Originally Posted by
billdelong
Your symptoms are very similar to issues I've had with SkyRC branded ESC's in the past. I used to run them in all my cars and they did great (when I was mostly racing on-road), a little over a year ago the on-road club suspended their program indefinitely and I've been running off-road exclusively where pretty much every SkyRC ESC I owned had started to act up, typically from hard landings off big jumps. It was as if the ESC was browning out, I would lose both steering and throttle so I knew it was ESC related. Things got worse when it would land from a big jump and then steering would lock straight and the car would lunge @WOT for a split second. It seemed manageable because it happened infrequently enough until one day my eBug slammed into a turn marshals shin, left a huge bruise that took weeks to heal, man I still feel bad about it
So that was the last time I used SkyRC in any of my 1/8 cars. Flash forward a few months and eventually my 1/10 cars would start acting up on the smaller 1/10 track too.. SMH
Really breaks my heart, because the SkyRC ESC's treated me very well for years of on-road racing (with no jumps) but they just can't handle impacts for some reason over time and I have since switched to HobbyWing across the board for the 8+ classes I run. Knock on wood, I haven't had a single issue with HobbyWing other than accidentally leaving my battery plugged in for a couple weeks and learned the hard way that the XR8 has a parasitic drain that killed a 4S pack.
Not sure which specific TrackStar ESC you have without a link, but I've seen several that are rebranded from SkyRC and if that's the case, then I'm fairly certain you're running into the same quality issues I did and would consider switching brands as well.
Trackstar is kinda like OFNA, they don't manufacture anything, they will bid out to OEM's to rebrand products with the TrackStar label on them... if you want to go cheap, then I would recommend their Aeolian rebranded ESC's, those have never failed me.
Good Luck!
Thanks. My ESC looks similar to the SkyRC units, but I'm not seeing an exact match. Here's a photo of the unit:
http://static.weloveshopping.com/sho...a/11746545.jpg
It does seem that the hall sensor is going bad. Did your ESCs damage a hall sensor? There is a clear dead spot. When I hold the rotor in a certain position and hit the throttle, nothing happens. The ESC seems to shut down. The motor hums for a second like it is trying to start, and then it just stops like it got turned off...
I ordered a sensor, but I don't want to damage it as well by connecting it to a bad ESC. It sounds like I won't be racing it this weekend.
I bought the used truck because I have trouble buying cheap electronics. Initially I wanted to buy the new Losi 22T 3.0, and I would have gone straight to the Tekin RSX for my ESC. I can't help myself! But I quickly realized that by the time I had it built, it was going to be an $800 truck, which seemed awful expensive for a small and simple 2wd. For comparison, $900 buys me a bigger and more complex tekno sct410.3 (with RX8 and e-buggy motor!
), and $1,200 would buy me a Mugen truggy.
So I bought this one on Ebay, avoiding the temptation to buy high end electronics. But now I guess I have to face my demons after all!