I have a Mato Sherman that Phil converted to El Mod for me many years ago. I had a problem with the tank going run away. I sent it back to Phil, he worked on it, changed the IR Emitter and sent it back. It worked till today. Battery in tank and Remote are fully charged. I start the tank and it runs fine for around 2 minutes then breaks signal and keeps running whatever direction it was going in when the connection was severed. I turn it off, restart it and it does the same thing. I'm at a loss since I'm not that familiar with the ins and outs of El Mod. I know it can be glitzy. And please, I'm looking for ideas on correcting the problem, not changing it out to Tamiya etc. Those that know me know I run multiple systems from El Mod to Tamiya, however, I'm not interested right now in gutting and redoing this tank. It is the earlier Elmod system. It is an Airtronics radio. Phil seemed to prefer them.

Who services this stuff anymore??? I would try changing the radio gear first. Maybe it is the Airtronics stuff. If you find it is the radio, pm me . I think I have an extra one of these kicking around that I don't use anymore.

If it is not the radio it may be a brownout issue, A couple of ways around this

1. Use LIpo batteries as they can really provide amps when you need them

2. By a capacitor bank fromHobby King. It will cost you less the 10 bucks. This will plug onto you receiver and help with the brownout issue.

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...f_1_4sec_.html

Make sure your receiver cables aren't anywhere near your motor cables - I've had a run away caused by getting them tangled up.

Hi I would say its radio problem rather than el-mod , Changing radio for one that shuts down when signal is lost (yours seems to be power on when signal loss). there is a way to change most radios from 1 mode to 2 mode or visa versa . if you changed the mode over on you radio , but keep the channels as they are you will stop the runaway it will go into main gun firing.
checking that the receiver is as far as possible from the motors (small tanks this is hard).

regards pete

I second the Tx/Rx as culprit. I only have one El Mod product, the Thinktank for the Kettenkrad and it's fantastic, so I can't help in terms of any issues, but it really sounds like a loss of signal or brown out.

Either way, the proper course of diagnosing the problem would be to look to the Tx/Rx first. Best bet would be to bench test both and see if you have any loss. If not, hook the Rx up to another tank altogether to see just in case there's a voltage drop under driving conditions (or use a different Tx/Rx combo with the El Mod).

Ok, problem solved. It was a combination of issues. First it was the battery in the TX. I changed to a NMHd for the radio. It still ran away, I unplugged the battery which resets the Elmod and clears issues. It now runs fine.

Hi Glad to hear you have cleared the problem , If it is possible to swop modes on your radio I would swop them , to make sure if the run away thing returns , all the tank will do is fire the gun instead of off the table (like mine did once) (now it cant swopped the mode over I just get gun fire) it can happen if you switch the radio off first (accidents will happen )



regards pete

i have an HE Abrams that Phil put together a complete ElMod system for me and I still never got it figured out and working properly.They where the hot ticket when they came out but I always found them very complicated and not user friendly at all. I think I'm just going to get a BARC board for it and be done with it. This one I built way back when only the HE Abrams was available and believe me plenty of work went into getting that sucker up to snuff so it would be a real waste if I didn't complete it.

Agreed. It was the only alternative until the DBRC3 and Benedini and the TK22. There are some great things that can be done with ElMod, but it's touchy. I've heard the updated systems are better, but as Dan put it who do we go to when it breaks or malfunctions? What i went through twice in the past year is an example. My HE Abrams El Mod needed part that ElMod no longer sells, luckily I found it from a third party vendor in Germany. The run away turned out to be fixable, but this is not the first time this has happened with this tank.