Advice required for running twin brushless motors
 

Hi guys,

Has anyone rigged up a twin brushless motor setup? I wan't to scratch build a creation but my appreciation of brushless technology is limited.

Can I connect 2 brushless ESC's to one receiver via a y-harness? Is it that simple? I am assuming I would need to run 2 battery packs and am thinking that a couple of small packs for 1/18th cars would suffice.

Thanks in advance,

Steve

Yep, I've done that with two Mtroniks systems in an E-Maxx. Set the transmitter to one ESC on its own, then again to the second one on its own, then attach them both to the reciever with the Y-lead. Each ESC is independant apart from input signal, so yep, you'll need 2 battery packs.

Thanks, this is great. Is there anything else to it though. I was wondering also, with twice power from the ESC's to the receiver, will this cause problems as it would be 12v as I see it?

I guess its dependant on the input voltage of the receiver. I was using the stock Traxxas one that comes with the E-Maxx and didn't have a problem with it, but I assume the standard EVX ESC would have stepped it down to the standard 6v, otherwise it was happy running on 12v+.

Thanks again, I guess I can only try and see.

One lat dumb question (relating to the 6v vs 12v thing), which one of the 3 wires would be an input voltage wire to the receiver? If I simply disconnected one of these wires, would the input voltage then be 6v?

It would not be 12 volts, as they would be hooked up in parallel. The red wire is the positive wire feeding the receiver, with black being negative, and the white wire is for the signal.

You should be able to run both speedos off of one battery if you want to. Just make sure it has the c rating to handle double the usual current.

Thanks for the extra info guys. I recall high school theory about wiring in series vs parallel...it now fits into place again. I guess I wasn't sure which way the y-harness worked but thinking about it, it would need 2 batteries wired in a series circuit to double the voltage rather than how I intend to do it, so it seems obvious (NOW!)

Thanks again guys, I think my creation might just be possible!

Cheers,

Steve

I would disable the BEC from one of the esc's if I were you, so they do not "fight" each other in delivering current to the receiver/servo. (just remove the red wire from one of the esc receiver plugs) :)

Ok thanks for the tip...much appreciated!

Absolutely! And be sure to insulate, shrink wrap or something, the one wire end you pull out.

Its far easier to use a short servo ext and pull the wire in the extension - that way when you want to go the other way or sell it, you just unplug it from the extension and its back to the way it was.

You can also use the modded servo ext to do this again whenever you need.

Great tips...thanks for all of that.

I have a shopping list now for all the bits (including 2 x brushless systems).

Regards,

Steve

steve, are we gonna see this thing at the track soon?

Chris...

Hey Chris,

Give me a chance to build the thing first! I'm gonna attempt to build something for the upcoming mini nats...note the word ATTEMPT! I have a backup twini mini if my build atempt doesn't work though.

And I'm not sure what class this frankenstein thing would fit into anyway!

Cheers,

Steve