Senton Senton 4x4 Mega - New, LED flash after 10 sec

[ttiffany]

Bought a new Senton 4x4 Mega for my grandson for Christmas a few weeks ago. I charged the battery when I got it home. Powered it on just to make sure it worked and ran it for a few secs before I wrapped it up under the tree. Today he opened his gift and we took it outside for a drive. Our first run we got 60-90 seconds of good running. Then forward/reverse quit and only steering would respond. LED flashing. I turned it off and on again and it would run for 10-15 secs and then same thing. Using stock 3300 niMH battery. Battery tests at 9.6v with a meter (odd since it is an 8.4v battery). I've seen lots of forum threads about resetting the throttle for this issue. Doesn't this model do a throttle calib on power up?

Is there something I'm missing? Is it possible that the esc is bad out of the box? Outside temp was about 34F. Not sure if that was a factor. Local hobby store where I bought it will open up Sat morning so if I don't get it figured out it's going back there.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Grandson was deeply disappointed that we had to stop!!

 

[SrC]

Feel really bad for your grandson. Present and all....
It's not good at all to fully charge a Nimpack and let it sit unused as a rule. It creates a bad capacity memory. New Nimpacks need to be cycle charged and discharged several times before they run at their peak level. FWIW. They are best stored very low and drained, no lower than 8.4v for your particular pack. (Just normally discharged after a bash). But yeah 9.6 v shows it is charged and normal. Does your charger have a discharge feature. I would discharge it and recharge it. Read the manual again. I believe there are jumper settings for that ESC. Make sure they are correct for the "Nimpack" setting. I believe there is also a ""Lipo jumper setting as well. Double check that. Seems your ESC is going into LVC mode. (low voltage cut-off) By the way it is reacting. That is voltage related, i.e. battery pack.
Hopefully others will chime in with their ideas.
Good luck.


EDIT: Check page 19 of the manual regarding jumper settings.

 

[ttiffany]

Feel really bad for your grandson. Present and all....
It's not good at all to fully charge a Nimpack and let it sit unused as a rule. It creates a bad capacity memory. New Nimpacks need to be cycle charged and discharged several times before they run at their peak level. FWIW. They are best stored very low and drained, no lower than 8.4v for your particular pack. (Just normally discharged after a bash). But yeah 9.6 v shows it is charged and normal. Does your charger have a discharge feature. I would discharge it and recharge it. Read the manual again. I believe there are jumper settings for that ESC. Make sure they are correct for the "Nimpack" setting. I believe there is also a ""Lipo jumper setting as well. Double check that. Seems your ESC is going into LVC mode. (low voltage cut-off) By the way it is reacting. That is voltage related, i.e. battery pack.
Hopefully others will chime in with their ideas.
Good luck.


EDIT: Check page 19 of the manual regarding jumper settings.

Thanks for the reply. I've checked all of the jumper settings already and they are correct. I do agree that it sounds like a voltage indicator but I don't know why. Battery has always tested over 9v. I'm using the stock charger out of the box and it doesn't have a discharge feature. I'm going to head over to the local hobby shop on Sat. They have a staff of RC enthusiasts so hopefully they will be able to figure it out. Also going to pickup a 2nd larger battery for him while I'm there. That way he can get longer run time.

 

[OleManTan]

My friend and I bought typhon 3s blx 4x4's and both are hitting LVC after a few mins like 5-8 mins. And this using 5200mah 3s lipo. Something isn't right with these things. Makes me sad not being able to use it. Wasn't cheap either.

 

[ttiffany]

So I took the Senton back to the hobby shop today. Like src, they also thought that it was triggering a voltage problem on the esc. They thought it might be a bad battery so they put in a new niMH pack and out to the parking lot we went. They ran it for about 5 mins and it ran great. I'm hoping it really was that simple as a bad battery pack.

I picked up a 2nd battery and better charger. Hopefully the 2nd run for the grandson will go better than the first.

 

[OleManTan]

I fixed mine today. This info is in the manual; ESC factory reset followed by throttle/neutral/reverse calibration. I am now able to hit factory lipo lvc of 3.7v and I bought a lvc alarm and set it to 3.2v and I now have changed the esc to work in nimh mode so I can get more out of the batteries than 3.7v I bought 5200mah 3s 50c batteries for $20 each. They rip. I'm charging them all now and tomorrow I will finally be able to full discharge each battery and see what kind of run times I get. I'm expecting about 20 mins running back and forth full throttle.

 

[KDRC]

Bought a new Senton 4x4 Mega for my grandson for Christmas a few weeks ago. I charged the battery when I got it home. Powered it on just to make sure it worked and ran it for a few secs before I wrapped it up under the tree. Today he opened his gift and we took it outside for a drive. Our first run we got 60-90 seconds of good running. Then forward/reverse quit and only steering would respond. LED flashing. I turned it off and on again and it would run for 10-15 secs and then same thing. Using stock 3300 niMH battery. Battery tests at 9.6v with a meter (odd since it is an 8.4v battery). I've seen lots of forum threads about resetting the throttle for this issue. Doesn't this model do a throttle calib on power up?

Is there something I'm missing? Is it possible that the esc is bad out of the box? Outside temp was about 34F. Not sure if that was a factor. Local hobby store where I bought it will open up Sat morning so if I don't get it figured out it's going back there.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Grandson was deeply disappointed that we had to stop!!

Upgraded mine to 6shttps://youtube.com/user/StrangeSound212