Castle Creations has announced the new Mamba Max Pro SCT Race ESC/Motor combo. This race system is a step up from the sidewinder SCT series, and includes a 6S LIPO ready fan cooled brushless ESC, and a 1410 3800Kv Brushless motor. What makes this better than the sidewinder SCT ESC/Motor combo? Let’s find out!
The Castle Creations power plant comes in a well designed box with plenty of padding to keep everything safe during transport.
Opening the box reveals a large foam insert, which cradles the ESC and motor fan. The secondary box holds the 1410 brushless motor. As you can see from the images, even the motor box is beautiful. While packaging usually gets thrown away, to me, it shows a company’s eye for detail and with brushless power systems, that’s a good thing.
The Castle Creations 1410 brushless motor not only looks great with it’s green ribbed can, but it’s a 4-pole motor. This means it should provide smoother (and more) power than the typical 2-pole motors, but only testing will tell.
Castle has provided us with super long motor leads, just incase you’re mounting this bad boy into a stretched limousine. That would be one crazy limo ride. Champagne EVERYWHERE!
Castle has soldered some high current motor connectors on both the motor and ESC. The soldering job looks great and there is plenty of shrink wrap to keep it neat. The wires are color coded red, white, and black, though there isn’t actually a correct polarity when connecting the motor as a regular brushless setup. If the motor spins in reverse, just swap two of the wires. Pretty simple right?
*NOTE: The battery polarity DOES matter. If battery polarity is reverse, it will blow the ESC.
The Mamba Max Pro ESC is 6S LIPO ready and includes a pre-mounted fan for extra cooling. The fan is plugged into the front of the ESC, so swapping it out should be easy, though I don’t expect I’ll ever have to. As seen in the image to the right, the ESC has a sensor port. That’s right, this ESC is sensored, so if you decide to go with a sensored motor, you can still use this Mamba Max Pro ESC.
The ON/OFF switch is pretty straight forward. Either mount it with screws or double sided servo tape. I chose servo tape for the slash 4×4 install.
As I mentioned earlier, the power system comes with both, an ESC fan and a motor fan. The motor cooling fan will need to be installed using two zip ties and the fan gets power from plugging it into the accessory port on your receiver.
CC PINIONS
Castle Creations offers a full line of high quality pinion gears as well as brushless power systems. The pinions are precision cut and bevelled for a great fit to the spur gear. Each pinion gear comes with two set screws, one installed into the gear and an extra one just in case you’re as clumsy as I am.
INSTALLATION
After coating two 3mm x 6mm screws with medium thread lock, I installed the motor mount to the 4-pole brushless motor. The motor came with some cap head screws, but I decided to use my own instead. Because the instructions say to use stock gearing with 2S LIPOs, I installed the 16 tooth Castle Creations pinion gear onto the 5mm motor shaft. I carefully meshed the pinion to the spur and secured the motor.
Deans connectors were an obvious choice for me, so I soldered one onto the ESC power leads. Soldering was easy, thanks to the pre-tinned ESC wires.
Here’s a picture of the incredibly long motor leads. There’s absolutely no excuse for having to solder on extra wire here. You can pretty much route these wires however you want to. I chose to wrap them around to the rear shock tower and zip tied them in place. If I decide to leave the system in this truck, I may cut them shorter for a neater install.
PROGRAMMING
The Mamba Max Pro SCT ESC can be programmed using your radio, or you can access even more tuning options using the field card or USB link. Programming is fairly simple, though boring using the radio, so I choose to use the free USB link. Wait! Did I say free? Yup! I’m not sure how long this will last, but Castle included a coupon code for a free USB link or a discounted field programming card. Sweet!
The Castle Link comes with a USB cable and USB adapter. The free software can be downloaded from the Castle website, though it only works with windows based computers.
PERFORMANCE
With the Mamba Max Pro SCT system installed into the Slash 4×4, we took it to the track. I drove for a bit, then shot some video. I drove some more, the took some photos. Either way, whether I was the one driving or the one watching, it was a blast.
Even on 2S, the Mamba Max Pro SCT system had more than enough power for the slash 4×4 on this incredibly dry and loose track. There was loads of wheel spin and even more dust being slung everywhere! There was plenty of top speed and impressive control for a non-sensored brushless motor. Gradual acceleration and braking allowed mid-air corrections to be made for smooth landings, as well as smooth cornering. When we wanted to get crazy, we just hammered it and dust went everywhere!
There was absolutely no cogging noticed in the motor, though it didn’t go quite as slow as some sensored systems out there, but who wants to go slow when you’ve got a power plant like this under the hood?
SUMMARY
The Castle Creation performed every bit as well as I expected it might. Castle has been a leading brand for bashers, and now with offerings for club racers as well. Check out their website for the many power systems available.
The ESC may be rated for 6S LIPO, but the motor is only rated for 3S, so be careful with the battery you decide to use. I stuck with the 2S, because that is what Castle recommends with stock gearing. Using a 3S LIPO requires lower gearing. The motor didn’t even come close to getting hot and the ESC fan did a great job of keeping the ESC cool too.
I do believe I’ll keep the Mamba Max Pro SCT system in the Slash 4×4 and let my some do some club racing in the 4wd SCT class.
It will be interesting to see how the motor holds up “long term”, but only time can tell that. If anything DOES happen, I’ll be sure to either post it in the comments below, or update this article. Thanks for reading!
Copyright © 2014 Castle Creations, Inc. All rights reserved.
Castle Creations, Inc.
540 North Rogers Road
Olathe, Kansas 66062
phone: (913) 390-6939
fax: (913) 390-6164
sales@castlecreations.com