problem but dunno?!

For my mate, you drives a slsh, novak havoc 8.5 & turnigy 5ah 20C 2S lipo. Now, the first time this happened. We were bashing up the road from my place, & his car started to feel like it was cogging. So we took the bodyshell off to see if anything was wrong, couldnt find anything, then drove it again. A few minutes after. The truck came to a complete stop, & caught on fire. At first i thought it was the lipo, so i started bolting it, but it was the esc that actually went up in flames.

So we both thought, yeah its probably the esc, well couldnt really use it anymore anyway, so i thought id be a good mate & let him use my sidewinder 4600 combo. Fitted it for hime, & soldered the deans plug that was on the havoc esc, onto the sidewinder cause i use TRX plugs. I wasnt with him at the time, but when he ran it, he said it started to cog like what the havoc esc did, & unplugged it straight away. So im thinking maybe its the plugs. But they seemed fine. So i resoldered them & checked them out, but they looked good.

So then we used his old XBR 8.5 combo from his drift car, & i chucked that in his slash for him. With a totally different deans plug. At first when we tried firing it up, it would calibrate to the radio properly, so then that got me thinking maybe its the radios throttle or something to do with the reciever or sumfin. tried a different rx, same thing. So the other day, he bought a new 2.4ghz radio, tonight we decided to fit it into the slash. Remember, the XBR hadnt been used in the slash yet, so when we went to fire it up, because we were going to adjust the radio's trims & settings, it started up, then i heard the throttle, then all of a sudden, low & behold the esc starts bloody smoking again.



This is the result. Nowhere else on or in the esc was affected, just the motor wires. When the same thing happened to the havoc esc though, it was the power wires that melted off, not the motor wires. I really hope this esc can be saved, that is just a resolder of the motor wires. We live in australia & by everything in usa cause its cheaper, & we have our last race meeting coming up this sunday.

So now im thinking its the batteries, something to do with resistance or something similar to that. But the thing is, its done it with both his turnigy lipos, not just the one. I have a balancer & some new plugs coming tomorrow, so i will change his plugs over to TRX, balance his packs, & fix that esc to see if the plugs are the problem, or even the lipos.

However, im thinking if its the lipos playing up, wouldnt they be puffing or something like that? They read fine on the charger, as in voltages & capacity, so this problem has got me stumped....

[BrianG]

So, two totally different systems, even motors? A radio wouldn't cause that since it sends low power signals to the ESC. At most, a faulty radio would simply not work, or send the wrong signal.

I assume you checked the usual things: How do you have the gearing? Is there any driveline binding?

The batteries could be at fault, but may be hard to tell unless you get an Eagletree in there.

Yeah, thats the thing though, i dont have or have access to an eagletree. gearing is stock, no driveline binding at all. I do however, have access to a multimeter.

Im hoping its not his batts, there his only lipos. I will chuck them on the balancer today when i get the chance & see if that helps. it cant be both his lipos though, i have only 1 turnigy 5ah & its been great...