Lipo battery blasted traxxas harness off

[KanchiX]

I was running my traxxas stampede 4x4 vxl the other day and when I went to connect a new battery, the wires that come from the battery and go into the traxxas clip blew clean off their contacts...

my wires running to the esc were way hotter than normal afterwards, and pulling the female end of the traxxas clip off of the male end was nearly impossible without a screwdriver since there was a small amount melted. (I feared the copper contacts had welded together, but they were discolored from the shock.)

What the heck happened, and why?!

Should I be worried about plugging in another battery to this esc?
My pops said it happened because I used rosin core electrical solder and not a silver core solder, but I want some opinions from people who are experienced in the rc hobby.

[666]

Let us see some pics? I'm beating you had bad solder joints.

[KanchiX]

Originally Posted by 666

Let us see some pics? I'm beating you had bad solder joints.

[KanchiX]

You can see the solder joint on the red cable that runs to the battery. the black cable looks about the same, so bad joints would make sense since the break looks so clean....

[666]

From what I can see looks like a bad solder joint.

How to Solder Traxxas Connectors - Will also work with Deans - YouTube

[Duuuuuuuude]

From experience: its the crappy banana plugs on the battery harness. They are not meant to carry much more than a charge current. I had the same issues with my 4wd sc rig...wires were hot, connectors were hot, everything was hot.

I made up a new battery harness using solid bullets instead of the cage type and all the problems went away.

[666]

I personally don't use flux, I know a lot of people do with good results.

I use rosin core fine wire electrical solder, the smaller the better.


Here is a video similar to how I do it.


How to Properly Solder a Deans Connector by Innov8tive Designs - YouTube

[KanchiX]

So I should be fine using my other batteries then if I scrape the small amount of melted plastic from the male esc connector?

[KanchiX]

Originally Posted by 666

I personally don't use flux, I know a lot of people do with good results.

I use rosin core fine wire electrical solder, the smaller the better.


Here is a video similar to how I do it.


How to Properly Solder a Deans Connector by Innov8tive Designs - YouTube

I should be using a finer solder, but the rosin core I got is fine then... good to know... now it's just about getting my technique down, and maybe a new harness to drop those bannana clip ends lol

[GySgt Hartman]

Originally Posted by 666

I personally don't use flux, I know a lot of people do with good results.

I use rosin core fine wire electrical solder, the smaller the better.

For tricky work flux is almost necessary. The key to all methods (RMA & No-Clean) is to clean any flux residue off the joint with a q-tip and lacquer thinner.

[KanchiX]

Originally Posted by GySgt Hartman

For tricky work flux is almost necessary. The key to all methods (RMA & No-Clean) is to clean any flux residue off the joint with a q-tip and lacquer thinner.

No-clean is self explanatory, but RMA? What's that? EDIT: NVM, Ahh the power of Google... lol