Smoked Hydra 120's

[Eodman]

Well I threw the money out the window! I took my toysport cat to the water put the elite 4s 4800 mah lipos in & the genie came to see me twice --- both 120's smoked!

My fault the cat ran fine on 2s 4800 elites ~ hell it ran great so I got greedy!

So I have 1 hydra 240 thinking of ordering a second one for it? Or order two new 120's aand drop down to 3s!

Any opinions??????

I will be sending these two back for repair but in the meantime ..................

[Mich. Maniac]

arent you running twin 8XL's?

[tth]

Isn't The Hydra 120's Good Up To 6s But Warranty Up To 4s?

[Eodman]

yes I am .......... so i'm not sure what happened! But both esc's are toast!

[AntronX]

Hey, I know the feeling, i burned one myself.
What prop and motor you used?

[Eodman]

feigao 8xls & x442 r &l

I'm running twins!

[AntronX]

Looks like your props were too big. Get another pair of Hydra 120's and a pair of M440 props (L & R). I also found X437 to work wonderfully with 8xl on my miss vegas hydro on 4S. Feigao 8xl are rated up to 90 amps. You should not need 240's. You should measure your full throttle amps in the water and keep them below 90A per ESC. I assume you were running 4S per ESc and not two 4S packs in series...

[Eodman]

I'm not sure the prop size was the proplem ... I literally put the boat in the water and no sooner gave it a liitle power to move away from shore and the Esc's went up in smoke! Never even approached full throttle, not even half throttle!

[AntronX]

Never approaching full throttle does not matter. I used to think same way till i burned my 120 and spoke to castle tech. The transistors in the ESC will still see full current spikes in partial throttle mode. Its because of pulse width modulation technique used to control motor's power or torque. The transistors switch on and off many thousands times per second in partial throttle. They see high instantaneous current spike every time they turn on. If you were to measure your battery current with an amp meter, you would only see the average of all those spikes, value that appears to be safe. Also, the PWM is the separate process from 3-phase switching. PWM controls amount of motor torque and 3-phase switching controls motor's speed.

The best way to estimate if the prop is safe, is to measure full throttle amps between the battery and ESC. So if you are burning up 120's with 8xl and X442 prop on 4S LiPo, that sounds about right since I have burned up my OEM RC 110A ESC running 8xl with X440 prop on 5S A123 pack.

[Eodman]

Yeah I might not need 240's but I already have one and if I want to go to larger motors later I would need them anyway!

One 240 will cost me less than two new 120's (I qualify for their Veteran discount) so what the hell!

We'll see on Friday --- on vacation next week with the family cruising to Alaska so I would like to decide on Friday!

[Steven Vaccaro]

Sounds strange. 4s on each 8xl with a x442 should work well in a boat that size. You are not over staining the motors.

[Steven Vaccaro]

I would send the esc's back for them to check out.

[Eodman]

Yeah I'm going to --- it ran fine on 2s just didn't like 4s for some reason!

[Doby]

One smoked,,,,OK that happens,,,but both smoked at the same time,,,thats getting to be a far reach to blame the speed controllers.

There is something wrong with the setup unless perhaps both controllers came off the same production line and were from the same lot, then I suppose there could be a manufacturing defect of some sort.

I would hate to think that a controller rated at 6S would hve to be derated to 2S. I have been running a Hydra 120 on 4S for over a year now with good results (of course thats after smoking one on 5S) Is there anything left of the controllers to send back? When mine blew, I sent the a baggie of chared remains.

Stupid question, but by any chance did you hit them with 8S by connecting the 4S's in series somehow? I have seen it happen

[Fluid]

One 240 will cost me less than two new 120's...

Hopefully you are sending the smoked 120s back to Castle, they will replace them for $105 each - far less than full price, and probably less than the price of another new 240. Your choice, but I know what I'd do.


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