Blizzard heat

[Chop]

I just purchased a Blizzard rigger (thanks Lakefront). Got it all set up the other night and finally put it in the water yesterday. This thing is a blast!!! Unfortunitly, I kept it out for about three minutes - should have checked it sooner, but I was having too much fun with it. Who would have though three minutes was too long (I do now)?

Anyway, after bringing it in I checked the temps manually - forgot where I put my thermometer. Batt's were hot but not excessivily, motor was nearly cool, but the ESC had gotten so hot that some of the shrink wrap had melted near the battery and motor wires. There was water flowing through the cooling system - I could see it coming out as the boat went by.

Electronics are: 6 S Fiegao motor w/cooling jacket, watercooled Baracuda 125 ESC and two Poly/RC 25C 4350mAh 2S1P lipos. All of this drives a 632 prop.

I'm guessing that you guy's are going to tell me to prop down, but is there anything else contributing to the heat?

[Raydee]

3 min at a time is about 2 min to long for a racing setup in a rigger. 6s is a hot motor on 2s Lipo. That setup is made for a 1-1.5 min race tops. If you want to have lots of runtime and keep it cool you are going to have to run a much lower KV motor. No it won't be fast but that is what you have to sacrafice for runtime. My 60+ MPH hulls only run for a minute and a half, sure the run time stinks but its a minute or so of pure bliss for me. If I want to run for longer times I can go to a lower KV motor, prop down and run at 40mph for 5 min but I would rather run it for 1 min and smile the whole time. Just find the happy medium and you should be able to run fast and still get better run time without burning things up.

[Chop]

Thanks Raydee. I didn't know that this boat was set up for just racing.
At this point I will just keep the run times short.

If I do want longer run times, and don't have any spare motors lying around, can I just prop down? If so, what size is suggested?

[Raydee]

Propping down some can help a little but nothing is better than the right motor for the hull and the type of running you want to achieve. On my Hydro's if I try to prop way down for long run time the hulls end up running to wet, not getting up and running like they would with the right size prop and actually run hot.

[AntronX]

Electronics are: 6 S Fiegao motor w/cooling jacket, watercooled Baracuda 125 ESC and two Poly/RC 25C 4350mAh 2S1P lipos. All of this drives a 632 prop.

So you ran two of those 2S packs in series? For 4S1P into controller? If so, see attached image.

[Chop]

No, sorry. Two, 2s in parallel.

[AntronX]

Oops, LOL. I was kinda getting amazed that barracuda 125 did not blow up in a nuclear mushroom cloud over the lake the moment you pulled the trigger... Ok, here is proper calc. The real world amps will be about 10 - 20 A higher than quoted. Man, those Castle controllers are tough.

[highndry]

"shrink wrap had melted near the battery and motor wires". What connectors are you using?

[Chop]

The shrink wrap is on the ESC. Melted at the solder joints on the ESC.

Connectors are 5.5 bullets all around, but they were unaffected.

[AntronX]

Are you allowed to go double on volts? Connect your packs in series and get half the Kv motor, like 540-11S 3226Kv. Still the same power and speed, half the amps = one happy barracuda 125

[AntronX]

Also, since you are running 900+ watts, why not Feigao XL instead of S ?

[Chop]

The 6 S Fiegao came with the boat.

[AntronX]

Post some pictures

[Chop]

Post some pictures

Pic's of what, the heat affected area on the ESC?

Here you go... The melted shrink wrap on the right, at the black & red connections.

[Chop]

Took the boat out for a spin at lunchtime.

Ran the boat for 1 minute 10 seconds and brought it in to check temps:
Motor: 105 degrees F
ESC: 95 degrees
Batteries: 97 degrees
I GPS'ed the boat at 43.3 mph.

[Raydee]

Temps look fine now....you could run it for a 1.5 minutes and see how much hotter it gets.

[Chop]

Went for a 1-1/2 minute run today, problem was... I stopped at 41 seconds.

The good news, I hit 47.1 MPH, the bad news, I hit a bouy too.

Water conditions were much better than yesterday. I didn't get a chance to check temps because it took a while for the boat to drift to shore. The Blizzard does not have any damage except a very small chip out of the paint on the left sponson. A pinhead - the size of the paint chip, not me.

When I learn how to drive it will go faster.

[Chop]

Went for a short run again today. It was windy and, dare I say it... SLEETING!! I made two good runs (with the wind) and when running back to make a third it blew over.

Wind blew the boat to shore in short order but I think it had cooled down by then. I opened the hatch and the GPS read 48.6 MPH.

What kind of top speed can I expect with my current setup?
What kind of speed can this hull handle.
And what would it take for it to go faster (within reason)?