Sea King 180 up in smoke

[lyndon915]

So I just recieved my new Sea King 180 in the mail today. I installed it in my Miss Geico along with my new leopard 2150 kv motor. Took everything to the lake and plugged my batteries in, im running 4s on this boat. Put the boat in the water and started to pull away. I didnt go 10 feet at low throttle that the boat started to stutter and then stopped, heard a pop and nothing. Retrieved the boat to find that the brand new ESC had let the magic smoke out.

Has anyone else had an experience like this?

[Boaterguy]

most likely defective ESC, contact whoever you bought it from (OSE, hobbypartz Etc.) and let them know, you most likely were not drawing 180A at low throttle.

[lyndon915]

Yea most surely not 180 amps, I probably hadnt hit 1/4 throttle when it stopped working. The really strange part is it seems to have taken out my reciever as well. I noticed it was not working when recovering the boat, the rudder would not move via the radio. Now I can not get it to bind to my radio and once more the BEC from the ESC was unplugged so the reciever should not have been recieving power from the ESC when it went up. I have no idea why it would not be working now

[lyndon915]

Has anyone else had this problem with the sea king 180's?

[Rich]

That's a new one! I have this esc on 5s2p with 3 extra caps (I ran it on the stock 3 caps on 4s2p and 5s2p for a bit). Hmmm you said you disabled the red wire on the esc to use an alternate power source to power the receiver and it took that out too? Did the caps go on the esc or did something else?

[ray schrauwen]

Did you cailbrate the throttle before you ran it?

[Rumdog]

Nope. I run the hell out of these things. 6s too.

[Rumdog]

Why werent you using the built in bec?

[ray schrauwen]

If you don't calibrate the throttle I don't have much sympathy.

[lyndon915]

Yes the red wire was disconnected from the receiver and it still just flashes orange, it's a spectrum MR3000, No idea what is going on with it, horizon says it means loss of power but it won't stop flashing. I'm going to send it into Horizon to have them take a look. I stopped using built in BEC's on my ESC a long time ago in my aircraft on anything over 4s. It is just extra load on the esc that isn't needed and I like the security of running a rx pack so if the esc goes up I should still have some control. As far as how the ESC failed. The caps are all fine; it seems that something inside melted down as there is melted plastic that pushed its way out around the circuit board everywhere there was space to.
As far as calibration, I did calibrate the throttle but what you have to understand is how an electric speed control works. It pulses power at full voltage to the motor, the lower the pulse frequency the slower the motor goes and the higher the frequency the faster the motor spins. The catch here is that there is no setting that is over 100% throttle, perhaps less than 100% but there is no way to get more throttle out of the esc than the batteries can provide. I see no way that not calibrating the throttle could result in anything other than not having full throttle or having a very steep throttle curve because you hit full power half way through the trigger pull. Regardless of this I did program the esc to my radio.

[Rich]

I have had that problem with the rx flashing (i have the same rx as you). It turned out to be a loose connector, my planes have done this also. I would check your connectors and maybe try a different rx pack if you have one.

[lyndon915]

OK guys looks like the company I purchased this ESC from will not take it back and handle the warranty for me. So does anyone know how I go about sending this thing back to hobby wing to get it replaced? Does anyone know if it has to go to China or if there is some sort of US service center.

[LarrysDrifter]

You won't get any help regarding a warranty. Just let it go and buy another one. I'm not being a jacks$$, that's just how it is. I've been in the same position as you with the same esc.

[ray schrauwen]

If you want a warranty then there is always Castle.

[lyndon915]

Yup,
I think castle is going to be the way to go. Just sucks that i smoked 100 bucks worth of ESC and it only moved about 10 feet!!!!
very frustrating!!