avoiding a meltdown
 

could the positive and negative wires in an esc cause a meltdown if they are
wired backwards with the signal wire being correct?

Not sure on all speed control but have done in the past I have with out any problem.

if u mean on a brushless esc and going to the battery yes if they are plugged in backward they will smoke and ruin ur esc.

it is not a smart thing to do

He means the receiver plug not the battery leads:rolleyes:...do your battery leads have a signal wire:weird:

That would kill the RX if anything , but I have done that before and nothing smoked .

Only once and it didn't hurt the futaba fm rx. If you had a meltdown, there was prob something else wired wrong.

it is the wires going to the reciever. the wires from the tazer esc that I had in
there before were red brown and orange. The new esc(intellispeed) has black red + white. I found out that black or brown are common ground wires so I switched the red + black wires to somewhat match the wires of the old esc
which worked good for a # of years. Plugged it all in and nothing happened,
didn't get any lights on the esc. So I decided to switch the wires back to normal and take a chance with a meltdown.(learned from the very first esc
I plugged in) Still didn"t get any action out of the new esc. But. I did notice that there is barely any action out of the steering servo. Is my reciever buggered?