Clarke board repairs

[Dragon245]

Has any one sent a Clark board back to Clarke , sent 3 back over a month ago tried emailing him twice but no answer, has anyone else had similar issues

[maxmekker]

Give me you full name , and email/facebook/messenger, and I'll look into it

what was nature of fault ?
shipped as ? ( letter ore traced parcel)

[dgsselkirk]

Clark is slow at the repairs but normally it is N/C so we can accept it. Eventually they make there way back after 3 or 4 months. Our club has at least 50 or 60 of these boards after 4 years operating them and we blow 3 or 4 a season so we have lots of experience...

[Dusty Steppes]

Have you kept records of what has failed on the boards and if so, would you mind sharing the info?

[MichaelC]

I am part of the club but I have been moving off Clark board to IBU as my own preference, but I think the majority falls into these three issues (I was only on Clark boards for couple of years).

- Blown board due to the lack of fuse on the board itself. It is not a Clark problem, but there were a large number of blown boards. This was drastically reduced by adding a fuse externally. The unauthorized use of lipo battery was also a problem (freshly charged 2S lipo will blow some of the Clark boards as I have 4-5 of them myself having this issue)
- IR emitter losing range. Basically IR emitter would not hit anything beyond 2-3 feet after a while. Not an emitter problem as replacing it does not fix the problem.
- Blown speaker amp. I think mis-use of 4ohm speaker could be the cause.

Other then the IR emitter issue, all the other ones can be prevented with proper usage of the board itself.

[dgsselkirk]

What Mike says...

Having said that I have a KV-1, and a Sherman that I run at every meet and they have been using lipos and emitter range is fine for over 3 years so go figure...

I too have run into the emitter issue and no seems to have a definitive answer on it...

[jarndice]

I think it was DGSSELKIRK or MICHAELC who when the problem of new CLARK boards failing with LIPOs first appeared They advised that if initially a NIMH or NI-CAD was used and then once all the systems were working the now initialised CLARK board would accept a fully charged LIPO.
That seems to be good advise to me.
Shaun.

[wibblywobbly]

I've had Clark boards for years, only ever had one problem, sent the board back and the whole thing was resolved in a couple of weeks. In short it wasn't the board it was a corrupted programming remote that was sending the wrong signals.

Regarding the IR issue. An IR emitter in standard form has quite a limited range, but we 'demand' a range of 30m etc. The way around this is to overpower the IR circuits. The guys that designed the TCB board analysed all of the IR outputs from all of the manufacturers, right from Tamiya down to Heng Long, and including the smaller scale stuff. Their board therefore has a library that allows a user to select any IR system they desire.

The one thing that they discovered was that all IR outputs are overpowered, with Tamiya being the highest by a large margin. Doing this quite obviously places a failure risk on the circuit or the emitter. Emitters are cheap, and easily replaced, but if the IR sender circuit blows a component then its a board repair/replacement. The IR is a very short burst of current, so the theory is that the circuit is under stress for a very short period of time, which reduces the chance of failure.

It is probably the weakest part of the tank pcb circuit as a result. If we want 30m ranges then it is a risk that we have to live with, and in all honesty, it is a very low risk.

Speakers are a dark art to most. Many believe that they can install a 'big' speaker and get a louder tank. I won't go into the details, but before installing a speaker, anyone should consult the manufacturer to establish what the amplifier is putting out. If the wrong speaker is fitted then it is perfectly possible to blow the amplifier. Elmod have an information guide on their forum that explains a great deal.

http://www.rceifel.de/forum/showthread.php?t=10405

As for using Lipo's etc, I have never used one. A quality 3700mah Nimh will last me all day at a tank meet, and quite often I don't even charge them between monthly meets. If I take three tanks to a meet, and run each of them on and off during the day, I doubt whether any of them are being run more than an hour a month. Using Nimh batteries is more than enough, it is what the boards were designed to run on, and just as importantly, it is what those universal Tamiya plugs were designed to handle. Putting Lipo power through one of those is not going to end well.

I do one long weekend meet a year, and 'might' have to charge one or two of them while I am there, which takes about 20 mins? Never had a blown board yet in ten years in this hobby.

[Dragon245]

Quick update Clarke dropped me an email confirming arrival and approximate repair time

[MichaelC]

He must be reading the forum.......