Christmas problems- AX-10 Help

[strangler]

Hello. Getting back into rc's after a 10+ year break. Wife just bought me an AX-10 kit for Christmas and I am really impressed with the truck, but not so impressed with the performance.

Joe Blow hobby counter guy sold her the truck kit, a Novak fifty-five motor, a Futaba MS AM radio (with 2 servos, no ESC), a Duratrax Insellispeed DTXM1059 ESC, a Hitec HS-645MG steering servo and 2 2400 Dynamite Dyna-Fun stick packs which I charged with my old Five Star Racing Line 5501 timed charger- 15 min +5 min, as I used to..??

Ok, now that you guys know what I'm working with..... here are the issues:

Forward AND reverse are glitchy.
Forward top-speed vary's, not by much but you can hear the diference.
I only have about 4 minutes of "good?" runtime. After that the truck slows.
There seems to be a delay between forward and reverse, more noticable when going into reverse.

Here are some facts:
I did not solder and capaciters to the motor. It appears to have the factory installed and there were no loose ones delivered with the motor.

I followed the directions as to setting up the ESC. The directions did not specify whether I should have the motor wires hooked up to the motor or not when I went to full forward and full reverse while watching the lights. I first chose to do it with the motor unplugged, and was unable to get the lights to read properly in reverse. I hooked up the motor and tried again- same thing. So much for easy setup, the lights are correct in forward, but do not come on at all when in reverse.

I hate the radio. Can I swap the crystal into an old Magnum Junior or Sport?

I am charging the battery for a total of 20 minutes- when removed from the charger I am showing 7.1V on my meter. Are these short run times to be expected? I thought it would run longer than the 10 or so minutes my old stadium trucks used to get.


In short, what am I doing wrong? I'm struggling with this stupid thing while trying to smile at my wife and say "I love you honey, this thing ROCKS".

Any help is appreciated.

-Scott

[Snakeman]

My peak charger takes about an hour to charge my 3600 Nimh batteries.

Dinners ready, so I gotta go, but check out rccrawler.com . They're the pirate4x4 of the rc world. Should hopefully answer your ?'s there.

[Deezul]

hmm thats a decent motor. did you check gear mesh and did you see if there is a reverse delay setting on the esc? also check your channel switches on the radio, maybe you got it backwards?

[smewhtguy]

Something is not right I am getting an hour on 1800 mah nicd batteries with a 55t matrix and rooster crawler esc. I am not sure on that esc but alot of the noncrawler based esc have a reverse delay and no drag brake. Also be careful how you have your wires routed, take care to keep your esc wire and your servo wires as far apart as possible and keep them away from the power wires going to the motor. I know space is limited but I see alot of people zip tie all the wires togther and this can cause glitching with cheap am radios.

[strangler]

Found a couple of issues. My new controller is junk and full throttle is not truly full throttle. That problem kept the ESC from being properly setup and my battery's were not getting a full charge. I swapped crystals with an old Futaba Sport and bought a new peak charger and everything is working a ton better. I have not run it long enough to get a run time out of it yet, but everything seems to be working better. I do have the ESC mounted on top of the servo, and all of the wires zip'd together, so if there is any continued glitch I will seperate those. Good to know, I didn't know that I wasn't suposed to do that.

Thanks guys.

[PJR]

My 6yr old just got the RTR for Xmas and was finding the same problems.I put a better esc and a Hitech servo along with one of my 50 turns and its way better

[Lance]

My reverse responsiveness sucks! Glad I'm not the only one...

[grn97TJ]

Lance wrote:

My reverse responsiveness sucks!

Get a new ESC. I have the Novak rooster crawler on my ax10 buggy and reverse is now instant and I can now save a rollover in time!
and it has a hill hold feature so when your on a steep incline it holds your place when you let off the throttle instead of rolling back like the stock one.

[The Modfather]

Originally Posted by grn97TJ

Lance wrote:



Get a new ESC. I have the Novak rooster crawler on my ax10 buggy and reverse is now instant and I can now save a rollover in time!
and it has a hill hold feature so when your on a steep incline it holds your place when you let off the throttle instead of rolling back like the stock one.

x2