My ESC took a smoke break today

[flag8r77]

Was going to hover my 550 in the yard today, haven't flown in over a month. Noticed the motor didn't start up right away, once it did I small a little puff of smoke coming out of the ESC. (this happened very quickly, maybe 2-3 seconds) With thoughts of my heli going up in flames I went over and uplugged the lipo, all was good. No fire or damage. Strange enough it still lights up when I plug the lipo in.
ESC is the notorious CC 85 HV

Question is....
1)should I even bother troubleshooting this, or scrap it and get a new one?
2)how is CC customer service?
3)could it be something else failing that caused this, BEC possibly?

*Had probably 100 or so flights, never had an issue with this setup.

[newhelliguy]

Once you loose the magic smoke you may not want to trust it.

[LITHIUMSTATIC]

Contact Castle. They are really good at sending a new replacement unit.

[flag8r77]

I looked at their support page, it's out of warranty (over a year) and the repair rate is $70 for that unit. You think they'll repair or replace for free?

[LITHIUMSTATIC]

Doesn't hurt to ask them.

[DominicD]

I would get an ICE100, it seems to be the ESC of choice these days.

[mapleleafs]

I would get an ICE100, it seems to be the ESC of choice these days.

+1

i think its worth getting the HV version though, because you never know what you may want to use it for in the future!

:)

[DominicD]

The ICE100 is rated for 8S, any more than 8S and you might wanna wait for the Fusion 50.

[flag8r77]

I really didn't want to pay extra for the data recording part of the ICE, as I use a eagle tree when i need to.

[LITHIUMSTATIC]

This Christmas I only hope to get the Capi 100HV.

[seemore74]

Well I live in the UK & I've had to deal with castle twice about the HV unit (once was my esc which messed up by accident & the other was for a friend which just stopped working after a firmware upgrade) I must say that they were one of the best when it came to cust service & quick response, even compared to companies here in the UK. I'd say send it back to them, they'll just replace it that's what they did with mine on both occassion even though I had to pay a small fee as it was out of warranty but still that was better than buying brand new units. For the time I did have a spare hobbywing platinium to continue flying gently with. IMO the HVs aren't as bad as people make them out to be, it's just that you have to configure them correctly for what you want them to do & for that I use Castles tech support & I always get great responses from them.

[missle]

I really didn't want to pay extra for the data recording part of the ICE, as I use a eagle tree when i need to.

When you figure the cost for a 100A (max surge >160A) that can handle 8S as well as record data, you aren't really paying "extra". The other good part is that you don't have to install your eagle tree as the data is always being recorded (as long as you clear mem every once in a while).
As for your original HV85, I'd just save that one and send it in to CC whenever you get a chance. That way if you ever get into anything flying in the 9-12S range, you'll allready have an ESC for it. ;)

[s0laris]

Sell the eagle tree..

This is so much more convenient than the eagle tree.

The advantage of the eagle tree is moving it from heli to heli tho