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Old 03-04-2011, 01:07 AM
  #14595  
niznai
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Originally Posted by Granpa
I have a few questions for those of you who are more learned than I. This only applies in situations where we have to use the motor leads that are supplied with the Johson 540J motor.

1. Since the motor leads supplied with the motor look to be 18 gauge or smaller, can we wire the esc with 18 gauge wire and not lose a significant amount of power??? If so, can anyone tell me how much it would affect lap times, understanding that tracks vary in size and complexity.

2. I have heard the Tamiya connector should be changed frequently. How frequently and what criteria do you use to judge when to replace them.

Yes, I'm aware that larger gauges of wire and hard wiring to the motor is better, but the particular situation does o allow for that option.
I am not necessarily more learned than the next person, but here are some of my experiences that may have been avoided if I knew better.

The Tamiya connectors can become faulty for no apparent reason. I can't explain it, but they do. What happens? Well, not sure, but you plug it in and the car doesn't move, like it has no battery. Something must go terribly screwy, because it all looks fine, and yet there is no power going through the connector. It happened to me with Dean's connectors as well (I changed to these when I could not take Tamiya connectors any more). In this case, I noticed the blades looked like they "sunk" in the plastic a tiny little bit, just enough that contact is no longer happening. There is no warning sign, they do it all of a sudden. Killed me the first time as I was completely unprepared, and it completely stuffed up my race. Changed to Corally since, never had a problem ever again.

I think the wire put on silvercans is there to suggest not to put too much power through, to make the motors last as long as possble for the average buyer.

In normal applications (backyard basher with Tamiya TEU ESC) don't think it matters.

Where it matters is when you have high currents going through (say you have a good ESC, batteries, etc). The bullet plugs are far from perfect though I never had one fail. They do get hot though. Liekwise the wires. It s obvious then that something is happening to get them that hot. I think what happens is they are run for a long time at or near capacity and the higher the current, the higher the heat. A better wire would take more current without overheating like that because they dissipate heat a lot better (quicker), helping all the electronics. Don't forget, your power wires are heatsinks.

I prefer to have no connectors on my cars between ESC and motor, but that's not always possible. I use then gold plated bullet connectors (not becasue they're the best there is, but because they are forever reusable) which I usually solder directly to the motor (a lot easier with brushless) and plug in the ESC cables. That way, I can swap motors/ESCs betwen cars easier and quicker and don't need to lug around a soldering iron everywhere I go.
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