Smoke, no fire (yet)

Hey...I'm in a lousy mood. I rec'd my 4mm and 3.5mm plugs today to hook my Mamba up to my E-Truggy. I wired it all up, everything went well. Plugged it all in and there was a steady trail of smoke coming from the Mamba. Oddly it did seem to work, I did all this on the bench, no wheels on the truck, just a dry run. The motor was unusually hot for just spinning there for a few seconds at a clip. I tried two different motors, one I had been running and one new one. Same thing. I eventually stopped and pulled the ESC out as the smoke and smell grew. At first I was telling myself it was the flux I had used to wire my UBEC but I know how that smells when it burns off, this was not that smell.

I'm only using 4s and to be honest, they are only half charged (15.5v was the reading on my Nomadio) - I don't get it. I'm hesitant to actually give it a try, it just seemed all wrong. There were even a few very odd revs of the motor. Seemed wrong, like the system was having trouble "talking" with the motor.

The Mamba I used was nearly new, I rec'd it after participating in the beta for the system. I installed it into my XXX-4 and ran it only two race days (maybe 8 packs or so). It worked fine in the XXX-4, no smoke or odd behaviour.

Confused and a bit frustrated...

DM