When they smoke ESCs, they usually have a short somewhere, windings, sensor board, or solder/wire touching. Bad solder joints will do it as well. This is just from my personal experience, so maybe someone else can go in depth more, but I have seen it happen many times. And to add to this, I have a CNC machine that also uses brushless stepper motors. I had a motor that worked fine, but constantly killed controllers(basically an ESC). After many of those at $500ea, I said send me new motor. It went from burning controller every 6 months to 5+ years and still going. Does this mean a bad motor is going to instantly smoke ESC? No, there are warning signs...as long as you don't continue to run it, you will be fine usually. If your motor heats up within a minute with no real abuse, something is wrong. Temp the wires, any connectors, motor, etc. Luckily the ESC fails in most cases, because the alternative is the lipo.

Cain - with so much wiring in 4 pole motors, they can start to short, but keep running. Like Outkast said, wires can get start getting hot or you can experience a stutter. Since they keep running, that electrical short, has to do somewhere - so its off the speed control (why we designed the error detection). Like mentioned, this can happen from hard landing, debris bouncing around inside the motor, heat, sensor, age, multiple reasons.

I even saw one so bad, customer soldered wire on B terminal, let it cool. Turn on buggy, pulled throttle, wire would pop right off, instantly hot enough unsolder the wire.

This is where you see the majority of your major smokey failures. Motor shorting internally, gets wires so hot they start to come off. Touch another wire in the live circuit, now a bigger electrical short occurs, causing more damage and failures. When using a 1/8 car we are dealing with more than 12volts - anything that goes wrong, typically becomes bigger.

Outkast - thanks for the nice information.

im not attacking them im just very frustrated with there service both the esc its self and there support witch has been a nightmare to say the least im still waiting on a email reply from a week ago still no reply I was not rude and only stated facts that I have been through. And the one thing I hate the most is they always point it to something else that could be the cause and not take any responsabilty for there product

:) I know how to drive and I do land properly tekin motor is new I have been through all this man trust me

I receive the tech emails, I apologize, but haven't seen this type of information, except here on r/c tech. I also don't make my direct email private as its been posted multiple times throughout the thread. [email protected], at the Viper office Monday-Friday = 9am to 5pm PST. I also posted on 9/23 that you could PM directly with any questions or concerns - which you did today.

email sent

replied. Thanks

I have a vtx8 that is cogging real bad then shuts off completely once the motor And esc heat up, any ideas what might be wrong? Everything runs perfect till your about 8 mins in

What Vehicle..gearing..temps..battery?

If its 4x4 sct...battery cutoff is probably hitting.

What's your motor temp cut off set at? Sounds like you have it set too low. For the ESC the motor temp is measured internally while we measure an external temp on the can of the motor. The internal readings can be 40-60° higher than what you read with the meter on the can. If you are set anywhere under 200° internal it will probably cut out sooner than you would like. Might that be your problem?

Ok thanks guys I will check that first

picked up a Viper 1900kv 1/8 motor for my EB48.

Any recommended settings to start with on 4S for my VTX8?

Turn the punch setting wayyyyy down!! These vipers are crazy powerful

Punch to 70 and throttle frequency to 3200.

hmm, wonder if this would better in my Truggy then?

I got the Tekin 1900kv buggy motor there ... for now :)