scirocco14

iTrader: (5)

Hi,

I am building my first RC car, a VTA car. I purchased a NOVAK Edge ESC/Ballistic Boss VTA motor 25.5 combo at Bush River Raceway in Columbia, SC and have installed it. Followed all the installation instructions to the letter, used the One Touch setup, etc. Everything seems to initialize properly.

My problem is this. If I apply a small amount of throttle with the car on a test stand, the motor will run fine but if I add steering input while the motor is running, the motor stops. I still have steering though. Sometimes the ESC resets quickly and other times it does not.

The 4000 mah 2S lipo is fully charged.

The servo is a Futaba S9252 digital servo. I am trying to use a Spektrum DX7 air radio with a Spektrum AR7000-X receiver. I also tried setting it up with a Futaba 7TC 2.4 radio with a R617FS receiver and it did it with that setup also. I would like to use a two-stick airplane radio as I've tried the pistol transmitters and am not comfortable with a pistol radio.

Can you help me diagnose the problem? I'm new to RC cars, but have been flying RC airplane and helicopters for several years and am familiar with both Spektrum and Futaba 2.4 radio systems. I have had not experience anything like this trying to setup airplane and heli ESC's.

Thanks!

Mark

howardcano

iTrader: (37)

The Novak Edge has a pretty weak BEC, so it is possible that the servo is pulling enough current to cause the ESC to brown-out. Try leaving the Edge's switch in the OFF position and plug a receiver battery into the receiver. If that fixes the problem, then it's the BEC.

If that is the case, then you can try a "glitch buster" capacitor instead of the receiver battery, plugged into a spare channel on the receiver.

I have several Edges, and some do indeed require the capacitor. It depends on the servo.

egobrkr

iTrader: (29)

This is the novak glitch buster if you find that you need one. http://www.amainhobbies.com/product_...iver-Capacitor

scirocco14

iTrader: (5)

Thanks for the tip Howard. My combo came with a glitch buster and I installed that during the build. It seems to make no difference whether it's plugged in or not. I thought the voltage might be dropping, so I plugged in a Voltwatch into the receiver and the voltage doesn't drop when I operate the steering servo.

This ESC has been doing strange things from the get-go. When I initially did the One-touch setup, the reverse function was active, even though default is NO reverse.

Last night I did a few more tests. I put the motor in forward at low speed and just let it continue. After several seconds, it stopped on its own. And it doesn't freewheel to a stop, it stops hard. "CHUNK". And then it may or may not restart after a few seconds. The lights on the ESC start flashing and sometimes it goes into setup mode on its own, going through the sequence. And then sometimes ALL the lights on the ESC light up and then nothing happens after that.

And occasionally it'll just go full speed on its own, no matter where the throttle stick is and I have to turn the switch OFF to get it to stop.

I'm thinking the ESC is bonkers!

Mark

scirocco14

iTrader: (5)

UPDATE:

I did try a receiver battery pack plugged in and it still did it. So after talking with Charlie at NOVAK, I'm sending it to them to get it checked out. Kudos to Charlie for responding on a Sunday and helping me out!

Mark