Just a heads up - I toasted the P-Channel MOSFET on my T’Rex Motor Controller by doing something stupid. There are metal chassis screws in the battery compartments of the Wild Thumper. I hadn’t noticed they were there when assembling my rover.
Anyway - using the standoffs that come with the board, I thought the second battery compartment would be an ideal place to mount the controller. Unfortunately, it looks like that causes the aforementioned chassis screws to short against the bottom of the board. I got about 10-20 seconds of life out of my board…then no more signs of life.
Long story short, I’ve bypassed the MOSFET for now with a wire as I don’t use it for it’s purpose (the ability to use a low current external switch to switch the high battery currents) - but thought I’d mention the blunder on the forum in case it helps anyone else avoid the same fate.
Metal is conductive! It releases the magic blue smoke - not good. 
I don’t know the exact spot that it shorted, just that it’s somewhere along the edge of the board near the center (depends what way you oriented the board I suppose. There’s large blobs of solder on the traces on the bottom of the board with no mask, so lots of places it could have shorted.
It is what it is. I’m not bitter about it, it’s Murphy’s Law - if something can go wrong it most certainly will. I’ve learned from it and am forging on.
Like I said, I’ve got the board working fine now by bypassing the FET with a wire. I’m just hoping that I can keep someone else from running into the same issue (not noticing the chassis screws and causing a short).
Argh…unfortunately I found this forum after my TRex controller suffered the same fate 
Here are some pictures of my disaster with comments.
Apparently, according to the designer, the stand-offs are to be used only with the TRex Robot Platform and not the Wild Thumper series.
In my case, I am extremely annoyed that there was no documentation or warning about using this controller in a Wild Thumper.
We are very sorry to hear that happened. If it’s not too late, can you post where the two came into contact withe each other to cause the short?
