Whoops, just a bit too hot!!

[Shogun6]

Hi guys, I disappeared for a while due to my conversion.

Yes I am coming out of the closet, the first step is admittance, so I admit I am now addicted to Rc helicopters.....

That being said the other night I charged the big and mini revo batteries as my daughter and I were going to drive them around, well next thing I know it is her bed time and I have 2 sets of batteries to discharge....

The mini revo was so much fun I kinda forgot to let it cool down. In the end the esc and motor were at 160 degrees......

What solutions have been created to keep things cool?

Currently I am running a mini summit on the body.

[ttThree]

As far as I know, 180 F is the limit. You can put a heatsink on the motor and fan, and a fan on the esc. That should help if you are running the same gearing. You can choose a smaller pinion and then the merv will run cooler, thats another option as well.

[minirevobasher]

Mine hits 160 too. Im running stock gearing, but im going to gear down to a 23t pinion and put a heatsink on the motor. Somewhere on the bay you can buy a esc fan. 50togo send me a link but i lost it....

[Jimmie Neutron]

160-180 is my sweet spot... 200 is bad news.
BUT, if you are running all out and only hitting 160; that seems fine by me!!

[minirevobasher]

160-180 is my sweet spot... 200 is bad news.
BUT, if you are running all out and only hitting 160; that seems fine by me!!

Jimmie, everyones telling me to gear down and im going all out with it hitting 160. It goes into thermal protection though.

[Jimmie Neutron]

Thermal protection is 200... so if you are hitting thermal, you do need to gear down.
Keep in mind that when you snap your temp; it is an external temp, not an internal one.

Also: just because I do it, does not make it right. lol

[Dadx2mj]

I agree with Jimmie, 160º is no problem. The ESC should not go inot thermal shut down until closer to 200º and that is the same temp you will start doing harm to the magnets in the motor.

[mike-susieq1]

friend of mine today his went into thermal after about 10mins running on very short grass but he was running a 3s lipo think it was stock gearing maybe. not sure why he keeps doing that i told him so many times to run a smaller pinion like 23t and only run and get some 2s lipos so he wont burn his stuff up but keeps doing what he wants ooh well. esc was way to hot to touch and motor was the same it even has a fan on the motor too but esc was blinking red like normal speed blinks. mine has never hit thermal i dont let it if it gets even the slight too hot to touch i stop for like 5-10mins and do something else instead then run again.

i have to agree with Jimmie on that statement what works for him doesnt mean its going to work for someone else each motor/esc is different.

[minirevobasher]

friend of mine today his went into thermal after about 10mins running on very short grass but he was running a 3s lipo think it was stock gearing maybe. not sure why he keeps doing that i told him so many times to run a smaller pinion like 23t and only run and get some 2s lipos so he wont burn his stuff up but keeps doing what he wants ooh well. esc was way to hot to touch and motor was the same it even has a fan on the motor too but esc was blinking red like normal speed blinks. mine has never hit thermal i dont let it if it gets even the slight too hot to touch i stop for like 5-10mins and do something else instead then run again.

i have to agree with Jimmie on that statement what works for him doesnt mean its going to work for someone else each motor/esc is different.

When it goes into thermal my temp gun says 160.
Im still going to gear down though to a 23t with 2s. Should be good. I wonder if anyone had done 23/50 with 3s and still had a heat problem. In that matter, even 2s.

[50togo]

Either your temp gun or your esc is out of spec
Depending on the grass 23/50 might not be low enough
I would still think about an esc upgrade

[minirevobasher]

Either your temp gun or your esc is out of spec

I can hold my finger down for a couple seconds but that is it

[Dadx2mj]

When it goes into thermal my temp gun says 160.

Where are you reading this 160º? You are temping the ESC right not the motor?

[minirevobasher]

Where are you reading this 160º? You are temping the ESC right not the motor?

On the heatsink on the esc. Once i get this thing running in the next couple days i will try new spots and go with the highest spot.

[Mossie]

guys getting a terminal protection at 200 and holding a tempgun and read 160 is easy to explain

i see guys here with a temp gun , hejjjjj its only was 20 dollar a wallmarket

yep! good for you but these cheap things are great for fooling around but got a major deviation

a good temp gun without this is at least i think 350 dollar in euro 200 euro (you got a industrial one then) with out deviation or at leats -4 or -10 difference

i can hear almost a bunch of PPL now who think what the ........ is he talking about that dutch guy

let me explain : i work almost 22 years in a Garage as a car mechanic , in that branch we use the temp gun alot with problems on hit issue like brakes.
a cheap temp gun wil nog give a perfect temp and we did tested this at my working ground

with a cheap COnrad (a radioshack one) , a temp gun from a local hobbyshop and a insane 3m industial one

so one day we looked for a problem and could not find it ourself so we called the guy who deliver the brakes to a certain brand and was sending one of his engineers , this guy brought a probe and other stuff and a real exensive temp gun which measure temps as 160,051
and we startd to find out how hot the brakes got after a few drives and what was the problem.
he did temp check it with his one and we also did a few check with ours both the cheap ones did give 30% less heat then his expensive one and our industial one.



the industrial 3m one did give -4 deviation and he did say throw away the two cheap ones

by the time that i plan to buy a temp gun a few months ago i was lucky my Uncle is a man who build machines for food company and fly RC heleicopters as a hobby and did vissit me an told him the temp gun story.
the next week he was at my door step and had a package for me
a industrial 3M temp gun



do with this advise what you want but cheap temp guns dont give you a perfect temp

[minirevobasher]

Well im not buying a 350 dollar one.....

[chilidillo]

OK ya'll, so what IS a good gun to buy at a reasonable price? I bought a Duratrax Flashpoint assuming it would be close enough for our purposes. But it sounds like maybe not.

Sooooo..... somebody post a link for a good value temp monitor

[Dadx2mj]

Before everyone goes and trashes their $20 temp guns may I suggest they are fine for our purpose. Thousands of hobbyists have been suing them for decades without issue. IMO with the exception of the odd ball fluke the vast majority of them read within a few degrees of acutal temp and that is all you need. Let's say the actual temp of your motor is 200º and your temp guns reads 190º are you not going to take the same action anyway? I have owned dozen of temp guns starting back years before I got into RC when I was keeping reptiles and from the cheap ones to ones that cost $50-$100 I saw little to no difference.

[Mossie]

thats what we thought HMMMMM its good

but its making a difference with a industrial one

i dont wanna say throw away your temp gun but dont think the temp you read are the acurate ones and are right temps

[Dadx2mj]

thats what we thought HMMMMM its good

but its making a difference with a industrial one

i dont wanna say throw away your temp gun but dont think the temp you read are the acurate ones and are right temps

I cant speak to your expereince but I do trust mine. At one time I rounded up 5 different temp guns in my house and used them on a cube of ice. I assume the ice was approximately 32ºF and all the guns read within 5º of that assumed temp. Maybe not dead accurate but more than accurate enough for our purpose in this hobby. IMO it would be foolish to suggest we need a $350 temp gun for this hobby.

[Mossie]

you got a accurate one then , my experience from work is that cheap ones dont give a correct measurement

[Jimmie Neutron]

Maybe not... but what Dad is trying to get at is they are accurate enough for this hobby.

I have had to buy quite a few temp guns (they don't like being washed) all of these guns were $15 or less and all of them were within a few degrees of being accurate.

[Dadx2mj]

you got a accurate one then , my experience from work is that cheap ones dont give a correct measurement

An accurate "ONE"??? I had 5 of them when I did this simple test.

[linux38]

So 160 thru 170 is OK on the merv. I only hit those temps when running 3s lipo batteries.

[50togo]

i had a china made temp gun .i ran tall gearing which was fine with a fan on the motor -fan stopped running during a run motor only showed 180 but overheated the magnets in the motor. i have since dumped it and use my raytek from my t maxx days

[Jimmie Neutron]

So 160 thru 170 is OK on the merv. I only hit those temps when running 3s lipo batteries.

Yes... I would say it is perfect!

[linux38]

Thanks Jimmie

[minirevobasher]

What gearing are you running linux?

[chilidillo]

I might suggest that you test your gun on a pot of boiling water; 212F at sea level gets you an idea of how close your high temps are to reality

[nitsuj]

I might suggest that you test your gun on a pot of boiling water; 212F at sea level gets you an idea of how close your high temps are to reality

Great tip!

I'm gunna try that out. & thanks for mentioning the altitude "variance".

The variance in temperature of people (approx. 98.6f/37c) is small enough to test accuracy of these guns too. But checking the variance at the temperature that will be closer to what you measure (i.e. 150f-220f of esc/motor) is better.


Regarding the temp guns, mine is a very cheap one and says it's 95% accurate. It measure my tongue 33.7c / 92.6f.

98.6-92.6= 6
(6/92.6)*100= 6.5% variance...meh. (and that was my morning temperature, I was still warming up lol)

[linux38]

What gearing are you running linux?

Currently running 19/50 on 2.2 hpi rims and proline racing speedhawgs.