Ruckus has lost power from the motor...

[Chuck1906]

Hello I am new to this forum and also new into the world of RC cars and trucks. I bought my son a Ruckus 1/10 truck for Easter. He's only played with it a few times now and already the truck has lost power it seems. One day last week he was running it through some high grass and I noticed smoke coming from the motor area so I quickly unhooked the Li-Po battery and let the truck cool off and rest. I figured the grass probably caused the motor to overheat.

Today we went out to an empty parking lot to drive and everything was fine but I noticed he didn't have full power. His truck seemed sluggish at times. He couldn't make the Ruckus do a donut for nothing and he was able to do that with no problem a few days ago. Shortly after that he had no power at all. You squeeze the trigger and nothing happened. Batteries were charged up before we left the house. I own a ECX Circuit and I took my battery out of my truck and put it in his and he still didn't have any power. When I hooked up the battery I noticed that the ESC didn't beep like it normally did. It did make a very low pitch sound but no beep. I could turn the front wheels left and right from the controller but that's it.

Does this sound like he possibly fried the motor? I bought the truck about 4 weeks ago too! The closes thing I could find in the manual that best described this was it said to install a smaller pinion.

Sorry but again, I am new to this, but what is a pinion and how do I install it if in fact this is what I need? Does the motor need to be swapped out do you think? This truck is only 4 weeks old and I wasn't expecting to be having an issue like this so soon.

 

[Evergreen247]

The brushed stock motors are prone to failure. I run in short grass/snow, the longest I had one still running was 2 months, the shortest .........2 days.

After burning out the 4th motor I upgraded to brushless systems.

 

[MonkeyFist]

Sounds like the motor is toast. You could swap the motor from your circuit into the Ruckus to make sure it's just the motor.

 

[Chuck1906]

The brushed stock motors are prone to failure. I run in short grass/snow, the longest I had one still running was 2 months, the shortest .........2 days.

After burning out the 4th motor I upgraded to brushless systems.

WOW! I may as well just upgrade to the brushless system instead of running through motors every so often. Thanks for the replies and suggestions.

 

[xlDooM]

Hook up the motor to the NiMH stock battery directly, see if it turns. It's possible that the ESC is fried but the motor is ok, in that case you are wasting money buying a new motor. Or possibly they are both gone...

If the ESC is also gone, it's time for brushless. If it's ok, you could get a new motor and a smaller pinion and give it another go. I hear good things about the HPI firebolt, which I can get my hands on for under $15 delivered.

The pinion gear is the small gear which is on the motor shaft, which turns against the much larger (87 tooth on the ruckus?) spur gear. By changing to a smaller pinion gear (one with less teeth then stock), you reduce (theoretically) top speed, reduce load and increase effective torque. The reason I said theoretically for top speed is that if you run in tall grass with high gearing, it's very possible that the motor just does not have the power to get up to speed, and lower gearing may allow it to accelerate further.

Also make sure you set the gear mesh correctly if you replace the pinion, and a very small pinion (less than 15T) may simply not work because you cannot set the gear mesh close enough. Read up on these things, it's fun

 

[slick2500]

Brushed motors are the devil, I've had one get so hot that the motor leads melted off the can.

 

[Chuck1906]

Wow! Well for now I had Horizon Hobby send me out a new motor since my truck is less than a month old. I had to end up getting the local hobby shop to install it because I couldn't get the pinion gear off of the old motor. I just got home and threw a battery in there and it powers up now but gives me a long beep sound when I turn on the controller. It still goes forward and backward while that loud alarm is sounding. Any idea what that might be? I know it beeps a couple times when you turn on the truck but this long beep is happening once I turn on the controller. In the meantime I will check the manual to see if it mentions anything about that.

 

[shortcourse5117]

Yeah brushless defiantly. My Ruckus went through 4 stock, and a Traxxas brushed motor. Also i've had that beep before, but I cant quite remember what I did for it too stop.

 

[No One]

If you want to stay brushed, I would recommend the Electrifly s600. It what I generally use after the Titan motors die. Decent power, and last much longer. Price is right to, normally can be found for under $17.