If the motor got blistering hot it sounds like you may have demagged your rotor.

http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l9...g/IMG_2523.jpg

Best I can do with this lense

Anyway to tell for sure?

Hard to say if there are cold solder from that picture. Either that or a failure on the rotor.. IMO

I know from experience that a blown motor will get VERY hot. I tried a CD in my Revo and it unloaded so much that the motor (10XL) spun relatively unloaded. Well, that's bad and it got very hot. Next time I ran it, it had a lot less power but got blisteringly hot. Mine never cogged though. Someone else used the rotor for a 7XL motor and it ran fine, so the rotor was fine. The coils just somewhat burned up. So I wonder if the problem is not the rotor, but one of the coils?

As others have said, it could be a cold solder joint, or just a toasted motor. I would try resoldering. Hopefully it's just that...

Does it all work fine when you take the pinion off so theres no load on the motor?

Yes bensf, actually it does.

thats really strange. same thing happened to my reedy 3 star in my tc3 last week and it would work fine if i pushed it (as if it was geared WAY high) then it was fine. motor was hotter than usual but the esc was quite hot... then i plugged it in again and it blew the caps and fets... grr... anyways castle wouldnt replace it under warranty (dodgy) anyway thats life.

If you have had the motor out lately, maybe the mounting screws are hitting a coil and grounding out a phase... had it happen to my 8XL. Try shorter screws.