Hobbywing Super Capacitor Installation
 

I have been running a Hobbywing 60a v2.1 ESC and upon initial install, I had removed the plastic wrap around the attached 2 cap board. Ran great until, I believe, messing around with a gforce battery my son uses for practice on his Viper ESC. Kept cutting off his ESC (the GenAces work fine still in his system) so I threw it (the battery) into my truck to see if it acted the same for the Hobbywing and one capacitor blew out. Took his battery out of rotation for later disposal, and my truck runs fine without the cap even though the fan spins at about 1/2 speed.

I ordered a new cap and went with the 4 cap board from HobbyPartz and before I solder it in replacing the blown board, I would like to know if I should have removed the clear plastic covering that almost looks as if it is clear shrink or left it on. I have searched high and low for a week and finally register here to see if I can get this mystery solved. Not sure how hot the caps get or if they need unrestricted airflow. Any one have any input?

Thank you.

leave it on, helps protect it. Those caps shouldnt be getting that hot.

Thanks for the reply. I will leave the plastic wrap/shrink on and give it a whirl. I actually do not know how hot they have gotten if they warmed up at all.

I believe there must have been something wrong with the gforce battery that blew the cap. I figured something was a miss because usually when the ESC hits the Lipo cutoff, the fan still hums along. When his battery hit the cutoff, after 2 minutes of running, the fan was off when I pulled it from the track. Now I have to give the fan a little (very little) tap and it spins up before putting the body on. Hopefully getting the cap replaced will help clear that issue along with keeping everything moving along as it should as I read its not a good idea to run without a cap.

The only thing the caps do is help if there is a sudden voltage draw like quickly turning the steering servo or possibly even sudden pulls of the throttle. I havent ever run without them but they are just capacitors, all they do is store energy and allow sudden burst of power.

On my hobbywing 120a V2.1 ESC, my fan went out and it would do like you said. It would start to spin then stop. Tap it and it would try to start and stop immediatley. I replaced it with a Novak fan and all is good. I tried finishing the day without the fan when it went out and it was acting up, Im guessing due to heat.

Soldered in the new Super Caps and the fan seems to fire up on its own now, but I think I will replace it this winter as its not the hum of a vacuum cleaner they usually emit. Being that the next month of racing will see highs of 70 degrees, I think I will be alright for now.

I do think our sons Viper ESC and 4 pole had something to do with messing up the his two GForce 5000mah 25C batteries, as my wife has a HobbyWIng like mine and we both run two of the same Gforce batteries for practice each and have no issues. The Gens Ace 5000mah 40C runs great for all three trucks. I did notice on his two bad packs through our Duratrax charger that his GForce cells were off by 1v on each battery. If its coincidence its a tough sell that it only happened to his packs. So I am thinking his system might be harder on the lower C packs. Something I will research.

But thank you for the reply and I will see how these new caps work with the shrink on them.