Runaway truck frustration.

[Marc Westerlind]

Hello, new to the group here...

You may have to excuse me a bit, I'm quite a novice.

I have been working to resurrect my old Team Losi XXT these last few
days. It was in mildly rough shape, but I got it driveable last night.
A problem I had long forgotten about has resurfaced.

The truck is using an old Novak Reversible Rooster speed controller,
and an older Traxxas stick and receiver 27mhz setup.

When the battery runs low on the truck, the car just goes all out, BTTW,
WFO, (full throttle), in whatever direction it feels like. It seems
as though there is no power left to steer the vehicle when this happens
and I have to chase it down before it self-destructs. (probably why
it was in rough shape when I put it away)

I bought the truck used a while back, and the speed controller was
already installed w/o any instructions. I found some info online here
that talks about setting up the speed controller. This is a little
embarrassing, but I had no idea this needed to be done.

Could this be causing my problems, or is there a deeper problem or
issue?

Is the problem actually within the receiver, sending bad info to the
speed controller once the battery runs low??


Thanks, I appreciate the help!
-marc

[Corwin]

> Is the problem actually within the receiver, sending bad info to the
> speed controller once the battery runs low??

Sounds like your ESC doesn't have radio priority circuitry, so what's
happening is there isn't enough power in the battery left to power the
receiver, but its continuing to power the motor.. so the damn thing goes
SNAFU. What you need is a new ESC.

[Corwin]

> > Is the problem actually within the receiver, sending bad info to the
> > speed controller once the battery runs low??
>
> Sounds like your ESC doesn't have radio priority circuitry, so what's
> happening is there isn't enough power in the battery left to power the
> receiver, but its continuing to power the motor.. so the damn thing goes
> SNAFU. What you need is a new ESC.

oh yah.. if you have the stuff that came with your receiver, there's
probably a little battery pack that allows you to run the power to the
receiver from a set of batteries instead of drawing power from the battery
pack that powers the motor. that would solve your problem too.

[Pt3]

The Rooster has "radio priority circuitry", but it may either be having a
malfunction or I've seen some receivers cause this as well. When Battery
voltage drops to a certain point it will pin the throttle channel to its
extreme. You can try a receiver battery pack to see if that will help if
you are running short on cash, unless you have access to another receiver to
swap to see what happens. I have 6 of the original Roosters and they all
work fine, but I'm running all Futaba radios.

Patrick



"Corwin" <corwinSPAMMENOT@deadmime.com> wrote in message
news:asipqa0d4r@enews1.newsguy.com...
> > Is the problem actually within the receiver, sending bad info to the
> > speed controller once the battery runs low??
>
> Sounds like your ESC doesn't have radio priority circuitry, so what's
> happening is there isn't enough power in the battery left to power the
> receiver, but its continuing to power the motor.. so the damn thing goes
> SNAFU. What you need is a new ESC.
>
>

[Marc Westerlind]

Pt3 wrote:
>
> The Rooster has "radio priority circuitry", but it may either be having a
> malfunction or I've seen some receivers cause this as well. When Battery
> voltage drops to a certain point it will pin the throttle channel to its
> extreme. You can try a receiver battery pack to see if that will help if
> you are running short on cash, unless you have access to another receiver to
> swap to see what happens. I have 6 of the original Roosters and they all
> work fine, but I'm running all Futaba radios.

Thanks for the help guys...

Yeah, the receiver I'm using is ancient. I didn't even know Traxxas was
around back when it looks like these things were built. ;) It sounds
like the problem is with this piece of hardware though.

Upgrading the whole radio system is a definite possibility... If I get a
chance I'll toy around with a separate battery pack for the receiver, but
I'm currently leaning towards some new equipment.


Thanks!
-marc