Plettenberg extreme with mamba max

[chilledoutuk]

Ok so I picked up a plettenberg extreme that craps was selling on ebay.

I have a lot of brushless motors but this one had me confused from the start tbh.

I got the motor out and tried to turn the rotor by hand i was huh it felt like it was jammed I got my pliers and it jumped to the next position i was like holy ****!

I have never seen such magnetic resistance in a motor before so i took the motor apart and cleaned it and oiled the bearings as tbh as it looked like craps had been mud wrestling with it.

I fitted it to my xxxt mf1 with a gear ratio of 88/20. The car already had a c40 8s in it before so it was a straight swap with a higher ratio.

I decided that the mamba max settings I was using before would be a good starting point which were default apart from lowest timing, 100% brake, 6v cuttoff.

The slipper was tightened up from before and the diff was as tight as a ducks butt and I went out to the yard to audition the new motor on 3s1p a123.

Initially I was quite happy with the performance but upon braking i heard the dreaded sound of teeth jumping in my transmission after it happened a couple of times the gearbox started making the whining sound that i hate so much.

So after resetting the gear mesh a number of times I just whipped out the gearbox and put in my spare one (which had a 86t kevlar spur I might add:D)

This time i decided to tame the beast a little and set the mamba max to 50% braking power and 20% punch control also set the start power to medium.

I also set the slipper to well er slip a little.

went back out and the car was once a again still a beast but a controllable one the braking now was now much kinder to the gearbox but as always losi need to learn how to make slippers that slip consistently as mine either gets tighter or end up getting a loose as an old slapper.

I wondered now if I could improve the smoothness of the motor by increasing the timing so I set the timing to medium and went back out and the answer was yes the motor seemed to be much smoother and more powerful and notably did not get any hotter.

Now I have always struggled to keep brushless motor temperatures under control in the xxxt The c40 only ran cool because I had a powerful 40mm fan
blowing over its lovely fins. In effect the c40 with a fan can dissipate more heat than almost any motor design I have come across.

The plttenberg has no fins and thus very limited heat disipation capacity just like the mamba cm36 motors and feigao 540 motors.

To my surprise after hard driving for 14mins the motor was only warm to touch which to me puts the motor about 40-50c which can only mean the the efficiency of the motor is very good.

I have yet to open the motor up on a long straight so I can say I know how efficient the motor will be in that situation but in my experiance when i have managed to get a car to stay cool in my back yard driving in open areas is normally no problem.

It seems to me the 4 poles and precise German engineering the partial throttle efficiency and high amp efficiency is higher than any other motor I have used in my xxxt.

now I am not saying that the extreme will be better in touring cars than say for example a kontronik or a hacker c40 but in trucks with big heavy tires the torqe generate by the massive rotor in the plettenberg extreme and its 4pole nature make it a very nice motor for any off road vehicles that have a strong transmission.

p.s.
On a side note I have been unable to get the u-force to reverse even though i set dil switch 2 to on. I suspect that the dil switch is not working properly any advice about this

[ElectricThunder]

Have you experimented much with gearing at all? I've read that the 4 pole motors get cooler when geared taller (a decent amount taller than a 2 pole).

Cool=good (being that it was like, 92F out today, it's ridiculously hard to get my motors to run "nicely"). I've resorted to I think a 60mm or 80mm fan from a pillaged computer....:D

[kufman]

Sounds like the Extreme is working well for you. If you look at the data sheets on the Pletty site, the Extreme is the most efficient pletty motor for 1/10 scale stuff (better than the shadow and the Indoor). You can look at it here

http://www.plettenberg-motoren.com/Datenblaetter/220_CAR/HP_220_20_A2_P4_CAR_EXTREME.PDF

it is somewhere between 85 and 89% efficient through the whole loading range. I have been wanting to run my Aveox RC7(4-pole, 1.5 turn, 3850 rpm/v) on a 3s, but I haven't taken the lipoly plunge yet. Soon!!! I love the smooth startup of the 4-pole motors on the u-force. haven't tried my mamba yet.

[TheSteve]

If you have the PC software and interface for the U-Force you can read the DIP switch settings. I am guessing if you had it you would have already done that of course.
The Aveox RC7 and Pletty Extreme are both awesome motors.
The 4 pole motors can be geared something insane in touring cars. I used to torture the RC7 with a final drive ratio of 4.6:1 - it never overheated and powered past the nitro cars.

[ElectricThunder]

Are there any RC7s still around? I've always been curious about that motor. Isn't the 1416 1.5Y (or something like that) the same motor?

[chilledoutuk]

allowing for the a123 cells to drop to 3v a cell i have calculated the top speed with a rollout of 3.45cm a rev and a kv of around 4500 to be about 50 mph.

Factor in the ballooning of the tyres and the fact that the voltage will rebound when nearing top speed i would be surprised if fresh off the charge it did not make that speed.

also if I was to temporally go insane iI could put my 3s lipo pack in there and try and hit 60 mph.

Although i think the plettenberg could be geared taller i think it would kick the snot out of the 3 a123 cells i am running at the moment and controlling a xxxt with geolanders at 50mph is scary enough.

Before i had fans on the plettenberg after running the a123 pack the motor was only 57 celcius and noticably cooler to touch than the mamba 4600 in the same truck.

But now the motor has a fan its running even cooler and only warm to touch after a long run i would guess about 40-45 celcius.

There is something satisfying about running a car or truck until the battery is depleted and then check your temps to find they had not increased from halfway into the run and sort of plateaued.

Its almost like you have the option of throwing another pack in and going straight back at it.

I will say though that the a123 cells do get quite warm when being discharged
But they seem to not mind and so far i am very impressed with everything apart from one aspect of these cells and that is the size. there just a little too wide to fit in the xxxt tray which is a pain in the butt.

ON a plus side the a123 cells fit width wise nicely into my losi xx cr flush to the bottom of the chassis.

also i might add that the cells are a little easier to fit in deck chassis cars that don't have moulded edges to get in the way

Now i just need to work out how to get a full pack through my cat 3000 without the 7700 catching on fire.

[chilledoutuk]

@steve
about the u-force 75 its possible I assume that either craps left rcs enabled or the controller has a broken dip switch.

what is there to these cables is it possible to make your own cable ?

[TheSteve]

The cable is simply a logic level to serial level converter. I have made my own, even got the proper connectors for the U-Force. The 4 pins on the U-Force are ground, Vcc(5 volts), transmit and receive. If you've ever used a Max232 or Max233(or equiv) chip thats all thats needed.
There is a way force the controller back to DIP switch operation if it was left in RCS mode. If I recall correctly you enable all DIP switches and connect power for a second or two. You can then remove power and set the DIP switches as you like and it should be fine.

re the Aveox RC7 - just don't over RPM it. I did have a magnet come loose in one of mine. It may have had something to do with the speed run I did back in 2000 with it - 10 cells, 63 MPH in a Losi Street Weapon.

[kufman]

Are there any RC7s still around? I've always been curious about that motor. Isn't the 1416 1.5Y (or something like that) the same motor?

Basically the same motor except the rc7 had a 1/8" shaft instead of the 5mm found on the 14 series. I can't remember how long the rc7 was in terms of the 14xx number.

I already had one rotor fall apart on me, but the new one is wrapped in carbon fiber. I think the key is to keep the motor cool to prevent the glue from breaking down. Not sure, but it will be fun trying. :)

[ElectricThunder]

Basically the same motor except the rc7 had a 1/8" shaft instead of the 5mm found on the 14 series. I can't remember how long the rc7 was in terms of the 14xx number.

I already had one rotor fall apart on me, but the new one is wrapped in carbon fiber. I think the key is to keep the motor cool to prevent the glue from breaking down. Not sure, but it will be fun trying. :)


Thanks, I figured they were the same. I didn't realize the 14xx had a 5mm shaft though.

I found an RC7 on ebay a while ago, but never went for it. Oh well.

[chilledoutuk]

so i charged up my kokam 2s lipo and chucked it into the xxxt with the same 10.49:1 ratio with geolander tyres.

It was considerably tamer but very drivable meaning you could got flat out without feeling your about to take off. but for me this was a little boring and as such i decided to drive like a loony and ended up putting a little too much heat into the pack than i liked.

I then decided to try out the 4000mah 3s lipo and wow it was a beast with this gearing it should top out about 60mph and it was like a rocket.

I was expecting it to get much hotter due to the increased rpm but too my surprise the motor temperature had hardly increased over when i was running 2s lipo or 3s a123.
At just a touch under 50c according to my ir thermometer after 12 mins of hard driving in midday sun im happy to say the least with the efficiency of this motor.

[scoob]

it looked like craps had been mud wrestling with it.

shhhh Craps doesn't want anyone to know about his mud wrestling days.:D

LoL, that red clay mud we have here gets in EVERTHING. You ought to see us after a day of racing.

I remember when those guys were running the Plett Extreme motors. One of the things about that motor that everyone loved was the efficiency. They seemed to be able to gear it any way they wanted without heat issues and that was in the long mains we run. Very nice motors, at a price of course.

[chilledoutuk]

The plettenberg extreme generally works very well on the mamba max but there are times where it cogs.

For example if you come to a full stop and then go straight away it will jerk like a spaz.
But if you just wait a moment then you can creep away with great smoothness its almost like the controller goes into launch control mode after a short while stationary.

tbh it does not bother me that much as i tend to never stop anyways.

[Craps]

I had 6 of those Schulze U-Force 75 ESCs with the Plettenberg Extreme motors I have sold off here lately that is all we used to race with on our dry dusty red clay tracks here and never really had any cogging issues, but I will say my almost 3 years experience with the great sensorless combo will not be able to match the low end smoothness of the Novak sensored systems since Novak improved the reliability of they're systems going to the sintered rotor. Now I own 6 Novak systems!

I will say the Schulze/Plett combos were alot less sensitive to gearing changes than the Novak and will be a better bashing system.

[chilledoutuk]

yes i am sure the u-force will drive the plettenberg nicely but i think putting it on 3s lipo would be asking too much of the u-force controller and it would be a shame to blow up such a nice controller.

I recently tested the u-force with a kontronik twist 3700 on 3s a123 and it was very powerfull indeed.
So much so that i had to rebuild the diff as it was slipping too much and tightening did not seem to stop this.
Good news is that the diff is silky smooth now whilst being very clamped down.

On the cogging issue i am using 4mm gold plugs so its possible they are too blame for the cogging i do like having them so i might just get some more decent plaugs which as thesteve pointed out the spring barrel compresses completely thus making a good contact.

The ones i bought back before I used deans were like this but some of the cheap ones from unitedhobbies I picked up once which look identical to the ones castle use on there systems the spring is only partly depressed and only the ends holding ever come into contact which would result I believe in a somewhat lower quality connection.

craps you don't have anymore u-soft cables ?

[ElectricThunder]

I use Great Planes 4mm male connectors on my 540 8s, and I've not had any issues with the plugs (no issues with the 5700 plugs either...go figure). They seem to work just fine, although I'm sure if I switched motors quite often they'd wear out at a pretty accelerated rate.

I wonder if motor temperature would go down by eliminating the plugs though?

[TheSteve]

4mm plugs that aren't defective work great. The resistance is plenty low and shouldn't change the temperature of the esc or motor.

[ElectricThunder]

4mm plugs that aren't defective work great. The resistance is plenty low and shouldn't change the temperature of the esc or motor.


Yeah, the whole defective thing really screws ya up.:D Thanks Steve.

[Craps]

yes i am sure the u-force will drive the plettenberg nicely but i think putting it on 3s lipo would be asking too much of the u-force controller and it would be a shame to blow up such a nice controller.

I recently tested the u-force with a kontronik twist 3700 on 3s a123 and it was very powerfull indeed.
So much so that i had to rebuild the diff as it was slipping too much and tightening did not seem to stop this.
Good news is that the diff is silky smooth now whilst being very clamped down.

On the cogging issue i am using 4mm gold plugs so its possible they are too blame for the cogging i do like having them so i might just get some more decent plaugs which as thesteve pointed out the spring barrel compresses completely thus making a good contact.

The ones i bought back before I used deans were like this but some of the cheap ones from unitedhobbies I picked up once which look identical to the ones castle use on there systems the spring is only partly depressed and only the ends holding ever come into contact which would result I believe in a somewhat lower quality connection.

craps you don't have anymore u-soft cables ?

I smoked a u-force a couple of years ago using a 3S 11.1 volt li-po and did not even trying it again.....I did not change the pinion gear when I changed from 2S to 3S that Jamie with Starluck said I should have went smaller on the pinion gear to turn the motor harder to cool it off.

I do have the u-soft and might sell it.

PS. Tip on the diffs: Use ceramic diff balls and it will extend your time between diff rebuilds 3 times. You just change the diff rings too during the rebuild. The balls will last thru several rebuilds. This is the AE Stealth diff in the T4 truck.

[chilledoutuk]

yeah I tend to get a few uses out of my diff rings by laping them until the groove is gone from the surface this also makes a nice matte surface for the ball to grip.
I was considering getting some ceramic diff balls.

I am currently running the u-force with a twist 3700 on 3s a123 in a losi xx and it barely gets warm I think ill leave the heavy duty stuff to the mamba max controllers.

Let me know if your planning to sell the u-soft.

[porra]

I have a few RC7s and the ysure are great motors.