Strange ESC and Receiver behaviour

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WeaselHinge

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Arrma RC's
  1. Raider
I'm hoping someone can help.

My son has a Raider Mega that last ran a while ago. At that time it was fine. Since then it has been sat in the garage which is dry and clean etc although we are about 500m from the ocean so you find things eventually slowly corrode. I can't see that being the issue and it all looks OK.

We just tried the car and it's dead basically. The sequence of steps was this :

1. Turned on. ESC LED flashed (red). No throttle or steering control ie nothing happened.
2. Tried another battery and changed transmitter batteries. No difference
3. Accessed receiver. Noticed that one motor cable had split insulation where it had caught against a heatsink fin. It may have shorted to the heatsink in the past. Applied insulation tape.
4. Went through bind process. LED on receiver flashed and bind seemed done.Tried steering and it worked. Did not try throttle, no reason.... Put it all back together and it didn't work (of course)
5. Removed receiver again. Powered up to do bind process once more but noticed LED on receiver was not flashing. Manoeuvred cables and re-seated cables in case there was an issue. No change. Have tried this several times and found that sometimes the receiver LED flashes for a few seconds and then goes out. When that happens turning ESC switch off and on again doesn't result in the receiver LED flashing again. It's almost like you have to leave it a while and then when you come back to it there will be the initial few seconds of receiver LED flash. Disconnecting battery and re-trying makes no difference. During all this the LED on the ESC flashes
6. So it seems like there is no power to the receiver. Or what power there is has major problems. The "leave awhile" aspect might suggest something related to capacitors holding charge. Either way I don't think the Tx and RX are bound together OR they might be but lack of power to Rx (seemingly) of course means it doesn't work.
7. I have tried removing the motor just to check it and that seems to work fine.

Disappointed in this product. It burned out the stock motor just driving around the park when he first got it. Long drive back to hobby shop to buy a replacement cheap no-brand type. Now we find after simply not using it for probably 1yr+ that the control electronics seem to have failed. It pretty poor. I doubt he's used it more than 10 maybe 20 times. I expect hassle keeping my old original Rough Rider going but this was brand new.

It's impossible to fault-find. Is it the ESC or is it the Rx? Does anyone have any suggestions for fixing the problem?

I'd also welcome any suggestions for replacement ESC and Rx parts (must work with existing Tx) - brand and source would be a real help. I suspect that the current electronics will be going in the bin

Thanks
 
It's a couple of years old unfortunately. Any ideas about whether the fault lies with the ESC or the Rx? Or suggestions for replacements?
 
It's a couple of years old unfortunately. Any ideas about whether the fault lies with the ESC or the Rx? Or suggestions for replacements?
Sounds like your esc power to the rx is the problem,do you have another radio controled vehicle that you could plug your rx into to test.Most likely bad conection on the esc pins,do you have a volt meter to read the output voltage on the red and black esc wire going to rx?
 
It's weird. I tried checking the voltage and it looked like it was 1.7V. Then nothing. I thought this might be a reflection of the condition above where the Rx LED went out after a few seconds.

I tried a new battery - again, had already done this - and it was fully OK. I assumed it was a bad connection and decided to try putting the whole thing back together checking the continuity of control at every stage. I reached the last stage (ie fully re-assembled) and it's still working fine. This despite multiple disconnects of batter y between each stage and much moving of all cables as part of re-fitting.

So right now it works. Makes no sense at all.
 
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