Seaking 120A Waterproofing and installing extra Capacitors

[Howard]

Hi,
Installed new capacitors & waterproofed a seaking 120a today

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I used ultra high heat black silicone & Home depot's liquid electrical tape. I used 35v 1000uf Caps. First I sealed both ends of the ESC

[Howard]

Next I glued two caps together, after it dried I bent the leads together as pictured. I then stripped the battery wires as shown in pics and soldered the caps to the wires. Negative side of the caps to the neg wire... Positive to positive




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[Howard]

Next I sealed the bottom of the caps with liquid electrical tape. A dab of glue on the side of the wires to the caps. Shrink wrapped it and it's done :rockon2:


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Howard

[jasoncyclone]

Nice wright-up! I am going to do this to my new t120! Thanks

[Fast Guy]

Caps were always running hot on my SeaKing 120 (150-170F) on anything over 4s so I decided to try to change the caps instead of adding as space in the boat was tight. I took some pics along the way.

First I cut off the shrink tube
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[Fast Guy]

Next I carefully cut off the exsisting caps so as not to damage the circut board
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[Fast Guy]

After removing the water proofing from the solder locations I soldered the new caps from Off Shore Electric back onto the original locations except for one positive attachment point that is hidden by the controll board. I moved that positive lead to the positive battery connection for easier access.

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[Fast Guy]

Finally I recovered with 54mm shrink tube. I like clear shrink on my boat ESC's as it is easier to see moisture should the ESC get wet. I was very pleased with the SeaKings performance after the cap change. On my current boat the ESC temps used to be 120F on the fet board and 150-170F on the caps. Now thw ESC is running 80-90F and the caps 100-110F on 6s and a 80a draw producing 1850 watts. :biggrin:

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[kphilliprc]

Thought I would share my cap upgrade as well. I also like to use clear shrink tubing on my ESC's. My stock caps were going bad so they had to be replaced. I used four Rubycon 35v 1000uf caps on each of my Seaking 120's. I also decided to do some work on the water cooling blocks while I had them apart. Bored out the channels the water flows through and drilled out the other end as well. The old diameter was the bottle neck of my cooling system before. Then I JB Welded brass tubing, two in each end of the cooling block, for hoses to connect to. The end of the block next to the caps got the curved tubing so I could easily get my hoses on.

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[justski]

is there such thing of to many caps ?....i have a new Castle Creations Hydra ICE 240A 33.6V w/Switching BEC my boat never hit the water yet and it wont till spring now ..my new Castle Creations Hydra ICE 240A 33.6V w/Switching BEC has 2 caps already in it should i add 2 more now or wait to see what happen's

[kphilliprc]

I just started in rc boats in mid 2010 and my experience so far has been this:

1. I've ran the Traxxas Spartan with the Castle ESC without an extra cap bank and the built in caps went bad. I sent it in to Traxxas and they reaplaced if for free
2. While it was out for repair, I picked up a Seaking 180 as a replacement. It came with 3 caps installed plus and extra bank of 4 caps. Never had any problems out of it. (I don't know exactly but I think the Castle ESC was a 80 amp so going from that to a 180 amp ESC made a different too i'm sure.)
3. I have a dual drive catamaran that the Seaking 120's above go in. The caps on both of them started going bad so they needed to be replaced. I also wanted to add either a cap bank or a couple of caps inline like I did here.

They definitely make a difference. I don't know what your setup is or know how hard you are going to push your boat but personally after what i've learned so far I would go ahead and add extras. I like to have some overhead on my builds rather than run everything at it's limits. If you decided to wait I would keep and eye on them and just make sure they are not bulging or leaking. If you see them doing that they need to be replaced.

Here is some info on why you would add a cap bank:
http://forums.offshoreelectrics.com/showthread.php?27369-Adding-capacitor-banks-to-ESC

If you scroll about 3/4 down this page you can see the cap banks OSE sells
http://www.offshoreelectrics.com/products.php?cat=ESC+Accessories+%26+More