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Brand new Impulse 31 V3 going haywire
Hey guys,
I'm down here in Barbados on vacation for a bit and brought my Spartan and (Brand New) Impulse 31 V3 with me. The Spartan is flat out ripping, but i'm having a weird issue with the Impulse and am hoping someone may know what's up with it.
In general, I like the SR310 / DX2E combo, having had them on multiple surface RC's lately. That said, I HAVE had some range/programming issues with a couple of them before and Horizon has always been more than helpful in replacing them right away.
In this case, I took the Impulse out for its maiden run, and got a few minutes in, and on a sharp turn (I think), the electronics just stopped altogether. No response from throttle/unsure on rudder. The boat was right near the beach, so I ran down and grabbed it in the shallow water...good thing too because after I picked it up out of the water, the motor went haywire and revved up pretty high for about 5-8 seconds, then stopped. I think it then happened a second time, then I was able to get the hatch off and unplug one of the batteries.
I rinsed all the salt water off and out of it, dried it, re-greased it, and re-binded the Tx/Rx.
Today: Took it out again, was about five minutes in to a great ocean run right at sunset..what a sweet boat man this thing rips and the handling is great....this time I hit a ripple or small wake and nosedived it at maybe 30 mph...it did a quick dive and popped right back up right side up...but no throttle again/unsure of rudder control. I passed off the Tx and swam out to it,..it was pointed out to sea. I was one or two strokes away from it and coming up on the rear of the boat and the throttle revved and it took off, prob about 1/3 throttle on its own. It went in a lazy arc about thirty or forty yards and died. I swam up to the back of it and of course it took off again right before i could grab it...again maybe 1/3 throttle speed or so. It was headed toward a catamaran boat party but fortunately stopped again after about thirty yards. This time when i got near it, i could hear the motor whining, but it had no forward motion. Fortunately in this case, the collet had loosened up and the motor shaft was just spinning but not the flex cable. My gf turned the Tx off from shore, and the motor stopped spinning, although i'm unsure if it was at the same time or if the motor stopped independently.
I rinsed and cleaned and re-greased again, and when powered back up, the Tx/Rx are still bound and there is full throttle and rudder control.
So far, my best guess is that water is getting in there and affecting the electronics somehow or that the quick turns or the submersion coupled with the quick stop in the water is somehow affecting the circuitry.
In full disclosure, I forgot to bring hatch tape with me and because of that there has been a fair amount of saltwater that has gotten inside both boats, but only the Impulse has been affected. It's hard to say thought that the water is definitely the problem since the issue seems to be when the boat makes abrupt speed or direction changes.
Hope you guys have some experience with this and can can offer some insight. I'm planning on picking up some electrical tape to seal the hatch in the interim, but am not feeling like its safe to be running the boat until i can sort out its electronics issues.
Thanks, - Davis
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