Did I fry my ESC? Hooked up wrong? Turnigy 180a

Hi all. New here and new to electric boats. Wondering if you guys can tell me if I hooked something up wrong or not. Sorry I don't know all the correct terminology but I'll do the best I can with the little I know.

I just got this used boat pretty much all set up, minus batteries and reciever. I bought new batteries and reciever but when I started plugging things in, things went bad.

I started by plugging in the small battery pack to the recievers power port. Then I plugged in the jumper wire to the bind port and bound the transmitter to the reciever, then removed jumper. Then I plugged in the steering servo to channel 1 on reciever and checked steering opperation. All seemed good so far.

This is where things go bad.

Next I plugged in what I THINK was the speed control wire from the esc to channel 2 port on the reciever. The speed control wires then quickly started to MELT! I quickly unplugged the battery but the damage was done. Below are a couple of pictures of the wires I am referring to. They are the wires with the blue heat shrink wrap. The reason there is shrink wrap on them now is because I replaced the melted section with a spare section (white to white, red to red and black to black). I have not tried to plug it in again yet. Wondering if I plugged in the wrong wires, or.....?

Also, after the the melt down, I plugged in the steering servo wires to channel 2 port on the reciever and the steering works with the throttle on the transmitter. So I believe the reciever is fine.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Edit: Power switch on ESC was "OFF" entire time.

I'm a little confused but we will see.
You plugged in a battery to your receiver?
If yes, the ESC BEC (Battery elimination circuit) will fight the ESC and that will result in wires melting.
You can only use one power source.

Do not plug in your battery, hook it all up to the receiver and your main battery will feed the receiver via its internal circuit.

Most likely, all you have done is cosmetic damage and yes, isolate those wires very well, keep in mind that you will use it in a boat, and it will get wet.
I'd replace the entire section and cover the splice with good heatshrink.

I should add that the big batteries were not hooked up durring any of this. Only the small battery to power the reciever. But that is good to know that I should not need the small battery at all. I understand what your saying about the two fighting each other, so don't use the small one, but should this have even happened if ONLY the small battery was being used at the time?

I don’t see any fried wires. What voltage was your “small” battery pack?
And what else could the “what you think was the esc” wires be?
Not sure how to help if we don’t see what melted..

I can't tell from your picture, but usually to run a external power source one of the wires on plug that goes from the speed control to the receiver must
be eliminated, usually the red one I believe. That could have been your problem. Reconnect your steering servo and speed control to your receiver
channels 1&2, NO external battery, turn on your transmitter and then
connect your main power battery or batteries and you should be good to go.If not then something is haywire with your set up. The melt down you
suffered, was that the first time you tried to hook up your new used boat or had you previously ran it?

The small battery is 7.1v I believe. The melted wires had already been replaced in those pics, so you won't be able to see them. Just saying that the wires with the blue heat shrink were the ones that melted. They were white, red and black.

This was the first time I had hooked anything up. Had not ran it before.

I have a new esc ordered, should be here in a few days. I just wanted to make sure this doesn't happen with the new one.

It sounds like I had things hooked up wrong by using external power source and not cutting red wire, but I'm still confused as to why it shorted with only the small battery hooked to reciever and no batteries hooked to the esc?

I will run the new esc like you guys said, just the big batteries hooked to esc and no small battery at all.

Thanks guys for your input. Very much appreciated!

Was that a new esc, or did you get it used? If it was new, maybe don’t modify your second new one with extra caps.

That ESC has a built in BEC (battery eliminator circuit) negating the need to run a receiver battery. It cannot be turned off. So you either need to not run a receiver battery and just use the built in BEC within the ESC, or cut the red wire on the ESC, and continue to run your battery pack.

Ensure that both your receiver and your servo are rated for the voltage of your battery pack if you choose to continue to use that.

The esc in the pics was not new, it came with the boat. And the "extra caps" were already on it. I don't think anyone added caps to it as I have seen some pics of this esc online and those pics also had the same amount of caps.

The Turnigy brand 180a esc pics I've seen had all these caps, but I don't think they make this particular esc anymore? The replacemnt esc I have ordered is a Seaking brand (also 180a) and it does not have the extra caps according to the pictures.

Also, those "extra caps" were wrapped up next to the other caps with heat shrink. I cut the heat shrink away to inspect for damage. Plus the wires for the "extra caps" are molded right into the main base of the esc, so I believe they were factory.

So when the new esc gets here, I will use its built-in BEC and not use the small battery at all. Wish I had known that the esc had a build in BEC. Really sucks that I fried a $130 esc due to stupidity....damn!

Still trying to understand why this would happen with NO BATTERIES HOOKED TO THE ESC?

Oh well, I guess if it hadn't fried when it did, it would have fried later because I would have continued to hook up the main batteries to the esc.

Probably because the ESC's internal BEC is only rated for 6v, and 7v+ was plugged into it. Probably just overvolted the BEC circuit.

You are correct in your new plan. Either run the internal BEC with NO receiver battery. Or, cut the small red wire between the ESC and receiver, and use either a receiver battery OR an external BEC.

When pushed to the absolute amp draw limit, these ESC's are known to have internal BEC problems. One of my boats, with two of these ESC's, the ESC that was powering the receiver/servo would cut out halfway down the straights and cause my boat to veer left. The side that the internal BEC was disabled on continued at full power. I switched to an external BEC, and that problem went away.