[EricH]

You'll have to describe your power source in greater detail. However, from the description given, limited though it is, I would guess that you're putting an awful lot of current through that CIM. This does two things: First, it heats the wires, as you're noticing. Second, it's going to affect the CIM's performance (I want to say it'll go faster, but I don't know that for sure). CIM performance affected = launcher performance affected = more tweaking while at competition.