Plasma Edge - out of control!
 

Hi everyone. Being brand new to this hobby, I recently purchased a Tamiya Plasma Edge kit. I built it fine and it kind of works, but, there are two big problems.

Firstly, the acceleration is really jerky. I pull the trigger on the radio, and it stutters several times whilst getting to full speed. Worse still the throttle sometimes gets jammed on full, sending the car smashing into the curb!

Secondly, when I pull hard on the throttle, the steering servo veers to the left, making control difficult.

If anyone has any ideas, I would love to hear from you.

Cheers,
Felix

Sounds like your battery is not supplying enough power under hard acceleration. This will cause the voltage to drop and the radio to "brown out" and cause all sorts of funny things to happen. What battery are you using?

It's a Storm 7.2v 4500 mAh.

If its a LiPo Whats the C rating?

It will be like 20c/25c/30c.

Also what type of Connector is it? Did you solder on your own Connectors?

also, how about the transmitters batteries? maybe try some fresh ones?:)

Not to be an a$$, but 7.2V means Nimh :D What electronics do you have in the car? sounds like the bec isn't enough...

NiMH :(

http://www.rcmodelcentre.co.uk/Storm...l?review=write

Yeah what he said!

Also what radio/receiver, servo, and esc do you have in it?

Too early, no coffee, not paying attention.

Meh 7.2 or 7.4 whats the Diff :P


As for the OP....

Could really be anything, cold solder joint, dodgey motor/speedy/esc connection, dodgey Battery.

Quick and easy way? Got a friend? Or a Local RC store?

Get them to test your battery in one of there cars and vice versa, least then you will know whether its your battery or your car.

Wow thanks for the replies. I posted the same question on msuk-forum.co.uk on Wednesday, and still haven't got a single response.

So the gear I have is as follows:

Ansman W5 radio
Ansman Model R5 reciever
Tamiya TEU-104BK esc
acoms AS-16 steering servo

This motor is just the stock motor you get with the Tamiya kit.

I have tried fresh batteries in radio, and it made no difference.


What does OP stand for?

Cheers.

Make sure your battery has a good charge and try disabling the low voltage cutoff on the ESC. The low voltage cutoff is for running lipo batteries but shouldn't be needed for nimh.

OP stands for original poster

OK thanks, I'll try that. I'll nip back to the shop at the weekend if it doesn't work and see what they say.

Cheers.

Well, I tried disabling the low voltage cutoff and also moving the reciever to a different part of the model in case its positioning was causing interference. Same result:(
The battery last for ages...like 20 minutes and it was still going strong, so I think its in good nick. Its brand new anyway. I was wondering if maybe the problem is with the radio. Another problem I found was sometimes, when I push reverse, the car lunges into full forward throttle. Its so unpredictable as to be to dangerous to drive near other peoples property. It randomly crashed into my neighbours car earlier! (no damage fortunately).

I have some old model aircraft, could I take one of the servos out of one of them and try that to see if that changes anything? Are the servos all a standard size?

I would remove all the electronics from the car and systematicaly check every component to make sure it is working properly. If you have friends with rc cars, you can swap in parts to see which piece is causing the trouble.

If I disconnect the motor, then the servo stops jerking when I pull the trigger. But that still doesn't tell be if its a radio brown out due to the motor suddenly drawing power, or interference from the power in the motor cables. If its a brown out, what can be done about it?

Turns out is was the reciever. Replaced it and everything works normally. Thanks for all your suggestions.