Has anyone pushed a Castle Mamba XL-2 hard in a boat yet?

[ray schrauwen]

Who has been running these in boats and what do you think it's capable of handling?? How hard have you guys pushed them?

I need something more robust than the SF200 8S, might get a 240 if I sell some stuff but, What about this Castle esc? I can water cool it and add conformal where needed....

What up?

[flraptor07]

Ray I'm pretty sure KFXGuy is using them and converting them to water cooled

[kfxguy]

Yes I have one in my mini. It's good for about 120 amps with a pretty high burst. I have made it thermal. Yes. It shuts down instead of burning up which is awesome to me. The cooling was plugged up at thermal shutdown. This is running an 1800kv motor on 6s and grossly over propped. Would I recommend it? Well....depends on what your doing with it. I think it's close to a t180 with what it can handle. It does drive much better than a boat esc however. If you wanted something a little more robust for the same price run a hobbywing 150 1/8 buggy esc. It's waterproof too and can handle more. It is a tad bit bigger, but it's still a nice unit. No need to add conformal to the mm2....it's pretty waterproof I can assure you from many sinkages lol.

[kfxguy]

Here's a look at how it's setup.if you haven't seen it yet....

[ray schrauwen]

O.k. it's not really what I'm looking for, thanks for the info.

[kfxguy]

Whoops. I didn't read the whole title. Thought it was about the mamba monster 2.

The xl2 was confirmed to have the same exact internals as the ice 240. This was told to me by a castle rep. What's the difference? The outer case is a different version designed for air cooling, however I was instructed to use aluminum tubes slid through it like the ice 240 for cooling. You may not find a tight fitting tube so I was instructed to use a thermal conducting epoxy. Next. The software is different. He did not elaborate how but I'll tell you a car esc will work just fine and drive just fine in a boat as long as it is cooled. I actually like the car driving manners better anyway, has better, quicker throttle response. I planned on trying one of those in something soon anyway. It would have to be waterproofed first. Maybe try one in my fantasm. I need a motor first tho.

[sapdforu]

I have 2 in my Daytona, I have pushed it to 90mph, 3700 watts. I left the fans on them and haven't had a problem at all. I will be buying more for sure.
I will be putting one in my pursuit with my lehner 2250/10 this weekend to see how much I can get out of it.

[RaceMechaniX]

Ray,

I have pushed one. They have the same internal guts as the ICE 240 Hydra's, but air cooling is not enough for the boats. If you can covert to water cooling they are pretty good on 4S and 6S. On 8S the ESC is a little vulnerable due to the low overhead of the caps.

TG

[kfxguy]

Ray,

I have pushed one. They have the same internal guts as the ICE 240 Hydra's, but air cooling is not enough for the boats. If you can covert to water cooling they are pretty good on 4S and 6S. On 8S the ESC is a little vulnerable due to the low overhead of the caps.

TG

What if you add a decent cap bank to it?

[RaceMechaniX]

Cap bank helps the ripple, but the onboard caps voltage rating is too close to a fully charged battery when you add the ripple voltage to it. On 8S Castle ESC's I end up unsoldering the 35V caps and replacing with larger 50V Rubycon ZL's. No problems with ripple under normal conditions.

TG

[ray schrauwen]

Cool and thanks. My 50% off coupon won't go to waste then.

[ray schrauwen]

Tyler, if I only run it on 4S or 6S are the 35v caps o.k.? I'm just running ovals for club races. I'd like to make it work in my Q-sport Whiplash running a 4070 TP Power 1250Kv Neu 1527 1y clone on 6S2P 8800mah total. I've run it with a SF220 modded cooling and a SF240.

I think it will go well in my P-Cat, Cheetah with 1521 1.5D on 4S2P, what do you think?

[kfxguy]

I have been kicking around the idea for a few days of getting one. I have a fried ice 240 and plan on swapping out the board into the ice 240 case and upgrading the caps and adding a cap bank. A 1521 pushes a cheetah nicely on 6s, unsure of on 4s....I'm sure the 4070 will do well.

[RaceMechaniX]

Ray if you use good quality caps it should be fine. I would do a back to back test before and after the cap install with the same set-up motor and battery wise. Log the results and make sure the ripple voltage went down when you added the 35V caps. If it goes up under the same conditions then the caps are not helping.

TG

[ray schrauwen]

Thanks Tyler. I'll keep the stock 35v caps on there to test with and go from there. I'm not sure if I'll water cool with case on or off. That big hunk of Alum. sinks a fair bit of heat.

I've read your posts on the decrease of ripple when you switched caps. I will see what ripple is stock first and check back against what your posted results were. The results you posted were quite significant I recall.