Hey Jordan.
There are a few things i can suggest.
1. I had all of these problems. To get the flasher program to connect with the controller start the flasher program. plug in the usbcom, turn on radio and plug usb into MGM, hit search on flasher program and than turn on the MGM. if it comes up with an error all you need to do is unplug the usbcom from the usb drive on the PC and than plug it back in and hit search again. Once it has found it hit download and than update following the prompts. But remember it is important to turn on the MGM ESC at the right time. Also the usbcom has to be unplugged and plugged back in every time you do a new search. You could also try updating the firmware on the usbcom itself. Do you have the flasher set to update device through USB??
As for your programing your radio there are a few things you can try. 1st the motor beeps on the NEU i found very very weak you really have to listen. I would say that you need to have the radio channel in reverse, i know you said you tried it but try it again, also try setting it up through the controller software first and than pairing up your transmitter. Also when in "controller" try playing with the neutral range i have to set mine around 12% or it wont work. Make sure that your servo cable from the ESC is plugged into the receiver, that had me going for about 30 mins once before i clicked. You could try running another receiver and a hump pack, I am running a castle bec and it works fine. I dont know about the DX3R but on the 3PK you can adjust the radio neutral point make sure that is where it is supposed to be and also that the radio is NOT in 70/30, it needs to be in 50/50.

Thats all i can think of off the top of my head without being in front of it to see what it is doing for myself. If all that fails try to contact Martin Dvorsky at MGM-Compro. He is really nice and very knowledgeable. i had a whole list of problems with one of my 28025-3. I got one of the very first ones made from MGM direct. I am watching this thread often so i will be looking for you reply to see how you went, or you can PM me. By the way i think i read somewhere that you are in Australia if so where abouts i am in WA

Thanks for the tips SV6000, i'll give them a shot tonight when i get home, hopefully everything goes alright and I'll post an update ASAP. Im in WA also, do you race or just mainly bash? You might be able to tell from this setup, im not much of a racer myself

I do both i have a STRR that runs a plettenburg Maxximum and 28025 as well. But i dont get a chance to race very often. Let me know how you go

UPDATE: D-Day=24/11/08
 

Hey everyone,

Well, thanks to the help of SV6000, i've got the controller programmed and working. I just finished installing everything onto the car and had it up and running on a stand. The power definately seems to be there, i only got it up to about 1/2 throttle but it was bordering on scary :lol: There was no tyre ballooning either, thanks to three layers of duct tape i put in before the tyres were glued.

Can't wait to get this thing running tomorrow. I'll try get some vids up as well, but learning how to use my video camera will be another project in itself :mdr:

Oh, and im going to be checking temps and things pretty regularly tomorrow, can anyone please tell me what 'good' temps for everything to be running at are ie. batts, ESC and motor. I would try a search but i have to leave for dinner in 5 minutes and i havent been doing anything except fiddling with the truck since i got home from work

thanks again SV6000 (life saver) :wink:
jordan

P.S anyone wanna buy a NIB MMM V3?

Can't wait to see the video Jordan.

Tape??
 

With all of that tape in the tires did you balance them:neutral:??? If not you will be surprized just how much vibration they can let out, which will affect your vehicles performance. Good luck with the initial testing Jordan. Glad to hear that your worked out the kinks on the MGM. I will be doing that soon myself:eyes:.

LOL, i had no idea about balancing them when i did it, but believe me after running up in the air i could see what was happening and how important balancing is, hopefully it doesn't make too much of a difference. Hope you have some good luck with your MGM as well, not to hard when you get everything in the exact right sequence :wink:

:yes: :yes: :yes: You did it!!!!!!! I am stoked for the vid!!!!!! :great: :great: :great:

Hey guys,

Well, i have got a video for you guys as promised, but i dunno, im a bit dissapointed. The ESC got pretty hot, so i stopped once it reached 170F-180F. The batts were 80F-90F and the motor was 110F. The pinion also came loose the first time i took it out, so that had to be fixed.

As for the truck, it handled awesome, the racerX was worth every penny, it would spin on the spot if i started to fishtail it, but not roll going at full pace. Heres the dissapointing part, it was SLOOWW, as you might be able to tell from the vid. I doubt it was going over 35mph flat out. I'm not too sure why this is though, i am assuming something is wrong with the gearing. But a hot ESC = overgeared, which means it should be too fast right :neutral:

Also it would not pull wheelies, but keep all four wheels planted when i took off, not to sure if thats the centre diff and setbacks working, or my gearing though.

Anyway heres the vid, dad was filming this one, and my head gets in the way a couple of times :lol::

http://i212.photobucket.com/albums/c...h_MOV01290.jpg

Any ideas to why it is slow and the ESC is overheating? Also, the motor/ESC connections seem to be pretty weak, sometimes id have to wiggle them around to get the truck to stop cogging, would that affect the speed? I would love to hear your feedback and suggestions :wink:

jordan

Funny Vid.
 

Ha Ha Ha I thought this was a Godzilla moive when I saw that big head come into the picture. :lol::rofl::lol::rofl: Just yanking your chain Jordan. Yes any kind of lose connections will create heat issues somewhere. Did you check for heat at the lose connections? It also may depend on your setup of the ESC as well if you have something set too soft or too hard. It looked as if it was running fairly well for the most part. Sometimes gearing the vehicle too low will also give you overheating issues. How about some close up pics of the truck now that it is finished. Nice to see you finally having some fun with all of your hard work.:yipi:

Ask and you shall recieve!!! I took these pics when i just got back from the run. Also, im thinking about asking Mike to CNC me CF or Alu motor mount so i can change between pinions easier.

http://i212.photobucket.com/albums/c...x/DSC00103.jpg

http://i212.photobucket.com/albums/c...x/DSC00104.jpg

Thanks for the comments as well Jerry, it was good to finally see it running and not break anything!!

P.S you can see i heatshrinked the piggybacks as well in case one of them decided to blow out, i wouldn't lose the cap, just some extra insurance

Nice.
 

It looks like a nice clean setup Jordan. How much does that thing weigh with everything onboard? Those batts must be pretty heavy considering the size of them? What are those 8000 mah's? And what voltage are you pushing through your ESC? So how do you like running the center diff as apposed to using a tranny? I will probably setup my SuperMaxx with a center diff once I get a big motor for it. I have a couple Torsend diffs and I was thinking about trying one of them as a center diff to see how it works in that position.

Roughly 14lbs all up. The batts are 5000mah a piece, running in parallel. So pretty much have a 5s 10,000mah pack in there. To be honest i have never run a brushless truck until today, so comparing to the old e-maxx tranny with the titans, i like it. When you take faster corners and the inside wheel starts to lift it seems to settle it down a bit more.

What center diff are you planning to use on the lightning? I've heard torsens are weaker than spyders so i would be careful running one with a 'Bolido', come to think of it, id be careful running anything with a 'Bolido', dont forget to wear safety glasses in case parts of the spur gear ping off into your eyes :lol:

Hey mate glad to see that everything worked out. A bad connection will cause heat to build up as it greatly increases the resistance. You will need to solder that connection again. In my race truck i directly soldered the motor to the ESC. When i first ran mine with that ESC i thought it was slow as well. It wouldnt wheelie either. It turned out that the batteries were a bit low. Sometimes the need to be ran and charged a few times before they will accept a full charge and discharge. Because of this i am switching to all flightpower packs. I run a flightpower pack in my truggy and it is quick. Even with low gearing, especially down the straight. You could also check the timing setting and frequency settings on the controller. Another thing i noticed is that you do not run any fans. My race truck speedy i ordered with active fan cooling (bigger heatsinks and a 30x30x12 fan each side) On my G3R i copied your speedy mount and bought two fans to mount on it. I had to cut a hole in a piece of aluminium to mount the bottom fan to it. Or you could run your setup on 6s. Another thing you could do is install a "black box" (available from rc-monster.com and is made by MGM just for the Zseries controllers). they are a really good tool for monitoring and recording things like temps, amp, voltage and servo position.That way you can see if the heat issue is due to a large Amp draw or another issue. But considering the size of the motor you are running...
4500(watts)/14.8V= 304.05A 4500/18.5=243.2A 4500/22.2=202. I think that is how you work it out. so as you can see 6s could be a good thing if you can drop down the size of your pinion, 2200x22.2=48840

Yep, thanks again for your help, seems to be all good now, except these temps. I'm going to solder the motor wires to the ESC tomorrow to eliminate the connections as the problem, i really dont want to have to cut another motor mount :eyes: Any tips to doing this? Do i just hold the wires together and solder them or should i wrap them together somehow?

What timing and PWM frequency settings do you run? at the moment my motor timing is set to auto and have the 8kHz frequency set. As for the fans, when i do run with the body, the ESC only clears by milimeters, so fans would have made mounting even harder.

Good to hear about the batteries, it was the first full charge i had put through them, so ill try get a couple more this week and see if them come to life

Your truggy is supposed to be fast. Is anything binding on the drive train? My BPP with the 1521/1Y had an issue like this and it was my fault as I forgot to shim the diff. The ESC (Schulze 40.160) got hot which is kind of unheard of. As for the fan, you can mount your ESC so the heat sink is not facing down and that way it'll allow you to mount the fans.

I have a question- what pinion are you running with the 42t? spur gear- I think I saw an 11t item back along?

Running the numbers through the calculator, it says:

Something isnt right. At a guess I would say either some esc setting sneed severe tweakage, or the motor is just too huge and cant spool up or something. Do you have a smaller 1515 or XL sized motor you can try with 1600-2300kv?

His truck should've been flying. Do you have the timing set right? Do you have the ESC set for race mode (I think that's one of the setting, it's been a while lol)?

I'll check for binding, but all the diffs and things were shimmed pretty well before i started. I'll check again though, it should just roll freely when i push it along right?

I'm running a 16t pinion, on the calculator has an adjusted speed of 75mph. Unfortunately this is the only BL motor i have, im going to bring the laptop out with me today hopefully (if the weather stays good) and tweak some things and see how that affects the performance.

For the timing setting, i've just got it on auto. Im not to sure what the 10*, 20* etc. would do so i just left it for the first run. What timing do you guys normally run? There is an option for race mode, but that means you cannot use the LVC feature, so i didnt want to risk my lipos. I'll check the timing and frequency and things like that today.

I was thinkning last night, cool motor and hot ESC = overgeared right? But if it is normal motor and hot ESC, does that mean the problem lies somewhere else? Im going to solder the ESC and motor together today to get rid of some dodgy connections i have there and see how that goes.

cheers for the help guys, i'll keep you posted on the testing.
jordan

That is definatley not the right gearing to be running on grass and you definetaly 100% sure overloaded the ESC. That type of gearing is supposed to be used for speed runs on asphalt. Change your gearing. I use a 17T pinion in my BPP mainly because it has a huge 65T spur and I'm geared for 34mph, but with tire ballooning it went 46mph radar confirmed. This is why I asked you if you had any plans on making a single motor mount so you could adjust to make a smaller pinion fit.

Ahh i see, I'm thinking about how to make one, hopefully i can find a friend who has access to a CNC machine :whistle: Even with overloading the ESC, shouldn't it still have been fast? Im going to try and tweak some things here and there. How does the motor timing work? I have it auto at the moment but im not sure what changes will do?

Not on grass. You're luccky none of the FETs blew due to the high stress you put on them. You have to find a way to use at least a 51T spur with a 11T pinion to run on 5S or you have to use 3S lipos. Auto timing is fine or 0 degrees as you have the D wound Neu motors. One thing good about the MGM is that the ESC slows down when too much load is put on the ESC. So you were probably running on less then 50% power.

Ahh ok, lucky then, ill look into another motor mount. Good to know theres still some speed left in it

You should've been flying, but on grass your ESC just went into reduced power mode.

Starting to make sense... :lol:

It did slow down even more just before i decided to stop, i thoguht it might have been the batteries, but it must have been the ESC. Starting to make sense... :lol: .........:rofl:

:na:

not good...
 

I just pulled the motor and esc off the truck and found i have melted the bottom heatshrink on the ESC, can i just unscrew the heatsinks and re shrink wrap it?

http://i212.photobucket.com/albums/c...x/DSC00107.jpg

http://i212.photobucket.com/albums/c...x/DSC00108.jpg

http://i212.photobucket.com/albums/c...x/DSC00109.jpg

Also, when i pulled the heatshrink off of the gold connectors, i found one of the motor wires had become detached and was only being held in place by the heatshrink. Looks pretty toasty in the connector. Could this have caused the overheating, or is it definately the gearing?

http://i212.photobucket.com/albums/c...x/DSC00106.jpg

any help would be good, i think this is definately operator error though :oops:

Which solder did you use for the bullets? You can just re-shrink the MGM. Make sure to hold the lighter as far away as possible so you don't fry the internals. Why not retrofit your motormount to be adjustable? Why would you (in your right mind) gear so high?

Not sure what solder exactly, i just bought it from the electronics place. Its 99.3% tin and .7% copper if that helps :neutral:. Good to know about the mgm, i'll make sure to do that. With the gearing, i had no idea where to start because AFAIK there are no others trucks with the same ratios as this, so i just picked 16t, i didnt think id be THAT far off the mark :gasp:

I think i might try fit a 50t spur on, to get this gearing thing sorted, i might have to notch the frame rails though. I'm still not sure... I could mod my motor mount to accept a 14t pinion, but i dunno if that will be a big enough drop.

Learning Curve.
 

It's called a learning curve RVO. Anyway Jordan that lose connection probably caused most of your overheating problems, but you still want to start out easy with the gearing up front to see how it handles first. Then as you see the data (IE: temps, speed, & operation) you can gear up until you reach a happy medium. I do hope that you did not do any damage to the ESC.

Just clean out that plug and resolder it correctly and you should be fine with that. I would look real closely at the other connections as well. Then work on getting your gearing correct according the the recommendations from Lutach.

You can do this:
(You have a 42t spur right??)
http://scriptasylum.com/rc_speed/_gear_calc.html
Using the bottom calc with 42/16 gearing it says 31mm shaft spacing. Without changing your motor mount, you can gear 48/10 with 31mm spacing, leaving your motor mount the same, bringing you to a easier 50mph... (probably closer to 45 when all factors are considered)
Here is a 10t pinion and some 48t spurs, not sure which config you need:
http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...?&I=LXUPN2&P=7
http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...?&I=LXLMT7&P=7
http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...?&I=LXVHB7&P=7

That is genius!!! I would've never thought of that. Thanks BL_RVO, i'll get right to it :yipi: I might also try out 46/12

Hey Jordan the center diff in my G3R is a 48t Kyosho item. it fits perfectly.

No problem, always willing to help. 46/12 is too high... :lol:

hmm.. ok, ill grab one of them, what pinion size are you using? Oh, and do you have any pics of your setup? Would like to see how your CD setup is layed out.

I hope you're joking :lol: and another thing, when taking the heatsinks off of the MGM, is there some kind of paste under them that i would have to put back on when i re-attach the heatsinks? It looks as if there is some kind of glue or something under there, im assuming it just helps with the heat transfer?

Yes
 

Yes Jordan it is thermal paste used in most PC applications for putting a heatsink on the processor. You can get it at most PC stores, or order it on line at TigerDirect.com.

Sorry Jerry, i didn't see this post earlier great advice. I'm going to go with the recommendations of Lutach an BL_RVO and gear it for around 50mph. I don't think i did any damage to the controller, all the components look ok, i did stop straight away when i saw it at 180F

Hey Jordan there is a picture here is a picture of my setup, i got i second hand off a guy on the traxxas forum, but it is the same as i have now. The only difference is that i am running a NEU 1515 1Y/F instead of the Lehner and i mounted my speedy on top of everything with an aluminium plate, sort of like what you did. I will post photos of my exact setup next week when i get back from work http://monster.traxxas.com/showthread.php?t=434613