smoked another...not sure why.

[DwightSchrute]

i plugged in a 6S to my monster mamba, turned it on, everything was fine, except the chime sounded a little distorted. i unplugged it, plugged it in again, it chimed this time correctly, i pulled the trigger, and it smoked.

not alot of smoke, just a little. but now my 6S pack isn't registering any power from the battery leads. the balancer plug says the cells are fine, but no power from the battery plugs.

any ideas as to what happend? i'm kinda frustrated.

[BrianG]

What kind of battery is it? If it's a Turnigy, there could be a blown trace on the PCB. That would make it act like you describe...

[DwightSchrute]

Originally Posted by BrianG

What kind of battery is it? If it's a Turnigy, there could be a blown trace on the PCB. That would make it act like you describe...

it was a 6S 5K flightmax (zippy).

a blown trace on the PCB? can you ellaborate a bit more? i don't know electronics like alot of these guys here do.

i know there was debate on whether it was safe to run these kinds of packs, but nobody ever said for sure if it was or was not the battery that was the cause.

[BrianG]

Not sure about the zippy packs, but Turnigy's have a PCB which the tabs are soldered to (instead of soldering the tabs directly together). This makes disassembly MUCH easier if needed, but the traces that go from tab to tab may not be large enough to handle the current. I know on some older 3s packs, there was a trace that was too small and would blow. Since the balance wires are physically attached to the cell tabs, it makes sense that the balancer would see all the cells, but if a trace is blown, the series connection for the main leads would be broken.

[DwightSchrute]

Originally Posted by BrianG

Not sure about the zippy packs, but Turnigy's have a PCB which the tabs are soldered to (instead of soldering the tabs directly together). This makes disassembly MUCH easier if needed, but the traces that go from tab to tab may not be large enough to handle the current. I know on some older 3s packs, there was a trace that was too small and would blow. Since the balance wires are physically attached to the cell tabs, it makes sense that the balancer would see all the cells, but if a trace is blown, the series connection for the main leads would be broken.

so is that a seperate issue than the ESC? or would that cause the esc trouble if that happend?

[BrianG]

Wait a minute, was the smoke coming from the ESC or the battery? I just assumed it was the pack due to the error in voltages...

fixing the trace is easy, if that is your problem... do you have another battery to test on the monster?

to fix the trace, remove the heatshrink of some 10awg wire and just solder the wire parts over the trace... never blows again :D

[DwightSchrute]

Originally Posted by BrianG

Wait a minute, was the smoke coming from the ESC or the battery? I just assumed it was the pack due to the error in voltages...

sorry, i should have clarified.....the smoke was coming from the esc. after the esc smoked, the pack wouldn't register any power from the battery plugs. like i said, it did show voltage from the taps, but not from the connector.

[DwightSchrute]

Originally Posted by Bazzokajoe

fixing the trace is easy, if that is your problem... do you have another battery to test on the monster?

to fix the trace, remove the heatshrink of some 10awg wire and just solder the wire parts over the trace... never blows again :D

i plugged in a 4S after that, and didn't get any power so i guess it was toasted.

that's the second monster mamba in a week i've gone through. the other failure was a huge fire that melted one of my favorite lids with one of my hyperions. i was trying to think of any connection between those 2, but they were 2 completely different setups.

sigh.....i hesitate what to do now. i'm the points leader in my e-class and i'm down to one last monster mamba and about 6 races left.

[BrianG]

Hmm. Sounds like the MMM did blow and then sucked a lot of current as it did so. Luckily (?), the PCB trace on the battery blew acting like a fuse.

[DwightSchrute]

thanks for the reply Brian. i'll have my buddy open up the lipo and see if he can repair it. he's builds and tears them down all of the time. hopefully it'll be an easy fix.

i guess i'll send in the monster mamba today.

thanks again for the help.

[DwightSchrute]

Originally Posted by BrianG

Hmm. Sounds like the MMM did blow and then sucked a lot of current as it did so. Luckily (?), the PCB trace on the battery blew acting like a fuse.

you're 100% right. my buddy opened it up last night and it was plain as the day is long that's what happend. he took it home to re-solder and wrap again.

so it looks like the battery will be ok afterall.

any ideas on what caused the esc to blow?

i took the motor it was running out and ran it for a pack on my mamba pro, and it ran like a champ so i don't think it was a bad motor.


my buddy swears the mmm shouldn't be run on 6S with zippies. he says it's just a receipe for disaster.

it really seems like my mamba pro handles voltage much better than my mmm's. it feels smoother and stays cooler than my mmm did. i thought they were just for 1/10 cars? my buggy seems to really like the MMP.

[hemiblas]

Thats so crazy. This is almost exactly what happened to one of mine that got sent back. When I was running my Zippies on 6S and the 2200 motor, went to slow down and smoke starts coming out of the esc. It EsC didnt work after that. I wasnt overgeared either, if I remember I had calced it out to about 50mph on my emaxx so I took the gearing down when I went to 6S. I had to resolder the pack with the same issue. I dont run 6S on my MMM anymore and all has been well. But it might just be 6S and zippies. I'm pretty sure it was a V3 also. My MMM have been rock solid with the 7XL motor and the truerc 10C, 8000mah or the 8000mah SPC lipos both on 4S. The MMM combo with the 2200 and the SPCs have been fine too. On a side note, I did notice the other day that truerc had a warning against using the 8000mah 10C packs on the Castle 2200 motor.

People have better luck with turnigy 6S apparently. I've heard enough horror storys about zippys to stay the hell away from them for my new Flux.

[DwightSchrute]

yeah, whatever it was, i'm never running 6S on my monster again. i have one last MMM and hopefully that one will last until i get the other 2 back from Castle. 4 and 5S is fine for me.