Mamba Max on 5s
 

What's the possibility of this working well? I was planning on going with a 4 cell for my revo, but I would use a 5 cell if I could use it with the esc. I don't want to buy the 5 cell and then have to buy another esc because the mamba won't like it, ya know?

Its been proven on 5S with a UBEC.

saw one working this weekend on my 5s pack.. theres two...

Sould be receiving mine back from griffinru soon. He did some internal mods and added another cap. These mods appear to increase the cooling ability and smooth out power spikes so that will help the mm cope with higher voltage. I plan on testing it with 4s and 5s in a heavy truck and 5s and 6s in an 1/8 buggy. i have had zero problems with the mm on 4s, just used a fan.

Is it just matter of cooling the thing down cause I can think of a few ways to cool it.

Cooling is very important, the fetss should handle 5s without problems, adding a few more capacitors to the battery input leads where they meet the board will help with voltage spikes. Look for griffinru's thread on mamba max mods, lots of info there on the mm.

It's important to use mechanical breaks with the system if you're going to use 5s on it as well as a UBEC as Squee mentioned.

Well I have no option for mechanical brakes as I'm using an emaxx trans.

What if I were to use a Mamba Max ESC in my Villain EX in brushed mode? Could I run 5s A123 through two brushed motors? My EVX went south a while ago, and I may need an emergency ESC if I have to race somebody. I have a little 5v 2amp voltage regulator that I custom made from Radio Shack parts, so i can use that for BEC power off of the 2s pack. It only has to power a 2055 steering servo.
I have a little 12v fan for my Mamba ESC, though there is not hardly any airflow under the hatch of a boat. I may just wait to get an EVX-2 when I have a chance, as I also need some waterproofing stuff for the boat as well.

Brijar!!!

brijar, send the evx into traxxas and they will fix it reasonalby cheap. I would not buy an evx 2. Buy a novak super duty it is alot better than the exv. Have had both and still use my sd on two titan 12t motors and it will run 11.1v thru them all day long

So even with the fan on my esc and conservative gearing, 5s isn't practical without mechanical brakes?

I ran mine on a 5S Revo w/ motor brakes for months, did eventually meet a demise tho, but was a n00b driver related incident (not me.) You can do it, but its hard on the controller and no 100% guar of success. If you are willing to roll the dice on it then fine, but the power spikes from braking may kill it, then you are out $50 to CC to fix it. Its up to you what to do.

I think just by watching your videos, 4s would be plenty for me.

5S on the Mamba Max is a hit or miss proposition. I have a few that do 5S reasonably well, but my others won't. Those that won't do it, won't even arm when I connect a 5S pack.

With the ones that will do it, I only say that they do it reasonably well, because you can tell that the esc is stressed. This stress manifests itself as cogging. If you see any significant cogging, back off of the gearing.

In my experience, my Quarks and Compros do 5S much better than the MMs do. The Quarks and Compros can handle a lot more gearing and run cooler.

The cost of a MM and a couple of repair trips brings you to about the price of either a Compro or Quark Monster Pro.

All of my MMs have been repaired at least once. The only MMs I'm running now are in an 1/8 scale buggy and my MGT conversion with a 9XL and very mild gearing.

I just tried 14 cells on a MM and it wouldn't turn the motor. The MM had both red and green LEDs lit, instead of just the yellow one. This was over voltage right? When I hook up just 1 7-cell pack the Neu purrs. So for me 5s is out of the question?

Yeah, you must have one of the newer versions. My jato has one of the first MMs and it ran 14 cells once (until the tires blew up).

I hooked up 16 cells to it to bench test it, seemed to work reasonably well, though there was no driving load on it.

This was no load either. Just the motor no pinion.

Mine was the whole truck running, just on a stand.

I have question too.
Is newer MambaMax different from old ones? I mean maybe newer ESC is works better on higher voltages not so hot and etc?
I am plan to buy MambaMax for my 5S setup becouse my 100A plane ESC have realy bad throttle responce, not so good for Race. Allmost impossible control car in air

This is the problem I just ran into. My MM is around 3 years old and can't run 14 cells at 16.8 volts. Isn't a 5s 18.5 volts?

How do you have a 3yo MM when they came out a year ago ? lol.

14 cells will peak at ~20V, 5S 21V.

If they built over volt protection into the new escs I'm going to be really disappointed...

The Mamba Max last year? I bought a MM esc with A 7700kv motor as a set from my lhs almost a year before hurricane Katrina, which makes it 3 years ago.

Edit: The owner told me that one of his former employees works at Castle. Did I get some kind of deal and didn't know it?

If anyone was curious, here is a person who managed to run 6s on the MM. Take a look:
http://www.ultimaterc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=82897

I have 2 generations of MambaMax (different FET's) and so far have not seen any limits.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
But with time capacitors are loosing their properties making ESC more sensitive to voltage spikes.<o:p></o:p>
And knowing that MambaMax capacitors are not rated for bigger motors, makes perfect sense that some ESC more or less sensitive to higher voltage due to the variation in capacitors parameters from batch to batch...<o:p></o:p>

GriffinRu,
Mine is about 3 years old and I have thermalled it 3 times. Would your mod help or I should get a Quark or an MGM?

my MM wont run on 5s whivh is quite annoying as i just brought a 5s pack to use with it :(

You could try replacing the three caps on it. From Griffin's post, it seems like it should help.

cant see how it would help its powering up and arming just not evern trying to turn the motor i think CC must have put some protection on the controllers to stop people runing 5s as my controller is only a couple of months old

Damn I am realy confused now. I dont know what to do :(. I can buy new MM $120 with free shipping but now they are out of stock and seller promised that it will be on stock within week, this means what MM will be new, directly from factory :(. I thought make a MM upgrade to run with new caps and heatsinks and use mechanical brake.

I don't see how its 3 years old. They've only been out for about a year and a half, or slightly less, and the beta testers didn't even get them until the came out to the public...

I feel your pain. I bought two TrakPower 2s1p packs and a UBEC from Mike and now it looks like I don't need the UBEC and could go up in voltage with a different esc.:grrrrrr:

I will get new MambaMax and check it for any voltage monitoring features. It would be sad if CC do such a thing...

You can follow my steps and do the mod yourself as result you will get better heatsinking for ESC and less chance to thermal it.

As far 5S support, I would like to get ESC which hesitate to work right away, maybe there is something else, I've seen many time low voltage cutoff set to wrong value and this will do the blinking.

I set it low and high and even tried it with the LVC disabled. Still no go.

me to also tried downgrading to an older firmware still no go :(

Sean, I had the older version and upgraded to the newer one, neither worked.

Griffin, I am electricly "challenged" but do you think it is the LVC when with 14 cells it would not turn but with 7 cells it did. It seems like if the LVC were set wrong decreasing the voltage by remove cells would 'worsen' the problem?

Maybe my brain is getting fried in my old age. Either that or everything is a blur ,since hurricane Katrina, but you all are right I got it in December of 2006 according to my receipt.:oops:

Woah! That's...umm...a bit off 3 years :tongue:
Have you tried using it with the 2 trackpowers yet? If that doesn't work with a UBEC then something is strange. Fully charged they should be about 3 volts less than fully charged 14 cell nimh, so less likely to trigged some over voltage problem on start up.

Yeah pretty embarrassing.:oops: Don't tell my wife. She will check me in to a "home" somewhere.:gasp:

I tried one 7 cell pack and I hate the cogging. Instead of fighting this I am going to get an MGM controller.... and hopefully no more hassles.


Thanks again for all the help.

From recent conversation with Mike looks like CC implemented something to check for voltage. I will get his ESC later this week and will check what kind of "upgrade" they introduced to their MambaMax ESC and possibility to by-pass it.
Maybe monster MambaMax is ready for release and they just doing some cleaning or...