bzyguy01

Has anyone else ever experience a brand new out of the package esc going up in flames within the first 3 seconds? Last nite I replaced my Electrifly 25 amp esc on a Yak that has been flown 20+ times now with a brand new eflite 40A esc as I was overamping my 25A ESC with a hacker A30. I wanted to add some redundancy and peace of mind as when I overamped my 25A ESC it would cut out in flite and then I would have to rearm it in flite to get it working again and you know that in some maneuvers low to the ground it can be a handfull! I installed the new ESC and made sure I had the motor spinning the correct way....Finished the reassembly of the plane and test fired it to make sure everything was good......Powered it up , ESC armed, Hit the throttle....3 seconds into it....Poof, Flames galore! You should have seen me trying to disconnect the battery while blowing on the fire to try and get it out as my buddy ran over to the sink to get windex to put out the fire....Black smoke and little string like things floating around in the garage for a min with both of us cracking up! Kinda funny to see us run around like monkies! Not funny about the ESC or nearly loosing my bird tho!

patnchris

Yup,
Had the same thing happen on my Ultra Stik 25e......LHS gave me full credit towards a Castle Creations 45.....Said it wasn't the first one they'd seem.........However I have the E-Flight 40 in my SeaGull Extra 300 and my Mini FuntanaX and have had no problems......Must be a quality control issue.....Pat

zac dady

That has never happened to me before. I would have heart attack if it did. I hope nobody was burned imagine accidently burning down your house while just trying improve your planes performace that would blow. I own three e flite 40 amp speed controllers and have never experieced one problem guess I'm lucky.

bzyguy01

I've heard of theese things but never personally had it happen to me ...until now[:@] I have at least 10 or so eflite esc's in use in other birds but, like I said, Never happened till now. I've had really good luck with my electric stuff so far...not too many complaints. I have nothing but issues with my gas stuff at times. Electric sure is nice!

zac dady

I know what you mean about hearing about it but seeing it happen must be crazy. The whole reason i went to e power is the reliability. I don't want to go back to the days of cussing engines fuel tanks. I think you just had bad luck with that speedcontroller. Will water even put out a electrical fire is there a special fire extinguisher an electric flyer should have? What happened to you really woke me up this afternoon.

bzyguy01

I pulled off the battery to get the sparking to stop but by this time I had flames. The regular ol fire extinguisher or water would have worked fine.

squirlgod

HAPPEND TO ME YESTERDAY. I had been using it to taxi and I wanted to try a different prop, so I put a bigger one on and all I knew was that I was drawing more than 30 amps. I don't know how much more, however. I don't think it was more than 40 because my AXI 2814/12 didn't get warm at all. mine however happend a little differently. It cut the motor out and wouldn't power back up, and when I tried disconecting the battery and reconecting, SMOKE...yea...I guess I need a wattmeter...

tedburg

Add me to the list. My E-flite 40 amp ESC just smoked on my first flight attempt.
I had spun it up at home without the prop on the motor and everything worked fine.
So I put on the prop and headed to the field. I turned radio on and plugged in the
LiPo. I did a range check before arming the ESC and that was fine. Armed the
ESC and blipped the throttle quickly once. Poof. What should I have them replace
it with?
Thanks
Ted

Red Scholefield

My Feedback: (9)

Stuff happens. Had a flying buddy wipe out his ESC when an E-flite battery had the leads reversed internal to the battery. Cost him a nice little B-17 model.

bzyguy01

Same deal here, I have a few more of these eflite ESC's and they are all fine. Just a thing is all....Poor QC testing.

squirlgod

I called horizon about a week ago and they said that if I sent it in...they would replace it no charge.... I just hope It doens't happen again...

S.C.C.

Yep.[:@] I had exactly the same thing happen to my 40a. Now i have a nice hole in the side of my mini pulse[&o]. sent it back and now its lost in post.

pbunn

My Feedback: (1)

I guess I should read this forum more often. It happened to me about 9 mos ago. I called Horizon and they told me there was no waranty for crash damage - mine blew on the first power up on takeoff of a new plane - the plane veered off the runway and was damaged after the pop and smoke. I argue that the ESC caused the crash and they told me to send it in with a letter and they would decide. I did so and have never heard a word. I sent it priority mail with a receipt and the package was received but nothing from Horizon. I needed a 30 amp ESC and looked hard at the Castle Phoenix 35 before saving some money with the E flite. Bad decision. Now I see that it wasn't just a random occurance. BTW -I replaced it with the Castle Phoenix 35 and have not had any problem.

flyguy00

My Feedback: (3)

You can add another pilot to the list of those who have had an E-Flite 40A ESC burn up. Mine flamed out while I was bench checking my new Seagull EP X-Ray ARF. I plugged the battery into the ESC to check the servo throws and motor direction, and all was okay. Then I unplugged the battery to make a few minor adjustments. A few minutes later, I plugged the battery back into the ESC and moved the servos and blipped the motor. Then I smelled smoke and I saw an orange glow coming from the ESC, so I unplugged it before things got worse. When I inspected the ESC, I noticed that the insulation had burned away on the front (motor side) of the ESC. Incidentally, my ESC looked just like yours after it burned up.

I called Horizon Hobby, and explained what happened. They told me to mail the failed unit to them for evaluation and replacement, since it is covered under the 1-year warranty.

My R/C flying is primarily with glow engines. But I have a small foamie that has many flights on it, and the ESC has never burned itself up.

Based on the threads that I have read on RCU, it would appear that the E-Flite 40A ESC has some type of problem, which causes it to burn up. Hopefully the engineers at Horizon can get it resolved. Otherwise there will be a bunch of airplanes going down in flames... and that's no good![]

S.C.C.

Mine is still lost in post[:@]
Even if they did find it , i would not want one of there crap esc's back in my plane. This 40a esc problem is becoming a common problem.