schulze 40.160H pics

[JMSCARD]

Heres the pics tyler... first owner cut the original second set of batt wires about 2" out.... otherwise esc is in pristine shape.. stored out of the dust even... lmk if you're interested... its obviously in fact one of the copper board early models...

[RaceMechaniX]

Hi Jason,

Sent you a PM.

TG

[JMSCARD]

Hi Jason,

Sent you a PM.

TG

ESC sold to Tyler... you Schulze Junkie you! haha... btw, I had to offer it to him first before listing... he's one heckuva good man to have around when you have questions about lots of things!!!!!!! thanks tyler.

[RaceMechaniX]

Thanks Jason,
These controllers are getting harder and harder to come by so I can't pass up a good offer.
If I do ever sell it I will be sure to give you first crack at it.

Tyler.

[Darin Jordan]

[T.S.Davis]

Thanks Jason,
These controllers are getting harder and harder to come by.

Yes they are. Perhaps it's time for you to design one and find someone to build them for you.

[kfxguy]

What's special about these controllers?

[madmikepags]

they are rated at 40Volts 160 amps but really are prob closer to 300amps!!!! easy to use plug and play one of the best controllers ever made if not "the" best.

[T.S.Davis]

Smoother than a vat of butter all the way through the throttle range. Instant response to changes in throttle position. The Fets are huge. Very nearly bullet proof unit. I've seen dead shorts across the board where the speedo survived. Raced in the next heat in fact.

The 40/160 in particular was way under rated for safe operation. A 160 would pump out amps way past it's rating. With a cap bank who knows.

Think Porsche vs everybody else.

[JMSCARD]

Travis the plug and play thing was always what I loved about them... before we had programming boxes and had to listen to beeps it was sooooo nice to have a super stout esc anyone could use, and the thermal shutdown saved me more then once from improper prop selection in my younger to fe days..... and they just flat out work... if you've ever owned and used one you'd know what I mean... I remember the first time I tried to program a HV200 etti In a old delta force sniper I nearly pulled my hair out... took the esc out and plugged in a 40.160wk and done with it... no setting up nothing... just pull the throttle and GO GO GO :)

Oh and BTW Tyler, made it home at lunch and your esc is in the mail 2 day priority.... thanks again!

[Fluid]

I love mine, but there are downsides:

HUGE in size
no logging
no BEC
no longer made
no factory support


.

[kfxguy]

Smoother than a vat of butter all the way through the throttle range. Instant response to changes in throttle position. The Fets are huge. Very nearly bullet proof unit. I've seen dead shorts across the board where the speedo survived. Raced in the next heat in fact.

The 40/160 in particular was way under rated for safe operation. A 160 would pump out amps way past it's rating. With a cap bank who knows.

Think Porsche vs everybody else.

Thanks, this is the info I was looking for. Guess maybe I need try one out so I guess I'll pick one up next chance I get....if I can afford it lol


What I've been doing and I like a lot is converting the mamba xl2 escs to water cooling. The logging as we all know is nice and easy to use and they have much better throttle response than a sf300. Almost mgm like. It sounds like these escs are even smoother, which is hard for me to imagine. Maybe one day I'll get to try one

[B Neal]

40.160 old - Pulled 745 amps last week on two of them, gonna let Marko try 800 plus

Brian
14s - 162mph

[T.S.Davis]

I don't have first hand experience but I hear the MGM are smooth like that.

I don't mind the size so much on a big boat but I used to run that in my P offshore on Nimh. hahaha Just cuz it always worked. Ran it in a bunch of boats. Then I acquired a bunch O' castles over the course of a season and sold my only 160. Shoulda kept that thing.

[T.S.Davis]

Anybody want to trade a 636 charger for a 40/160? They cost about the same when they were new. I own more useless crap.

[photohoward1]

Love my schulze controllers. All 7 of them. 40-300. 40-330 and 5 40-160. There is still factory support BTW.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[RaceMechaniX]

As mentioned by others, they are simple, smooth and can push huge amounts of current. They are one of few if not the only controller to use 3oz copper PCB's. This allows excellent cooling across the board and pushes short term current rating well over 500A. No other controller has done this as successfully as the older Schulze. Although there is no new software, Matthias still does support repairs for the controllers and the quality of repairs is still top notch.

Terry, designing or copying the old Schulze is pretty simple, but ponying up for the $100k PCB production is stiff. I worked with a vendor on an industrial controller for my work and built the controller with a 5oz copper PCB. It was shockingly expensive, but the current is through the roof with excellent thermal properties. Needless to say the cost of the controller was around $5k, a bit too much for most hobbyist.

TG

[T.S.Davis]

I'm surprised Hifi or someone hasn't reverse engineered some of the Schulze designs. Heck, even Castle. The trouble with the Castle was that they were actually too inexpensive in my opinion. They could have ditched the fancy anodized casing and spent another 100 on parts to make it a beast. Something truly indestructible. Then price it accordingly. We would have paid it for something worthy. We're still paying it for big power setups. You track down an old Schulze or you spend fat dollars on an MGM.

The Schulze really were stellar. A company that is already making ESC should be able to get it done for less than a new startup.

[Fluid]

...There is still factory support BTW...

Only kinda. Mathias will do some repairs out of his garage but he has limited parts available the last time I checked. But that is better than many Chinese controllers...

We would have paid it...

Maybe you would have Terry, but not enough would to make it worthwhile for Castle. Don't you remember all the grousing about how expensive the Hydra controllers were compared to the Chinese controllers? A company couldn't do all the design and setup for a world class controller only to sell a hundred units a year. It is nice to dream though.


.

[JMSCARD]

Only kinda. Mathias will do some repairs out of his garage but he has limited parts available the last time I checked. But that is better than many Chinese controllers...

Maybe you would have Terry, but not enough would to make it worthwhile for Castle. Don't you remember all the grousing about how expensive the Hydra controllers were compared to the Chinese controllers? A company couldn't do all the design and setup for a world class controller only to sell a hundred units a year. It is nice to dream though.


.

Tyler after reading this stuff I want both you, and howards schulzes I just sold you both... I've decided to keep them please send them back haha... jk.... I will find another... truthfully I don't have the skillset to upfit these with watercooling (well the 40.300 I could have, just to big for my needs... I don't run saw, just a sport boater who cant stop buying) but I WILL come across another couple hopefully 40.160wk originals and keep it :) I actually have found that the misses being a dual citizen with a German Passport has done me lots of good surfing Ebays German site... :) She can respond and ask if they will ship to US of A for me, and I've gotten a few things that way that showed euro shipping only :) Dang I give out all my good information... btw this only works for me... don't any of you try any of what I posted, nor trying to find a german gal who speaks fluent german :)

[JMSCARD]

Only kinda. Mathias will do some repairs out of his garage but he has limited parts available the last time I checked. But that is better than many Chinese controllers...

Maybe you would have Terry, but not enough would to make it worthwhile for Castle. Don't you remember all the grousing about how expensive the Hydra controllers were compared to the Chinese controllers? A company couldn't do all the design and setup for a world class controller only to sell a hundred units a year. It is nice to dream though.


.

From what I read it was to many warranty repairs for castle to deal with... and they aren't real good at saying "NO" ..... we honored them for at least partially covering repairs on items that the end user damaged via neglect, and improper use... In the end most of those folks weren't from forums like this often it was from folks who had no business owning a High end anything in any model... but had the money, and the whine when they called furious after one smoke filled run... I tend to suck it up... my brand spanking new swordy 300 fried about a month ago from a flex that was letting go and binding... one run... $300 dollars later its a paper weight.. oh well... who do I blame, and who should pay the piper... me unfortunately.... I actually found a couple hydra 240lv's dead in my storage a few days ago... I wonder if castle will still fix them for a fee? What did I like best about the castle controllers? The ease of the Castle software to play with was super nice... and it worked on my boat esc's... plane/heli esc's... and car esc's... companies that think like that are sad to see go... and Joe at Castle was always very helpful as was the support... when you called you talked to someone, who actually was quite knowledgeable... maybe if enough of us call castle or send notes to please release a new boat controller they will hear the calling :)

[kfxguy]

I don't have first hand experience but I hear the MGM are smooth like that.

I don't mind the size so much on a big boat but I used to run that in my P offshore on Nimh. hahaha Just cuz it always worked. Ran it in a bunch of boats. Then I acquired a bunch O' castles over the course of a season and sold my only 160. Shoulda kept that thing.

The mgms are smooth but I'm not sold on them. A lot of money for not a lot of reliability. My personal experience. Although....I did have a motor direct shorting and the mgm running it kept protecting itself. It still works as far as I know. I like them. But I don't. I guess it's because I can get a sf300 lite for $280 and know that it's stouter than a 25035 mgm. The logging on both controllers kinda sucks when you compare it to castle logging. I like the size and looks of the mgm tho. I have two of them and they are just drawer queens as I'm scared to use them in anything with some power. I may end up putting one in my Rivercat but I'm building a nice xl2 for it. Here's a quick video I did a while back of an mgm 25035, just to show (as best as you could tell in a video) how smooth it is and how low you can turn the rpms. It's even better when the boat is in the water.

[T.S.Davis]

Maybe you would have Terry, but not enough would to make it worthwhile for Castle. Don't you remember all the grousing about how expensive the Hydra controllers were compared to the Chinese controllers? A company couldn't do all the design and setup for a world class controller only to sell a hundred units a year. It is nice to dream though.

Yeah, now I do. I have selective memory. The proof of what you're saying is that Schulze doesn't make them anymore. The homework was done and still there wasn't enough market to make it worth while. Reality is such a downer.

I think with Castles there were a number problems that made it tough for them. The primary being that they warrantied a lot of equipment they shouldn't have been asked to. Part of that was due to the explosive access to equipment and frankly...............the forums. Guys would recommend stuff on forums that they didn't understand, haven't run, with only limited experience. Readers would buy a motor they thought was the same thing (it said 2600kv on the box). Solder it up having never soldered before. "I use Deans, all my cars have Deans and they run great" Put the big fat prop on with the 1.6pitch (it was what I had) and then send the crispy critter to Castle for "warranty".

[T.S.Davis]

... maybe if enough of us call castle or send notes to please release a new boat controller they will hear the calling :)

That reminds me. Is there less crispy critter reports these days about ESC's? I had not thought about that lately. Are there less failures than there used to be? Not sure how to quantify that.

Castle should just do it like Hackers did for a while. If it stops working we'll fix it. If it's a crispy crunch turd in a ziplock bag forget it.

[kfxguy]

That reminds me. Is there less crispy critter reports these days about ESC's? I had not thought about that lately. Are there less failures than there used to be? Not sure how to quantify that.

Castle should just do it like Hackers did for a while. If it stops working we'll fix it. If it's a crispy crunch turd in a ziplock bag forget it.

I agree. I would like to point out the fact that the castle escs were great but had some shortcomings. For one they had the wrong caps in the 8s versions. 30v caps are not enough for 8s. I change mine out if I'm going to run hv on them. Also they had to be the most sensitive to water. If you even got a drop of water on one, it's done (my experience lol). I think they would be awesome controllers if these two issues are addressed. Actually one more issue. There's no cooling for the bottom of it. On my latest xl2 conversion I added cooling to the bottom of the heat sinks. Only makes sense as there's fets on the bottom too that need cooling.

[T.S.Davis]

We never needed that anodized case. Waste of money in my opinion. Give me a couple decent cooling blocks and some shrink wrap like the old Hydra.

[kfxguy]

Come to think of it terry, I don't see a bunch of esc failures very often anymore. Think about this for a moment. I bet just about everyone of us owns a seaking 180 in this thread...on this forum. If you don't own one in sure you have. Now. Think about the relatively low failure rate of them. Especially compared to the amount sold. Why? Because it's a solid design, an it's water proof. I've got one in a customers boat running close to 80 mph in a cheetah, running 6s, an aggressive prop and that hull is more draggy than a normal cat that size. It's running a neu 1521. The esc barely gets warm. I think that castle just needed to tweak the design of it a little more because it wasn't always the customers fault...some some design issues. If hobbywing can do it....why can't castle? Wanna know why....because they are hard headed and don't want to listen. I talked to them a while back and tried talk to them about it. They didn't want to hear it. Boneheads buy seaking 180's everyday and most of them live even with stupid setups......

[T.S.Davis]

We've cluttered this thread to death but did you ever notice the burst rating on a Turnigy180? 1080amps. WTH is up with that? Has to be a BS number.

[kfxguy]

We've cluttered this thread to death but did you ever notice the burst rating on a Turnigy180? 1080amps. WTH is up with that? Has to be a BS number.

I'm pretty sure the op don't care lol.


Yea that's a b's number but I'd bets it's around 300 or so for a few seconds. I've abused some pretty badly and they lived. This cheetah I mention, we have no logs on it but he runs oval and is using a 1915 prop so it's no lite weight setup. Pretty impressed with these cheep escs.

[JMSCARD]

I'm pretty sure the op don't care lol.


Yea that's a b's number but I'd bets it's around 300 or so for a few seconds. I've abused some pretty badly and they lived. This cheetah I mention, we have no logs on it but he runs oval and is using a 1915 prop so it's no lite weight setup. Pretty impressed with these cheep escs.

Yes, in reality the T180's are the most reliable esc I myself have ever used, especially during the cost/benefit analysis.... but when we need anything over 6s we have a lot less to choose from, in fact hobbywing really needs to produce a HV 200 plus amp esc, we like how they price things... and it seems they know how to make esc's... wish theyd expand their lineup! Has anyone used the YEP (YGE knockoff) escs that are on hobbyking... they have an hv120 and hv180 marine controller that looks awful nice... I know a lot of heli guys speak highly of the non watercooled yeps so they must be pretty good, also here they work well with the high pole motors as well... wondering as I've been debating trying one... they look awful nice, but hesitant to try if no one else has lol

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...ler_Opto_.html

And a little ESC talk never hurts anyone... its the one thing we can all agree on as being the most vital part of our boats... and we talk a lot about them... but hard to get real facts from the pros so if we get you guys on a roll... I just assume keep the info rolling lol