Stinking VXL3's. Whats wrong with it?

[K-TOWN-KITT]

I have a 4x4 Stampede vxl. I bought used off fEbay. Looks like it was Used a bunch and bashed a bit. cleaned dust, dirt, sand out of bullet connectors on v3. Then took 5000mah 2 cell lipo fully charged. Hook it all up. Hold truck by chassis and pull trigger. I get 4 spinning pizza cutters. Set the truck down. Pull trigger. Truck gets up to speed then goes into low voltage mode, or lvm, where the esc. binks red slowly and the truck goes half speed. This happened to me 3 times. Then i seen bad soldering on the battery connector. I changed the connector. I had to make a jumper wire because the wires on the esc have been cut short. There is a Traxxas battery connector on one end and a black and red Maxx connectors on the othr. Just so you know I can solder. I am 99% sure my solder joints and jumper wire I made are good and not the problem. I recharged the battery and took the truck back out. Set it down and pulled the trigger. Sucess! The truck ran great. Topped out about 45 mph. mulching up the leaves all the way. After the 9 minutes it wet into lvm for less than a minute then wouldn't go anymore. I have recharged the battery. Took it back out. Got up to speed and back into lvm. Checked the battery connector, messed with the bullet connectors. They feel a little gritty sliding them together. could that be it? Do the connectors make that much of a difference? Do they wear out like say how a Tamiya battery plug would? Maybe I will just byass them and solder the wires together. Pretty cheesy you can't just solder the wires to the motor. Anyways any help would be great before I start chopping wires on a $250. model. Thanks.

[Coelacanth]

Connectors that aren't up to the task will tend to get hot or even melt (in the case of Tamiya-style connectors), but probably wouldn't cause a significant drop in run-time.

There's a lot that you're assuming with this car...the ESC could be flaky. Is the battery the one that came with the car or your own? If it came with the car, the battery could have a reduced run-time. But since I'm assuming the battery is your own and known to be good, I have to point my finger at the ESC. I don't know much about Traxxas electronics, but can you reprogram it or reset it to default settings, then go from there? Do you have another ESC to test with?

[romulus22]

This exact thing happened to my SC10 with that brushless setup. Make sure your batteries are up to spec. I was told that the batteries were most likely the cause after I sold it in half working condition

[Lonestar]

would you be using 2S with the speedo setup as 3S, maybe?

otherwise, can be many things, most likely worn out battery with too high IR. Reduce timing/boost/watts/whatever on the motor and see if it still happens. If it's disappeared with the lower settings, it means your battery can't supply enough current.

and... you need friends. Because friends don't let friends buy traxxas electronics, which are overpriced, overmarketed, and underperforming

Paul

[RC104ever]

I'm going to lay the blame on the ESC here. As it was used, you really don't know what has happened to it in the past - it could have a borderline connection somewhere causing it to go into lvm. Have you tried resetting everything to factory defaults? That's always a good place to start.

Have you tried putting in a known working ESC with the rest of the setup? Or swapping in a different battery as someone suggested?

I had one of these and tried and tried to get it to work properly but gave up and bought a Castle Sidewinder. Much better.

[dldiaz]

I agree with above, either a weak battery or bad ESC.

I find the Traxxas Velineon setup to be pretty robust, it takes a lot of abuse...
and Traxxas customer support is "usually" pretty good,
they might replace the ESC.

[K-TOWN-KITT]

Thanks for the replies. I don't think it's the battery but I'm charging up a puffy but trusty 5000 2 cell lipo now and am going to try the truck with that. I figured out how to reset the esc. on Youtube. Kind of like a Novak Rooster. I'm going to center the trim knob and reset the esc. Gotta go for now. I'll let you guys know what happened later tonight.

[illshou]

The vxl3 is notorious for lvc problems. Most guys that still run them just turn the lvc off and run an external one

[harry697]

I agree with the rest. Leaning more towards a weak battery but could very well be the esc also. The VXL3s is known for a high cutoff voltage. Every one I've ever owned would hit LVD at around 3.7 volts per cell. With 2wd vehicles and 5000mah or higher batteries I would still get an easy 15-20 minutes of run time. However, a friend of mine just bought a new Slash 4x4 and he's lucky to get 10 minutes out of a good running 5000mah pack. He's running the same packs in a Blitz with VXL esc and gets 20 minutes or more out of it. Both are shutting down at around 3.7 per cell.

Unfortunately resetting the esc won't help anything. The VXL3s doesn't have an adjustable LVD and it also auto-detects whether you're running a 2S or 3S pack. Only setting that would affect run times would be turning the LVD on or off.


In the past two weeks, we gained a new driver at our backyard track. He's also running a 2wd Slash VXL but he has the LVD turned off and uses an external alarm. He has drastically longer run times than anybody else on the track with the same esc.

[K-TOWN-KITT]

Just put in the other pack. Instead of just seeing how the truck responded to just changing batteries, My dumb ass did the reset at the same time. I just lost my control test. Now the truck runs around 60% of what it did when it ran that 1 time. Changed back to the other pack and the same thing, 60%. Stupid. How could I be so stupid? Stupid to buy traxxas. Your right Lonestar. These are the people who made such creations as the Sledgehammer and the xl1. And to prove how stupid I am, I just got a Jato 3.3 in today. We all know how no 2 3.3's run the same right. Ok relax. Sorry to get all wound up. I know that there stuff can be very squirrely but when you get either a good motor/esc. or 3.3 you know it. l'm just mad because now I have to learn how to set everthing on that stupid radio. I remember messing with one of these before. Pain in the but to program without the tlemetry if I remember correctly. There is really an extra blink for everything or something dumb like that right? Been a busy day. I'm going to watch some vids. and get on it tomorrow. I'll keep you guys updated.

[K-TOWN-KITT]

Alright, I got the transmitter calibrated and have the esc. on profile 1. Back to well square 2, lol. Put in original pack. Again Held the truck by the chassis and pulled the throddle, I got my pizza cutters back. Put it down. Almost got it up to speed and into lvm. Put in old puffy pack no.2. Same thig. So it is not calibration, profile, or the battery. I think it's just Traxxas.

[K-TOWN-KITT]

By the way here is the setup video for xvl. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8PxlZ_epkM

[Coelacanth]

Alright, I got the transmitter calibrated and have the esc. on profile 1. Back to well square 2, lol. Put in original pack. Again Held the truck by the chassis and pulled the throddle, I got my pizza cutters back. Put it down. Almost got it up to speed and into lvm. Put in old puffy pack no.2. Same thig. So it is not calibration, profile, or the battery. I think it's just Traxxas.

Well, the Traxxas ESC, by process of elimination.

[Lonestar]

Your right Lonestar. These are the people who made such creations as the Sledgehammer and the xl1.

well, I didn't exactly say this... I said their electronics were not good value for money... some of their cars, especially last century, were fabulous.

Anyways.

I hope you find out what happened...

Paul

[romulus22]

What size are the batteries. The problem I was told that most likely was wrong with mine is that the batteries couldn't keep up with the amp draw of the ESC.

Keeping track of this thread cause I'm curious what the final verdict is.