Ghost in the VXL Machine
 

Skip to the bottom for Cliff's notes.

I got a VXL system for my kid's rusty a few months ago. I installed it, and sent him on his merry way. After he ran it, he reported that it had "bad cogging". I explained to him that any sensorless system will cog a bit, and not to worry about it. He went away and didn't mention it again.

A couple weeks ago, I got to use his car, and it has HORRIBLE cogging. It won't start to move unless you hammer the throttle to 100%, and even then it often takes a kick to get it rolling. Once it's moving it's fine and has the whole range of throttle.

Through testing, I discovered that the problem was with the esc. His motor ran fine on my 1st gen VXL esc. His rx ran my esc just fine. My motor cogs like his does on his esc. My esc can crawl using the smae batts that lock his up. Etc. etc.. It's definitely a problem with the esc.

No problem, I set it aside to be returned. Recently a friend was over and needed a car to drive with us. Instead of putting my totally dismantled buggy back together for him, I decided to just put the faulty esc back in the rusty and let him use that.

After running for about 15 minutes, I noticed that the rusty was no longer cogging at all. The only change from before to now, is that the lid is now off of the waterproof rx enclosure to make it easy to install/remove the esc.

What's going on here? Is it possible that there's a bad wire leading from the rx to the esc that's now making good contact because it's not being pinched in the enclosure lid? I really don't want to send it back if I don't have to. Has anyone heard of something like this before?

Cliff's notes: Esc was broke. Now it's not. What gives?

Can't help ya, but nice Police reference :p

it's possible that your leads were pinched in the cover, or that you had a dirty or loose connection that was better after you plugged it all back together. Strange stuff for sure

The radio box in the orig Tmaxxes was notorious for cutting the rx wires and causing glitches if the wires weren't perfectly located in the tiny space provided or stayed there when cover screws were tightened down. So its def possible in my mind.

Look your wires over carefully and make sure there's no cuts or nicks. Provide a little slack on the inside so when the enclosure is fastened, there is no tension on the connection.