UBEC Smoking
 

Why is my UBEC smoking? I am replacing one (that had the same problem). I removed the blk jumper on my 12120, so that is not the problem. Ran w/ reciever pack and it seems fine.

I checked my wires and they seem fine..Plz help...

Maybe faulty ubec? Has it been through any hard damage? You should get a free replacement since it has a 1 year warranty on manufactering defects. Did you say its your second smoked ubec?

Yes, I smoked one last week. I think that it has something to do w/ my truck. My throttle starts to act erratically and the UBEC gets hot and starts to melt the white shrink wrap.

I also noticed that the 2 caps (silver ends) on the positive side of my 12120 are not flat, they are pushed out slightly.

EEK! You popped 2 caps on your 12020 than! That results in a hot ubec. You gotta send that thing to mike so he can replace it.

What would cause the caps to pop? The controller never got hotter than 125.

Well, either the caps were overheated or bad from the start, any water go on them?

Caps also expand from a voltage higher than its rating. They can also expand with reverse polarity, but they usually full pop from that.

I would think that the smoke is from the UBEC grounding out which could also cause the caps to pop or swell. Is it on a aluminum chassis?

Yes it sits on an al. chassis, but I have plenty of pading and I know that it is not touching.

I had a ubec do the same thing. Do you have a switch in it?

No switch. What was your solution?

Well, the reason i asked is because when i wired my switch in the last time, i think i had a bad connection after that. I cured everything by replacing the switch, ubec, and redid my connections all over. And now i can go far away and it's smooth runnin. But i took my time on everything and double, then triple checked everything again! Yanked and pulled and inspected each solder joint. I would say some thing with yours is wired wrong, or bad connection somewhere. UBEC are finiky it seems. Oh, and i took it off my chassis all together! I mounted it on the side of my receiver box.

Try to make sure your batteries are not touching the chassis. I did that and smoked ubec and the caps on the esc.

The batts are not touching and all of my wires are double insulated so it won't touch accidentally.

Today I ran through a pack of batts using a reciever pack and everything worked fine. Maybe it was my soldering, who knows.....but I did get 25-30 runs w/ the first ubec that fried. The second ubec fried within the first 5 minutes of the run.