so ive been chasing this for like two weeks now and im losing my mind. motor 3 on my build keeps cutting out - not like a full desync, more like it hesitates for a split second and then comes back, but obviously by then the quad has already rolled into something. happens specifically when i punch from a hover, not really during cruising. already rebalanced and swapped all four props, tried two different sets, same thing.

the esc is a 4in1 blheli_32 45amp rated. motors are 2306 2450kv. i did check the motor screws and they seem fine, no wobble in the shaft either. betaflight logs show motor 3 output dropping but i cant tell if thats the cause or the effect you know what i mean. like is betaflight cutting it because of something or is it actually a hardware issue upstream.

only other thing i noticed is that corner of the stack runs hotter than the rest, like noticeably hotter. maybe a cold solder joint? i resoldered the motor pads last night but havent had a chance to test yet. just wondering if anyone else has seen this specific symptom before i tear the whole thing apart again.

the heat thing is a big clue honestly. i had almost the exact same issue on a build last year and it was a partial short on one of the motor phases - not enough to blow the esc but enough to cause it to thermal throttle basically. the esc was protecting itself. check your phase wires where they go into the motor, sometimes the insulation gets nicked right at the motor bell and it grounds intermittently when things heat up and expand. its a pain to find but worth checking before you assume its the solder joint on the stack.

did you check if there's a desync setting in blheli suite? sometimes the demag timing is off for higher kv motors, i had weird cutout behavior that wasnt really a cutout, it was just desyncing and recovering super fast. looked exactly like a hesitation in the logs. try bumping demag timing up one step and see what happens. might not be your issue but easy thing to rule out before digging into hardware