

You are using a mm controller IIRC?

He is using the Quark.

When mine was doing this, after a few minutes of running, the truck would just stop, alot of the time when I would go reverse/forward. But I don't remember if I lost steering or not, but I had to switch off the controller, then on again. It was not thermalling, the case was quite cool. This was actually after I saw the capacitor electrolyte on the outside of the controller (collected dust). So I guess one cap was still working, it was weird.

My first 2 would cut out a few minutes into a race on 14 cells. (they stop for a few seconds, then go again, usually slamming on the brakes when they stop)
The first one had a lot of smoke coming out of it after doing this.
The second one did it as well, after every run there was a slight burnt electronics smell coming from it which gradually got worse every time I used it. Ater a couple of weeks this controller also only had about 1/2 power on 12 cells, but full power on 14 cells..it would just cut out though.
While I was trying to get this one replaced S&K told me they had been thermalling and I burnt them out, because I kept driving (it's hard to stop driving in the middle of a race though, even if you think somethings not right). I hadn't really considered that much though, because they never got that hot (I was using the heatsink from rc-monster, 1 40mm fan, and sometimes a 3" computer fan). S&K just said the outside temp will be less than the internal temp, which I already knew and it just made me think more about the Quark's poor heat transfer from inside to case.
At first I thought it might be glitching or the UBEC, but it didn't go away when I upgraded from the stock TQ3 (origional e-maxx radio) to a spektrum and except for when the second one was acting funny, all 3 don't seem to do it on 12 cells, so I'm kind of thinking they were thermalling.
I haven't used the 3rd one (got it back from S&K about 1 1/2 weeks ago) on 14 cells in a race yet, because I'm afraid it'll do it again.

This is in an e-maxx with a 7xl.

Oops, I guess I missed this...

Yeah, ZPB is correct, I was using the Quark. The problem has got to be the BEC though. Remember that ParkBEC I tested? Well, Mike wanted to know how it would do in the Hyper 8. Well, now we know. I had forgotten I put it in there. Seeing as how it is only rated for 1.25A, it makes sense that it overheated under racing loads. I want to do some more testing to see exactly how the BEC reacts when it gets to shutdown temps. Certainly explains my problem!