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Hi Guys,

I'm confused and hoping somebody has worked with one of those cheap, generic 20A ESCs like this one (there are many clones but they're all similar design):

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07WFHL6BK

I'm upgrading electronics in a cheap 1/18 scale crawler with a FlySky FS-GT2E radio/receiver.

I've bound the radio and steering works as it should. However, even with the transmitter turned off, when I connect the lead to the motor wires, the motor/wheels spin. I can't seem to find a way to recalibrate the ESC so it will have a proper neutral (no power to wheels). Nothing I've tried got the motor to stop in idle position, let alone go in reverse. The cheap ESC didn't come with any instructions, but I thought I'd be able to figure it out. I've tried a lot of things but nothing seems to work. I don't think the ESC is defective, I just think there must be a way to recalibrate this ESC.

I've tried turning on the Tx with throttle full on and then to full reverse, then neutral, but no matter what I've tried, when I turn the car on, the wheels spin at at least 50% throttle, not at neutral. This thing has forward/reverse/brake and a brake/no brake toggle switch, low voltage cut-off, but I can't find any documentation on how to reprogram it.

Has anybody worked with one of these generic ESCs?

Just wanted to update this to admit to a brainfart. When I connected this ESC in place of the existing toy-grade circuit board and battery and motor connectors, I followed this exact video. I cut off the exact same connector as this guy did, connected everything exactly as he did:

https://youtu.be/ToWNMTWJNJs

As it so happens, the ESC I bought had the 2 red connectors' wires attached to different spots on the ESC, so instead of connecting the motors to the ESC's motor connector, they were connected to the battery/power connector. Logically, this would explain the strange behavior of the motors spinning as soon as they were connected, even when the throttle plug wasn't inserted in the receiver, even when the transmitter wasn't turned on. I'm surprised nobody caught that. In my brainfart defence, these ESCs come with no instructions at all, and all you see in all the pictures are 2 pairs of red/black wires with a male and female red connector coming from the ESC, and nothing to indicate which is power and which is the motor connector. All I had to go on was that guy's video.


I did a test by connecting a servo to the throttle channel on the receiver and was surprised that the servo neutralized properly and pressing the Tx trigger forward/reverse made the servo swing both ways. So the voltage going out to the ESC was working properly, evidently.

When I tested it by swapping the leads so one pair of leads went to the motors instead of the battery connector, ba-da-bing...it all worked properly. The ESC made its startup beeps that it wasn't making before, the throttle was at neutral, and worked in both directions.