Today let's take a look at all the common problems brushless RC basher motors can have and how to fix those motors. This will allow you to fix and upgrade your Traxxas Arrma Team Associated and Redcat motors!
Great video!! They used to sell a gear puller. It would attach to the shaft underneath the pinion and a screw on top that would tighten down on the top of the shaft same diameter as the shaft. When tightened would pull the pinion off from the bottom. Hard to explain!! But worked good. Lol. I raced b4 brushless came out. We had miniature lathe’s. To cut the commutator with a diamond bit. I still have mine. They also sold a lot of different brushes and spring options back then. Yes I’m old LOL 😂
There are several options for pinion gear pullers out there. The problem is I've never really found one that was strong enough to rip a stuck pinion off of a shaft in the sizes of gears that we typically use these days. They usually just bend
"I just used some soap, water and my girlfriends toothbrush" Savage! 🤣 Btw, plenty of rebuildable brushed motors still made, just mostly for crawlers where brushed is still common (probably not for much longer). Great tips! 👍
Yeah for sure. I just think that the vast majority of people that encounter a brushless motor especially in my audience are going to be encountering non-rebuildable ones.
Man i was so stoked to see you use the bread trick. And not get into some brute force mode lol. That's the sign of a mechanics pro right there!👍 The version i know is grease + towel iirc. Brilliant, this is why i subscribed!
Awesome I'm glad you enjoyed. Yeah an old Volkswagen mechanic taught me the bread trick when I was probably 20 years old. Great for removing pilot bearings in flywheels
I have found a work well for smaller gears but seems like I was break them on most of the larger gears like mod 1. Maybe I just haven't gotten a good one.
@@DoRC @speedkar99 if you watch any engine tear downs of all kinds of makes and models he always claimed his brothers or wife’s toothbrush. Either way that kind of joke makes me chuckle.
The biggest advantages of brushed motors next to being cheap is that they have higher starting torque and run smoother at lower speeds, while brushless motors tend to cog. You need a sensored brushless motor to mitigate that and those are quite expensive. For something that is supposed to go slow like a crawler or truck, brushed is still a very good option.
Sensorless smooth field oriented control exists. The odrive boards and clones support it down to at least ~20 rpm. You can't convince me that this doesn't involve witchcraft, but it is possible.
@@ZapTeam Even a low kV brushless motor has low starting torque, which can only be mitigated with sensors and intelligent ESCs. It takes one full rotation until a normal brushless motor reaches it's full torque, because the ESC doesn't have proper feedback from the motor windings beforehand and randomly fires on the three phases. A good 5-pole brushed motor with lots of turns still beats a sensored brushless motor with low kV in starting torque and low speed control for less than half the price. The low kV sensored brushless systems make the most sense for rock racers and rock bouncers which need to go both slow and fast. But for pure crawlers they are kind of a waste of money.
@@razorblade7108 Ok well you taught me something I didn’t know before. I dont know a whole lot about rc ground vehicles I was just saying something I’ve heard.
Awesome video man… I would add that a small machinist vise & drill press makes drilling out broken screws/bolts much easier…. A man can never have too many tools & a good little bench top drill press & vise can be picked up on the 2nd hand market for very little money.
Another major reason brushless motors are far more powerful then a same sized brushed is because rotational mass of the rotor in bushless is far less freeing up much more power. Brushed motors have the mass of the windings and a largerer diameter rotor causing more rotaional mass to accelerate
You can test between the phases to see if the resistance is similar. If one is much higher or lower than the others or one of them's open then that is indicative of a problem.
If Allen/ hex screw won't come out or is rounded, use a torx bit same size and gently hammer/ tap in. The percussion of hitting it in helps break a stubborn screw and torx bit will grab into worn hex/Allen hole. Great for grub screws and no drilling / cutting needed. Replace worn screw with new one once out 👍
@@DaddyDaughterRC-sw2zb Yeah maybe It's a different type of fasteners because I've been a professional mechanic for over 20 years and I've tried it a bunch of times and had really mixed results.
The bread trick was genious! Also on the sensored motor you could try checking if there is any part number on these 3 black components on the pcb (the magnetic sensors) to replace them because they are dirt cheap and also there are not any other complicated components on the motors' pcb to get bad so, it is most likely to be the sonsors or just some connectrions from the pcb to the pinout. Great video as always!
That brand of motor I thought had what they called a toonup pkg that came with the PC board 🤔 for the one I used in my slash for racing thanks for sharing 👍
Great video! But my Holmes Hobbies Crawlmaster Magnum is the best crawler motor I've ever used and it's a classic brushed motor! I know that this motor is an exception obviously though 🤪
Great tutorial, nice techniques. Do you usually replace your problem motors with new ones, and then just set the old ones aside as future repair projects? There are some brushless motors that have an endbell/plate that isn't removable...or at least does not have any fasteners that hold them on...I don't know if it is just press fit or if there is an adhesive involved. Anyway, do you have any thought on working on those motors for getting bearings in and out? I suppose if that plate is on the shaft end there is probably room to knock the old bearing out from the outside (though if the bearing comes apart the outer race could get jammed in the bore). I guess perhaps these are the cheaper motors so not as big a loss if they can't be fixed.
I've got a pretty decent reserve of electronics that I can dig into if I need to so broken motors tend to pile up until I get a chance to sit down and fix all of them. There are some brushless motors that don't have a back end bell and in that case you're pretty much just having to reach down inside them to replace the rear bearing. It can be kind of a pain. Generally speaking with the bread trick the bearing won't come apart so it should be removable that way though getting the bread down there is going to be a little more challenging.
For removing bearings, my first "go-to" is my bearing insertion/removal tool. Should be a standard tool on everyone's RC tool kit. It doesn't always work...but, for me, I'd estimate it works at least 90% of the time.
I RC on a budget so use a lot of Surpass motors, there's no way I'm throwing £15 bearings in a £15 to £50 motor, cheap bearings (10 for £5) are good enough for them, I don't mind replacing them a bit more often. Good advice.!
Yeah and they probably didn't have high speed specific bearings in them to begin with. I'm not going to lie I've thrown regular bearings in motors in the past and haven't really had any problems with it I just don't like to recommend things that are outside of the specifications of the parts.
You can try just using regular bearings of the same size. Any local bearing shop should be able to supply them. They're also a fairly common size so you can just measure them and then order replacements online. I can pretty much guarantee you that they'll be available as they are metric.
Yup! Unfortunately the extractor drills are also not very good quality and the screw was too hard for them. Ideally I would have used a left-hand drill bit but all of my left hand bits are too large
Man my slash 2wd always throws the pinion off so i used blue locktight on the shaft and screw. I bought a pinion puller off ali express and it saves me so much time. I don't even try to take the grub screw out anymore.
It's good that works for you. It shouldn't be necessary though as long as you clean the grub screw and threads on the pinion with alcohol or brake cleaner. Let that dry apply the thread lock tighten securely then give 24 hours to dry.
Yeah as long as there's a blind hole behind it it will work. I actually learned it from an old timer Volkswagen mechanic when I was just starting out in the profession:)
Cool informative video, So did you have an XO-1 at one point? since you have one of their motors i was thinking about buying a stock XO-1 motor for my XO-1 someday. Not like i'm asking you to sell me one of your motors. I should definitely do this whenever i have bad\broken brushless motor.
I have had a couple of them but I don't think this motor came from one of those. That being said there's nothing really that special about an x-01 motor.
@@DoRC I also think there's not much special about an XO-1 motor, they're a previous gen 1717 Sensorless Traxxas called it the "Big Block" then they built there own that they now sell in the new XO-1's. The reason i was interested i own an XO-1 and it currently has a Castle MMX8s\1717 1,650kv sensored combo. And i like the Black can of the stock motor better than the green that Castle has nowadays.
@cjchannel12 actually no you mention it That motor wasn't out of an x-01. It's just a 1515 size motor so must have been out of a first generation E-Revo or something like that
@@DoRC Oh really? I guess that's cool i remember hearing about when Castle and Traxxas had that perfect partnership before they threw most of it away for proprietary defective ESC. And i mean the VXL-4s to 8s systems most of them go bad or catch fire although i haven't had these issues but others have. The solution in my opinion i think Traxxas should renew their partnership with Castle or better yet start a new partnership with Hobbywing like the other companies do like Arrma, Redcat and Corally
@cjchannel12 Yeah I'm not really sure they have more failures than any other brand. I feel like if they did they would do something about it because warranty claims would cost them a lot of money. I have personally never had a Traxxas ESC fail and I've probably had a hundred of them
I have spektrum 1900kv motor, when vertical the drive shaft can move up and down a little and hit bottom. Would that be a bearing? Bench tests sound fine.
I'm not sure exactly what you're asking here. If the ESC is brushless but not censored you can run either a sensored or sensorless brushless motor Just in sensorless mode. If the ESC is sensored you can still run either one.
@@DoRC Sorry, I meant to say a sensorless brushless motor. With a sensored ESC. But you answered my question. Just have to see if I’m able to change the ESC to sensorless mode. Thank You for answering my question!! Love your channel 👍👍 Your knowledge in Rc is amazing!! 👍👍👍👍👍
Haha, never seen anyone use the bread/grease method to extract one of these motor bearings. Good trick for the pilot bearing in your car engine. I am a bit disappointed though. Was hoping I was going to learn how to repair a motor with bad windings as I believe one of mine has some, and would like to get it working again.
Is technically possible to repair windings but unfortunately it's generally not really economical from a timestand point. You're pretty much going to be cutting the old windings out and threading new windings in which is not going to be fun.
@DoRC I've got a couple of stock Kraton 6s motors with bad rotors (broken magnets) and I think it's a Poisedon motor or something like that, just stutters when I try to run it on a known good esc, even without load. Thinking some of the windings may be burnt or damaged, but I believe the rotor is nearly identical size to thr Spektrums, so I was thinking of trying it, but haven't yet. Ideally I'd like to get the Poseidon working again just for fun, cause it was actually bigteedos motor that he ran in his 100mph erevo.
Yeah in that case you can just take the back one off and proceed the same way. It's a little bit more challenging to install the new front bearing but it is doable.
The freezer thing isn't quite as effective as some people think it is. Going from room temperature to freezing is only going to give you about 0.0002" or 2/10 of of a thou on a 20 mm diameter bearing. The temperature differential just isn't really enough to make much difference. You really need significant Sub-Zero temperature is in order to shrink it enough to really affect the fit much.
@@DoRC Yes it has less effect on smaller bearings compared to something like an engine bearing but more clearance means less bearing pounding so I always do it anyways.
I love how they’re all castle Motors 😂. I’ve seized 2 $200 Castle motors in my Sledge. Even after checking temps they seemed normal. I gave them another chance and same thing happened. Funny thing is that they completely locked up (like a motor wire came out) while it was about 30ft in the air😤
The easiest thing to do is just burn off the coating first which you can do with a small torch. You have to be careful not to get the wire too hot. You can also scrape the coating off though it's not quite as effective.
There aren't really many good options. With the right jig you could probably bend it back but it's unlikely you would get it straight without some sort of custom tooling.
THIS IS HUGEE!!! I have a Copperhead 10 esc 1412-3200Kv and the bore feels loose when pulling and pushing I think it’s the bearing like you said just that I have no idea what size they are and I don’t know if they sell them too. :/
A little bit of free play axially as in when you pull the shaft in and out as normal and does not indicate a bad bearing. If you push it side to side and you hear or feel free play then that would be an indication of the bearings going bad.
@@DoRC when I turn the bore. I feel like it’s scratching something like it gets stuck onto something and when I get over that hump. It feels smooth so something is definitely wrong.
@@Desauce512 okay that sounds like there's either some contaminant inside the motor or more likely you're right it is a bad bearing. Best thing to do is pull it apart put the rotor in the bearing and spin it. You'll be able to tell pretty much immediately if you've got to bearing problem or not.
In this case the armature is technically the stator. The armature is the part of the motor that the electric current goes through. The magnets are on the rotor in this particular setup so it wouldn't be considered the armature
I have a castle 1717 motor with a bad rotor….castle doesn’t offer a replacement rotor for this size motor…(figures 😢) I did email them and they offered a core return price for a new motor $130…..not terrible I suppose …just rubs me wrong cause I could fix it myself if I had the parts…
I would disagree about brushless bcing more powerful and i have tons of rebuilt brushed motors i havd one that is 27 years old and still runs perfectly up to 32000rpm
For a given size and for amount of power supplied a brushless motor will pretty much always be more powerful. There are two main reasons for that. The first one is that they use neodymium magnets which are more powerful and the other one is that there is no power loss due to The making and breaking of contacts at the brushes themselves. That's not to say that a brush motor can't be powerful because they can be and some are even made with neodymium magnets but brushless inherently is able to use the available power more efficiently.
@DoRC I see your point and perhaps my experience of motors is just a bit different than yours but I have found that in most instances even though they turn to very high rpms with ease a brushless motor produces less torque for a given wattage. I think they are definitely the way forward for many applications. Maybe newer examples are making more power but my experience is that most rc manufacturers are using high rpm motors with significant gear considerations to achieve the correct power required and avoid the cogging that often befalls them at start up.
@captainchaos3053 hmm maybe. It is also possible though that brushless motors run at higher RPM simply because they can. Brushed motors do have RPM limitations based on the centrifugal force that the mindings can handle and the surface speed that the brushes themselves can handle.
@DoRC Yeah that is also true. I believe the lack of brushes and therefore frictional heat also helps. In general they can tolerate high current better as there is no arcing which in turn allows for higher voltages and currents than ever thought possible in the hobby. 20years ago a 60v battery and over 200A just would of been so impractical but now it's quite normal. Perhaps that's why people think brushless is more powerful.
11:52 if you ask Joe at Castle he’ll tell you they repair sensor boards. However, if you ask Linda, she’ll tell you Joe is full of shit and needs to stop saying that. Ask me how I know. 😂😂😂
Yeah I've actually got helping hands a vice and a jig specifically for soldering connectors directly off camera. I just didn't grab any of them. saaaaderr:)
@@RcSpeedFreak-kk8wj I usually use the tools I just get distracted sometimes when I'm filming. Actually making the movie uses probably half of my focus. It's kind of the same reason why I ended up almost melting the one to end bell:/
I coukd fix that sensor. A multimeter in diode mode. Castle motors cost like 100 beans plus tax in nova scotia. That's a horrible iron brother. You shoukd refer people to basic electronics repair instead of fumbling over a lesson. No offense, great video. Get a ksger stm32 oled t12 station. Then you don't have to worry about waiting to change tips. The built in ceramic heaters in low end irons are a pain. I fix electronics for friends and repair game consoles. Microsoldering is a hobby. I use an lcr meter too.
Yeah I could also fix the sensor. The video was aimed more at people who probably wouldn't have the skills or inclination to do so. I wouldn't say the 888 is a horrible iron. It's certainly not high-end but it will do everything the vast majority of people in this hobby need to do. I've been using that iron for both RC and electronics repair for probably 10 years now and it's never let me down. The only issue is is not quite powerful enough for some of the largest connectors that are currently being used.
@DoRC cool. Sorry if i came off like a know it all. A ksger t12 stm32 oled station from ali will last you forever man. I paid 140cad years ago but they go on sale for 40usd all the time man. I upgraded the handle but didn't need too. I have a jbc station now and would be up for a trade for an old rc if ya wanted. I'd include tons of extra cartridge tips, leds of every type and shape along with some other stuff for repair and new rc parts. It's up to you, I have tens of thousands of leds hahaha. I have a new 2 channel spectrum transmitter as well that I forgot to send back with an axial I bought and returned. I'd even throw in a multimeter if ya wanted a new one. I send electronics learning kits to random people for free but I stopped doing it recently because I'm saving for a road trip down to Utah and some other places. I want to go to some rc comps (as a spectator) along with some swap meets. Even with the exchange rate, rc is a super expensive hobby here compared to the us. I'm building an rc park on my property at some point and might have an open house where I give away a bunch of rcs to get the hobby going around here. Im 45 and retired haha. I have a ton of hobbies and I'm thinking about getting a second engineering degree this fall to pass the time haha.
@jstro-hobbytech I appreciate the offer but I actually have a generic jlb station sitting in a box waiting to be setup. The QS8s I solder need more jam than the 888 can do so this one is 250w:)
In my experience they don't really fail any more often than any other motors. It just so happened that the pile of motors I currently have were all castles :-)
Good tips and that Syncro looks like a lot of fun! I just fried my stock brushed Fazer motor, tried a Tamiya 540, but it's too under powered to be fun. Thankfully, my hobby shop had an exact replacement for about $20. How long do you usually let your Loctite set before a run? I go with a least overnight or 24 hours for speed run stuff. Thanks for sharing your knowledge!
WOOOW. This is a very USEFUL video. Big thank you and I will always remember to use my girlfriend toothbrush. 🫡👍 (and use brake cleaner to wash it if it needs👌)
