This Mamba Max didn't like me
 

I got my 3rd MM about two weeks on (it was a Friday). On the following Saturday I put about 5mins. on it in my Hyper 8 with:
-Feigao 8XL
-Maxamps 4s 5000mah Lipo battery
-18/46 gearing
-receiver battery pack, BEC disabled
-fan
-Proline Road Rages, it was driven on the street

On the next day, Sunday, I put another 5mins. with a puff of smoke ending the run. I hadn't been doing anything out of the ordinary, and there was a fan over the MM. Funny thing is, I'm currently running an older MM (my 2nd one, from maybe 4 months ago), and even without a fan it seems to be doing fine (with constantly pegging the throttle, and then pegging the brake).

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...e/IMG_5607.jpg

Oooh, toasty. You gotta keep the smoke inside the FETs! Smoke is what makes them run, and if you let it out, they don't run so well. :)

Since I imagine you're going to call Castle, do you think they are going to ask how you managed to burn it like that?

Its funny...it seems the Mamba Max is failing in the more mild of the "overclock" situations. I've heard of more MM's failing on 4S than on 5S or 6S...

MM, that's wild. I'm surprised that you were able to run the 18/46 gearing. We ran 16/46 in an 8ight buggy with a MM and 8XL and it kept stripping gears when on the track. It turned out that the system was cogging so badly that it would tear teeth right off of the spur. Had to go to 14/46 to stop the cogging.

I don't know what's going on with the Mamba Max lately. The very first two that i bought are doing OK on 4S. The three newer ones are with Castle right now. The very last one that quit working, just stopped. No smoke, no nothing.

I hope the restructuring they did last year didn't mess with quality, I got the two that didn't program right to send in and get repaired or replaced

Don't remind me about that darn smoke...
I gotta call Joe for some other business, and I'll also ask him about my two Mamba Max ESCs. Hopefully the newer one will be replaced for free since it had such little time on it.

The number of people using 4s vs. 5s is much greater.

The MM handles the 18/46 gearing very well (had a nice long run last night without a fan). Cogging is very minimal, and low speed driving is very possible... and I'm even using the 4mm plugs! Perhaps the 8ight has a different diff ratio than the Hyper 8?

Yeah, the cogging wasn't always a problem, but when you're running on a track, you can't always see or hear that it's cogging and for some reason, we kept tearing up gears because the motor was jumping from reverse to forward so violently. I've only seen this on two MM controller, but it happened none the less.

I'm not having much luck with the MMs lately. I guess I'm either pushing them too hard or just plain expecting too much out of them.