Mamba XL ver2?

[Shonen]

I will be keeping an eye on this, I'm interested in what the weak point of the XLv1 is. Mine is still fine, but it's not nearly as loaded as the Baja conversion guys' XL's are.

[DrKnow65]

I'd like to hear from Castle about the "Crash voided warranty" statement one of the guys put up over on the root thread.

I just can't see that being the case?

Originally Posted by DrKnow65

I'd like to hear from Castle about the "Crash voided warranty" statement one of the guys put up over on the root thread.

I just can't see that being the case?

Well my XL died after a crash, and they sent me a repaired/replaced unit free of charge...

edit: And I even stated in the repair form it was due to a crash so they were well aware.

[padrino]

Not sure what the percentage is for actual failures since they've sent out hundreds of combos by now. In my case no failure yet and built in BEC is holding up great. My only problems so far were getting my aftermarket chassis and conversion kit mated but a drill bit, dremel, left over GBE engine mount took care of things.

Now watch me post in a few days with a failure :)

[Bmr4life]

Originally Posted by DrKnow65

Has anyone other than me actually had an XL ignite?

How did you blow yours up?

[BrianG]

Originally Posted by Bmr4life

How did you blow yours up?

He just let the smoke out too fast. The speed of the smoke escaping caused too much friction, which then caused the fire. All you need to do is regulate the speed of the smoke and there won't be a fire.

[lincpimp]

Originally Posted by BrianG

He just let the smoke out too fast. The speed of the smoke escaping caused too much friction, which then caused the fire. All you need to do is regulate the speed of the smoke and there won't be a fire.

Not to look down on you Brian, but i thik you have an oversimplified view of the "smoke"...

I have the personal belief that the black wire that returns the "electronpowerenergy (EPE)" (sorry for the technical term) is the root cause of most electrical failure. I am not alone here, as I am part of a highly advanced secret society whose members adhere to a stict code of silence. I just cannot help but say what follows as i think it is time.

If you go back to basic physics you will see that red items always go faster or perform better, ie all race cars are red, important items are red (caution signs, stop signs, stop lights, etc), women with red hair are much scarier than brunettes and the list goes on.

So the positive wire coming from the battery is always red, so the EPE can flow out best. But when it comes to braking the esc attempts to put the EPE back into the battery and is forced to do this thru a black wire. Since we know that red wire transmits the EPE fastest, it is only common sense that the black wire cannot keep up. So you end up with a backup of EPE and we all know what happens then. The EPE builds up a mass of power that must be disapated. So it undergoes a phase transformation to black smoke (stay with me, as this is getting rather technical). And since you cannot have 2 black items in the same space at the same time (law of conservation of matter) the smoke will transfer itself into an alternate universe for a microsecond and then reappear back in our universe on the outside of the black wire, usually blackeneing the area around it.

Possible cures for this? Well I do not have to tell you that more money is spent trying to keep EPE in than is spent curing cancer and maintaining Donald Trump's hair combined. I do think that the KISS princle should be applied here (rock and roll all night) and after we get over the hangovers and get tested for STDs we should change the color of the black wire to red. Now I know that it cannot be the exact shade of red as the positive, as the EPE would not know which wire to exit, and that may cause a time/space ripple that could have effects stretching across the cosmos. I for one do not want to go down in history as causing the sun to implode. And neither should you, no matter how much you want to trump Nixon for bad ideas.

So we must carefully balance the shade of red on the negative wire. Some setups may require a pink wire, others maroon. We need an impartial 3rd party to do this, and I nominate the free masons. They are generally old men, and while they cannot move fast they often have canes and those could be used to beat offenders. If we allow them to police this I feel the situation of smoking electronics could be completely avoided. Now we would need someone to watch over the masons, as the balance of power could shift to them, and we really do not need that to happen. Bricks would be everywhere and they would likely take over the concrete industry and build all kinds of useless stuff like mailbox surrounds and curbs.

Thoughts?

[brian015]

I like your proposed solution to the excess EPE buildup and am glad it doesn't involve pushing some stupid button every 108 minutes.

[snellemin]

I would omit the Mason and red shade all together and go with a intercooled black wire. Or crossdrilling of the wires can control the flow of smoke being released.

[lincpimp]

Originally Posted by brian015

I like your proposed solution to the excess EPE buildup and am glad it doesn't involve pushing some stupid button every 108 minutes.

We as a group spent considerable time trying to get around all of the button pushing.

Originally Posted by snellemin

I would omit the Mason and red shade all together and go with a intercooled black wire. Or crossdrilling of the wires can control the flow of smoke being released.

I agree that some measure of crossdrilling would help in the event of a failure. But the wire intercooling would be another failure point, and I really do not want to overload the masons, as they do need naps in the afternoon.

[snellemin]

How about covering the crossdrilled wires with bacon? In effect you get smoked crispy bacon upon a failure and will keep the Mason's happy.

[BrianG]

See, now you guys are overthinking the smoke thing. I'm telling you, it's the friction from the smoke that causes problems. The correct answer is usually the simple one.

By the way, red items don't go any faster, they just appear that way because the color grabs your attention. It's all about perspective.

What DOES make things go faster is a flame graphic (sticker/decal/paint). That has been proven a number of times in controlled, repeatable tests. The reason behind this is a little more complex though. What happens is the various colors of the flame graphic cause thermal variances just above it which positively interact with the airflow from the object in motion. This redirects turbulence in a controlled manner to provide the least amount of air resistance when traveling at high speed. Of course, this only works on a planet with a yellow sun and when it is at an ideal angle at noon in a narrow temperature range, so changes to the flame orientation, color gradients, and flame tongue curvature must be made for maximum efficiency depending on geographical location, temperature, and time of day. Fortunately, the design of the common flame graphics are such that they work well in a variety of locations; you just don't get the maximum benefit as you would with a specifically tuned graphc. In the R/C world, our vehicles are scaled down by X amount, which means the variances in flame efficiency are X order of magnitude less (efficiency variances scales down by model scale), so even a "generic" flame graphic has almost the same performance as a perfectly tuned one. Incidentally. this is why R/C vehicles can have pretty much any flame kind/size/color/geometry and they all drastically improve performance almost equally; even more so the smaller the vehicle. Don't try that on a real 1:1 car though and expect good results; stick to a properly designed flame graphic when at larger scales!

[lincpimp]

Originally Posted by snellemin

How about covering the crossdrilled wires with bacon? In effect you get smoked crispy bacon upon a failure and will keep the Mason's happy.

True, masons love bacon.

Originally Posted by BrianG

See, now you guys are overthinking the smoke thing. I'm telling you, it's the friction from the smoke that causes problems. The correct answer is usually the simple one.

By the way, red items don't go any faster, they just appear that way because the color grabs your attention. It's all about perspective.

What DOES make things go faster is a flame graphic (sticker/decal/paint). That has been proven a number of times in controlled, repeatable tests. The reason behind this is a little more complex though. What happens is the various colors of the flame graphic cause thermal variances just above it which positively interact with the airflow from the object in motion. This redirects turbulence in a controlled manner to provide the least amount of air resistance when traveling at high speed. Of course, this only works on a planet with a yellow sun and when it is at an ideal angle at noon in a narrow temperature range, so changes to the flame orientation, color gradients, and flame tongue curvature must be made for maximum efficiency depending on geographical location, temperature, and time of day. Fortunately, the design of the common flame graphics are such that they work well in a variety of locations; you just don't get the maximum benefit as you would with a specifically tuned graphc. In the R/C world, our vehicles are scaled down by X amount, which means the variances in flame efficiency are X order of magnitude less (efficiency variances scales down by model scale), so even a "generic" flame graphic has almost the same performance as a perfectly tuned one. Incidentally. this is why R/C vehicles can have pretty much any flame kind/size/color/geometry and they all drastically improve performance almost equally; even more so the smaller the vehicle. Don't try that on a real 1:1 car though and expect good results; stick to a properly designed flame graphic when at larger scales!

Red items go faster. Why are all ferrari's painted red? Enzo knew back then, and he did not have any computer to tell him.

Now your flame decal theory is interesting. Do you think we could apply flame decals to the black wires in order to balance out the EPE flow? Any help will better than none, and flame decals would be easier to retrofit. Alot easier to tell the power companies that they do not need to replace 10s of thousands of miles of black wire. And any idiot can stick a sticker on.

[DrKnow65]

Originally Posted by Bmr4life

How did you blow yours up?

My first XL went up in flames for no appearent reason. No crash, no motor failure, no overheated, no reason. Castle called it a manufacturing defect and promptly replaced it.

I believe I had one of the very first few retail XL's and mine lasted about a week. I have had the replacement up and running for ~2 months now without issue :-)

[BrianG]

Originally Posted by lincpimp

Red items go faster. Why are all ferrari's painted red? Enzo knew back then, and he did not have any computer to tell him.

Now your flame decal theory is interesting. Do you think we could apply flame decals to the black wires in order to balance out the EPE flow? Any help will better than none, and flame decals would be easier to retrofit. Alot easier to tell the power companies that they do not need to replace 10s of thousands of miles of black wire. And any idiot can stick a sticker on.

Red items don't go faster. Like I said, they just appear to because they are brighter and catch your attention easier. Paint one brick red and another black, throw both of them with equal power and see which one is faster. Ferrari paints their cars red because people don't know better and they are just cashing in on the ignorance.

Flame graphics only work on surfaces exposed to the outside. Inside the vehicle, they make no difference. You need proof? Repeat the brick throwing test outlined above, except replace the bricks with a certain flame-labeled lipo pack and a "regular" non-flame pack. Make sure both weigh the same.