so this has been driving me nuts for about two weeks now. running a 5inch freestyle build, the usual stuff, 2306 motors on 30x30 stack. everything was fine until i crashed pretty hard into a concrete barrier and since then motor 3 has this weird stutter when i'm sitting around 40-60% throttle. not at low throttle, not at high throttle, just that mid range band.

i've already reflashed the ESC firmware and recalibrated, swapped the prop just in case it was a balance issue, checked the motor screws. the stutter doesn't show up consistently either which is what's really making me doubt myself. sometimes a whole 5 minute pack goes by fine and then it'll do it 3 times in a row on the next one.

blackbox shows a small RPM dropout right before it happens but nothing that looks catastrophically wrong. wondering if the motor windings got partially damaged in the crash or if this is actually a bad solder joint on the ESC that's only failing when it gets warm. anyone had something like this before

that inconsistency thing is almost always a cold solder joint in my experience. warm ESC makes the joint expand slightly and lose contact intermittently. i'd pull the ESC out and go over every motor pad with a fresh iron before you go blaming the motor. the fact that it happened right after a hard crash really points to it ? vibration can crack a joint that looks totally fine visually.

if you resolder and it's still doing it then yeah maybe the motor took some damage, but id bet money it's the solder first.

had almost exactly this on my 4in1 after a similar crash. turned out one of the motor phase wires had a tiny nick in the insulation and was occasionally shorting against the frame. wouldnt have found it if i hadn't just run my fingers along the whole wire slowly. worth checking before you pull everything apart