Fanatic01

As I said in my first post I would rather stay away from a bec whether that means getting a servo that doesn't have 300oz of torque (I only need 150oz and .15 for speed.) I'm not racing with it.... The mamba monster 2 claims to have a user adjustable bec between 5v and 7v. The default on the page says its 5.5v like the first one but can it be changed to meet the standard 6v of high torque servos? http://www.castlecreations.com/suppo...nster2-QSG.pdf

Pulse_

don't consider amperage as an isolated factor, in reality you won't more than 120A in most cases

If you run 4s I would highly recommend a HW xerun 120A SCT, and here is why

The higher amps speedos are not as smooth as lower amps ones from my experience (3 years of racing only)

The tekin is the less reliable from my experience. It has the best features, design, support etc.. But I had more failures with the RX8 than all my other speedos together (it's the only speedo that ended in smoke...twice ). And I took MANY precautions. I had the very first gen as well as the last ones. Still running my last one in my JQ, just hope everything will be fine now. This said when it works, it's great.

The Castle is a nonsense, at least today. No sensored mode, expensive. But the warranty and support is good.

The HW is by far the best bang for the buck. Very strong ESC. Cheap, sensored. It's big, ugly, has less features than a RX8 too but you can't be wrong with this one. I would go with the 120A rather than the 150A though. It's smaller, cheaper, same features, smoother.

As a side note I did my best laptimes with a MMP + external BEC on my 1/8 buggies. It's great in 6S 1400kv, very very smooth.

So all in all and that's quite rare for me the best speedo for 4s application is the cheapest of the bunch. I really hope for an evolution of the RX8 to come out. The VTX8 is good on the paper but I rather buy an evolution than an all new product.

Cain

iTrader: (294)

if its anything like the MMM from what I remember you can change it using the castle link. I don't know if they give it away still, but usually you would get a card in with your ESC so you could get a free one sent to you.

I have ran the following ESCs since I have been doing 1/8 electric:

- Castle Mamba Max modified with external bec (non-castle) and fans
- Castle MMM V1 thru V3
- Castle MMP no mods, no bec, etc.
- Tekin RX8
- Speed Passion Silver Arrow V1
- Speed Passion Silver Arrow V2

For the money if its in stock and you have room on your vehicle to fit it, the Silver Arrow V2 offers a whole lot of bang for the buck. Its like $70-ish shipped new. Its sensored and has a 90 day warranty. 4S limit though.

Tekin stuff I had, the firsts RX8 failed, no dramatic fire, just stopped working off of a jump. was pretty common to here that failure at the track. Next one back from Tekin was excellent, no issues. I wasn't too big of a fan of there hotwire interface so I decided to move on.

SP Silver Arrow V1 failed very dramatically, taking out much of my gear. SP however had a recall I guess on this particular batch and replaced as much as they could of what was damaged.

Then went to MMP as I heard people using them. the BIG thing I found when using it was to make sure you had electronics like the receiver and servo that didn't draw hard on the gear. using a Futaba servo for steering, had no need for a BEC. Went away from it mainly as I didn't like how the sensor wire port could fail. Once out of warranty, sold it.

The Castle gear I have had luck with in general, and the stuff that failed, Mamba monster revision 2 if I recall correctly while revision 1 kept working, go figure, was under the 1 year warranty. If they made a true sensored 1/8 ESC that had a robust BEC, watch out!

Personally, I am a big fan of warranties, especially in 1/8 electric. I also feel that it says a lot about a company that promotes there product as the best, but doesn't feel its reliable enough to have an industry leading warranty. If its that great, why don't you feel it will last at least as long as the other guys ESC which is built for bashing.

Now, I run a speed passion unit, Silver Arrow V2 and its warranty is only 90 days, what gives right? Part of it is the cost to performance I see, and the replacement cost (when available) is less than out of warranty costs of other ESC brands.

Can it fail? Sure, but, the benefits I am seeing, including that nifty hand held programmer and its price are real big selling points for me.

She is not the smallest girl however, so make sure you have room.

I am however curious to check out the new viper ESC. They got the long warranty I would expect and its waterproof. But, can't do sensorless, which, for what I was thinking of using it for (5SC sized flux which the MMM seems to handle fine), can't do. But, for what it can, say that new Kyosho 1/7 scale vehicle, man it has my eyeing it lol, especially its 6S capability.

Zerodefect

We shall see.

I'm building a Serpent 118E for Summer. An Rx8 is going into it as my HW won't fit. And I have another Rx8 for a spare.

I'll bet:
-that it loses 1 fan blade for every 3 battery packs it drains
-the case cracks within 3 months despite 1/4" of Kyosho gyro gell.
-majik LEDs or fire force me to my backup Rx8 before winter season.

jasonwipf

I've run both for 100s of hours each over 4 years and have owned about 6 Castles MMMs and 8 Tekin RX8s. Here are my findings.

Both can and do burn up! Not often but 1/8th racing is tough on cars. These two escs are amongst the toughest on the market.

1/2 the time my castles had smoke and fire when they burnt up. Tekin, never, just stopped working. Most of the Tekin malfunctions were within their first year or two before they updated their case and addressed a soder issue on one of their boards. Castle MMM will also sometimes brake at the case joint (top half brake loose from bottom half) then wires or circuits get crushed during race and it fries. Castle=0 / Tekin=1

Plugs vs. Soder posts. Plugs can and do loosen. Soder can brake off if you suck at sodering. I have lost more races to castle esc plugs than I care to mention. Castle=0 / Tekin=1

Fans: Castle needs a fan or you are asking for a burn out. Tekin does not need its fan. These fans brake often and are 10-20bucks to replace, sux.
Castle=0 / Tekin=1

Sensor: Castle sensorless will cog on you, not always but it will happen when you least expect it. On a race start, up an important jump face. Tekin Sensored has very smooth low-end, no cogging. Castle=0 / Tekin=1

Tunability: Both are great when hooked up to the computer. But the Tekin lets you adjust basic settings right there on the track with a few button pushes and has a temp sensor led. Castle=1 / Tekin=2

The rest such as price, service and size are all very comparable to each other so I'll call the rest a wash. But that is Castle=1 and Tekin=6. You'll hear all kinds of opinions but those were my facts. Hope that helps.

romian14

iTrader: (110)

I've had my Tekin Rx8 in my 1/8 Buggies and I've had not one Issue with them. I bought a Brand Tekin Rx8 from Towerhobbies about 2 years ago and it STILL runs like the first day I ran it. Not one issue from it so far, and very reliable. Even the Fan works GREAT! Looks like new too! I take very good care of my stuff, and have never had a Tekin rx8 fail. I also believe people that have their rx8's fail have probably abused them or some sort of user error that causes them to smoke/break. IMO Tekin is the top brand for 1/8 Electric. They have my loyalty and I'll probably always stick with them. IMHO you get what you paid for. This was all from my experience by the way. I can't really speak for castle as I have had only their MMP. I had it my slash 4x4 and it smoke the 2nd run I took it on. Castle's customer support was flawless but DANG did take a long time for it to get it returned to me.

....Was never a fan of the Hobbywing Junk either....

Fanatic01

Well I'm not going to be racing and I'm not much of a solderer so the Tekin doesn't fit well in my books. My main concern now is the newer Mamba Monster 2. No one has really used it yet so info on it is scarce but it is a lot more water resistant (I wouldn't say waterproof) than the original. Internal Bec is what I'm worried about from what I read about spektrum receivers and servos. Both esc's seem incapable of supplying the power unless I'm missing something that only applies to specific servos and receivers. I don't run my RC's all that hard unlike people who race. Sure I want the power if I need it but I don't go all out all the time, that's just asking for trouble no matter what you have in your RC.

Randy_Pike

iTrader: (6)

I've seen all but 3 or 4 broken cases and MOST were caused by a cleaner being sprayed on the unit, which isn't good. I've seen one snap after being ejected from the car too...not our fault I'd like to think.

Fans come and go. A good setup shouldn't need a fan. I'm confident you know how to setup and gear your car, so chances are you don't need a fan. However if you feel you do, an easy trick is to remove all of the cross bars EXCEPT the outer two. This will allow the blades room to move and debris to not get stuck in between to two parts.

I will tell you that a large majority of smoked out failures are due to poorly performing batteries. Every unit that I've inspected that has smoked has blown all 3 caps on it. This is a sign of a battery that cannot sustain the load being asked of it.

There is no such thing as perfection in electronics. We all try, some of us succeed better than others at times.

Davidka

iTrader: (86)

How did speed controls survive the NiCd and NiMh batteries we ran before Lipo came out?

Randy_Pike

iTrader: (6)

Simple, brushed motors.

Wease

iTrader: (77)

I'm not hear to argue and I believe that some of the failures may be due to sub par batteries, but I've seen two of my own RX8s and a half dozen other's go up in smoke and we were using very good batteries! In my case I was using ProTek 70C 6400 Mah hard case Lipos. Both times my buggy and a truggy had flipped on to it's roof. Not violent crashes, but a simple flip over at low speed. Pull the trigger and no response; a few seconds later smoke is pouring out from under the body. Without exception, in every RX8 failure I have personally witnessed, the negative battery post (and some of the other posts) had detached from the circuit board. I race and I'm competent enough to say I don't wreck often and when I do it's not of the violent variety.

Make no mistake, I love Tekin! I have three RX8s, 1 RS Pro and 6 RS ESCs in my stable of vehicles. Despite past failures of my RX8s, I have no intention of switching to another brand PERIOD. I recommend Tekin to everyone who is considering a new ESC. However, I keep spares in my box because of past experience and every time I flip on my lid I cringe before pulling the trigger again. It's frustrating to watch guys running Castle ESCs who have these violent train wreck type crashes lap after lap after lap continue to drive away with no ill effects. My current 3 RX8s have been running without issue for the past 1.5 years on the same batteries used during previous failures. The point of my post is that I hope Tekin continues to solicit feedback from user's on circumstances around failures and works to improve the durability of the RX8. I frequently hear the explanation of sub-par batteries, but I'm certain it's not the only reason and in my humble opinion, not the primary reason for failures.

Cain

iTrader: (294)

has Tekin stated what battery brands aren't subpar? May make it easy knowing this which to stick with, and which to avoid.

jasonwipf

Randy, My comment about the cases were about castle MMM ESCs. I have never seen a RX8 case come apart. But I have personally witnessed at least 4-5 Castle MMM cases come apart. Oh I have an email coming to you and Jim later keep a look out.

To the MM2, maybe they changed somethings inside but outside it looks like a case redesign, many of the same issues on my last post seem like they would still be drawbacks. If they did change alot inside, ask yourself if you want Gen 1 of a new esc? Its like buying a 1st year production of an automobile. Bugs

RiceP

iTrader: (71)

I have had 3 RX8 esc and the first I bought was over a year ago and it still works no issue. My other two have no issues either I just use a little common sence when running and bashing. No esc is indestructible but take care of your electronics clean them and do maintance. I see lot of people at track with expensive electronics that they just let get cover if dirt and grim I know my stuff gets dirty but clean it I between rounds dirt will not let stuff cool and also will get in to equipment and cause damage by abrasion and shorting spots.
But back to subject the main reason I run RX8 is for its programing no need to carry laptop or programing cards and it is simple with the LEDs no having to listen to beeps to know what u are doing. I have run the cheaper esc (Hobbywing,speedpassion,Hobbyking) not saying the are junk but u get what u pay for to me it's like running a kyosho buggy next to a Duratrax some wont notice the diff but in the right hands the kyosho is far superior setup and tune are night and day. Go with RX8 and just take care of it and you will love it