Could it be that your sensor cable is loose or intermittent?

I don't believe Leopard make a sensored ESC.

Correct - it's not censored and either is the motor

So this is what I did to no avail. Re-bind the tx/rx and recalibrate the esc. (there is some aluminum but most of it is a plastic chassis).

After doing this nothing changed...the steering works fine, esc fan powers up and makes the same beeps, but upon pulling the trigger it does some jerking back and forth and then stops - as in if I return the throttle to neutral and pull again it does nothing.

So unless someone else here has more ideas I'm gong to try another rx/tx to see if it works.

What are you running pinion & Spur? If you give a push by hand, will it run? Cuz now it sounds like it cogging. Brushless motors does not take much to get going. Remove the pinion and turn on, does the motor screams?? If it does lower the pinion 5-10 teeth and go from there.

No. Pushing it doesn't make it start going...that doesn't do anything.

I don't recall the pinion/spur off the top of my head but it's something like 16/62

We've gone through the recalibration. pinion/spur ratio is ok. The only thing I can think of is Set up with 2Slipos. ESC set up too high on Cut-off. Have to look up the manual on line, probably later this evening. Cut off should be 6v or 2S lipos. I don't know if the Leopeod uses Blinky mode or program card. Sounds like the cogging ESC set at 3s lipos not 2s lipos. I'm more into the higher end ESC's (Tekins). I'm just giving my opinions and given you ideas, to get you going.

Yeah I'm gonna check the cutoff voltage value tonight. I actually thought of it last night but ran out of time.

The Leopard has a programming card.

Well this was an odd one (fingers crossed).

So after checking the cutoff voltage (it was set fine) and I went ahead and made a few other changes mainly punch control. But that didn't fix the issue - I didn't think it would since I really didn't change anything that should have fixed it. Pulled the spur and it did the same thing.

But I noticed that the bullet connectors between the motor and ESC were warm. I thought that was odd for being on for less than 5 min and no motor running - other than 2 seconds of that cogging.

So I pulled the plugs apart and reversed them (left the center yellow) but reversed the other. I have no idea why I did this - to my surprise it didn't blow up...and even more surprisingly it worked - no cogging.

I switched them back...and it continues to work, put the spur back on, still working. True test later this week when I can get it out before it's dark....

So all this because somehow the motor itself got "confused"...still going with weird!

I know you will think I'm nuts, but I think it's the esc.

Why?

Reversing two of the wires should have made the motor run backwards if it was running the proper way before....but if its working good now, it sounds like it had a bad connection to me anyways.

It probably did but I was shocked that it was working so I didn't pay attention.

You said it! JB if it runs a bit, got crossed up with connections, You got it correct. You still may have to do the calibration again, it changes when you switch connections. Make sure your TX REV set to NOR( normal).

As I was reading through this thread, I was going to suggest that you check your connections to the motor because it sounded like you might have had a poor solder joint.

Since you are using bullet connectors between the speed control and motor, you obviously have checked those. If you continue to have intermittent issues, make sure there are no loose connections from the wire to the actual bullet connectors.

Because you are using the vehicle to make jumps, a bad solder joint would eventually come loose. Also a poor electrical connection will cause the wire/connectors to heat up due to the resistance at that point in the circuit.