Factory installed smoke?
04-11-2003, 03:27 AM
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Factory installed smoke?
So I found out tonight that my hitec eclipse has factory installed smoke. When you see alot of it, your radio is bad. I made a plug to go from my field charger to my TX. Just to save the hassle of taking the battery out of the radio and charging it. Well the first 5 mins of charging was fine. Then a bad burning plastic smell and a ton of smoke came from my frikin TX. This was worse then crashing any one of my prize planes. I called Hitec and they wanted $115 just to diagnose the problems.
I took the TX apart and all of the wires from the battery plug to the buddy box plug to the first circuit board were gone. Then the wires from the first circuit board half way melted.
They were kind enough to email me a schematic of the wiring. So I went to work, unsoldering all of the white plastic plugs, and hard wiring everything. After about 5 hours I put it all back together, and it works. Somehow everything is back to normal, the battery wasnt even ruined, it didnt even need new wires. I have no idea why this happened. I forgot to ask Hitec if you can fast charge directly through the TX. I wont do that anymore. So if you see smoke, thats the factory telling you its bad, and needs fixin.
I took the TX apart and all of the wires from the battery plug to the buddy box plug to the first circuit board were gone. Then the wires from the first circuit board half way melted.
They were kind enough to email me a schematic of the wiring. So I went to work, unsoldering all of the white plastic plugs, and hard wiring everything. After about 5 hours I put it all back together, and it works. Somehow everything is back to normal, the battery wasnt even ruined, it didnt even need new wires. I have no idea why this happened. I forgot to ask Hitec if you can fast charge directly through the TX. I wont do that anymore. So if you see smoke, thats the factory telling you its bad, and needs fixin.
04-11-2003, 02:42 PM
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Factory installed smoke?
Im not sure, this is still bothering me. The plug on the TX goes directly to the battery through the first circuit board that has the antanae on it. I still cant figure out wha happened. The battery didnt even get hot.
04-11-2003, 04:08 PM
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Factory installed smoke?
Yup, the charger is fine, I was able to charge my batteries and fly yesterday. What a relief to have a smoked up TX and be able to fly the same day.
04-12-2003, 01:08 AM
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Factory installed smoke?
The battery probably never drew current, it most likley came from the charger. Did you have the charger on the wrong setting? If it was overvoltaged you may have avalanched a diode? If the wires melted some serious current went through it for some reason, temporary short of something. Any pieces of lose bits drop out of the radio when you opened it? Got any pictures? I'm curious.
04-13-2003, 03:54 PM
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Factory installed smoke?
I do have some pics of the completed rewire section, but none of the melted wires, not one component on the circuit board went bad. There is a diode directly in line on the board where the wires plugged into the board. It is fine.
