[aotsukisho]

So one of my friends recently picked up a brand new E-Revo Brushless Edition. We set it up this Friday and spent an entire weekend bashing around.


Got the box in the mail


Red Hat Revo


cracking open the box


very nicely packed


okay, enough with the plastic


the updated guts for the truck. It comes with the new TQi radio, that has telemetry and all sorts of things built in.


the Mamba Monster


next to my ERBE


unfortunately, the night we unboxed the new E-Revo, the lipos had not yet come in from Hobbyking so we test drove it with the 7-cell NiMHs. Disappointing performance, but Brad was happy regardless.


closeup of the black Traxxas-OEM 1515


using the iOS app for realtime telemetry. It's pretty nifty, I must say.


old vs new


and they can both pick on the little guy at the same time

[aotsukisho]

After a couple of weeks of bashing around, things have begun to need replacement on the RHER. Unfortunately, most of these things have been ESC's lol. Both the stock Mamba Monster and my old one have stopped working or caught fire, respectively. I didn't get photos of the one that came with the truck since it doesn't look any different, but I did get some of the one that exploded.


not too suspicious at first glance, minus the desoldered negative battery wire


uh oh


some serious heat inside


the status LEDs are long gone


the next day, I was still amazed


yeesh


now onto the gorn that happened inside


smells like how it looks


all of the copper traces had their mask burned off


copper lifing off everywhere


forgot to take a photo of the MM in the chassis, but there are burn marks everywhere


closeup


inside of the body got scorched too

...and so, at this point in the story, Brad asks me what the hell is going on and why he's blowing so many ESC's. I honestly tell him I don't know, and that possibly by running it at 6s he's getting a little close to the voltage threshold and possibly he's just being unlucky. (My old MM that caught fire had only been used on 4s until just recently.)

"What would you do?" he asks. "I just want this thing to run, and not blow up every time I play with it."

"Well..." I say.


a week later, this shows up in the mail


oh yes.


I had run out of 6.5mm bullets so we reused the ones from the blown ESC. Lots and lots of solder


plexiglas mounting plate for maximum surface area that the doublestick tape we used can adhere to.

I forgot to take photos of the truck with everything mounted up, but thanks to the plate I didn't have to cut into his chassis' battery vents like how I had to do with mine.

[aotsukisho]

RHER keeps blowing its tires


back in the garage, with another midnight wrench session


the tire tore all the way around right near the bead glue joint


there was some intermittent grinding coming from the diff when he first got the truck, and it sort of went away and we didn't think much of it. However, when we broke down the chassis to put thicker oil in the diffs, I noticed this bit of copper stuck in the rear ring gear. Took some time with a flathead screwdriver to scrape off, and now the diff is back to normal with 500k weight oil in it.


Brad being a cyclops