Alternative cause of Cutouts under load

I've been researching and following several threads and forums trying to figure out the base cause of these power cutouts/radio dropouts/radio interference issues that some of use Evolvers have. I've been following this post, Evolve - radio is using nRF24L01
and a couple others on reddit.
I can only speak to my experiences, of course, but I want to at least put my information out there and see if others can confirm or tell me I'm nuts.

Background:
I've owned my board for one year and haven't really had too many issues with cutouts, maybe 4 or 5 over the course of the summer. I have never experienced a motor lockup which, I think, is a completely different issue. I haven't ever sent my board to be repaired by Evolve, but I have done some small physical modifications and repairs to both of my remotes (I have two, both have issues with dropouts.) and the board itself. The electronics in the board and remotes and motors are stock.

Lately, I've been commuting about 2 miles and going for pleasure cruises on the weekends and I've noticed the dropouts becoming more frequent, about 4 or 5 in a two mile ride. Knock on wood, I've never crashed because of a drop out, but if gives you a mini hear attack when you can't accelerate or worse, accelerate too quickly after a dropout whilst in downtown traffic.

The anatomy of my dropouts are as follows:
1- I'm cruising along and the motors cease to deliver power.
1b- If it's a short cutout, I'm still rolling and the motors kick back in after about a second. The remote does not show a drop in connection even though the trigger is not responsive. (There is still loss of speed and a jolt from motor drag)
2- If the cutout lasts longer than 2 or 3 seconds, the remote then shows the dropout with "---%" in the battery gauge.
3- 90% of the time, while I'm still moving, I can give the rear of my board a stomp with my kick foot and the remote immediately reconnects. The other 10% of the dropouts fall into category 4.
4- If i do nothing and roll to a stop, the dropout sticks and the remote will not reconnect. In this case, I can look at the power button on the side of the board and confirm that it is still powered on, but not connected to the remote. To reconnect, I have to power down the board and the remote and turn them both back on.

My ability to give my board a good whack and have it reconnect leads me to think there is some physical connection issues and not radio interference or really anything to do with the remote. I've checked my connections and made sure all the solder joints are good, but there are a few connection points that I'm worried about. Mainly, the five pin connectors that attach the motor controller board and the power board.

Power Board Motor Controller

My hypothesis is that maybe my pin connections are not as solid as they should be. I don't really know of a good way to test this theory though. The only time I can get the board to dropout is when I'm on it... Which makes me think it has to have something to do with the flex of the board and battery case.

The upside to this theory is that it could very well be a physical issue that could be addressed easier that a ghostly, hard to pin down, radio interference or remote control issue. If anybody who's been having dropout issue could give your board a stomp to test this idea, I'd be grateful to have your input!

 

What you described with the dropouts is exactly what is happening to my board at the moment.

I've had mine since July last year in the first wave of boards to come out and it has worked perfectly fine until recently. I'm not sure what the issue is. I've opened the case and coiled the cables as suggested here: Drop outs solved for me - GT Carbon :}

But it still drops out. Only for a brief second or half-second then proceeds to pick up speed again, sometimes quite suddenly.

I've also purchased a later remote and used the remote from a Bamboo GT I have and it still occurs so it is clearly an issue with the motor controller. I've ruled out a software issue because the board worked perfectly fine previously. And it's not interference from the environment for the same reason.

Therefore it is definitely a hardware related motor controller issue. Because i've had the board so long, it may be vibration damage to the wires or perhaps some moisture or dirt is affecting the circuitry. I'm going to attempt to do a clean and inspect all the pins as you've done and report any findings.

This is of some concern to me because it has cut out whilst braking downhill which leads to the board picking up speed then the brakes engaging suddenly which has subsequently pushed me off (didn't fall but had to run down part of the hill). The opposite going uphill or on flat ground is not so bad if it cuts out but is quite annoying. But the latter occurring is now dangerous.

 

I've been following this thread:
Bamboo upgrade Part 2 -Motor controller and remote

Probably gonna just take out the evolve speed controller and replace it with something that doesn't have this issue. Of course, this is going to take a while.