Motor breaking in procedure

[speedfreak]

Hi guys and boff's

For all the experts out there, I am in need of a good lesson.

Guess its been debated over and over again, but i cant seem to find any discussions on this matter, i.e. motor running in, mainly for johnsons 2 slot or mabushi's. I just joined the local club here and raced in what we call here the open class which requires use of these motors. The guys were quite fast compared to me and it was not gearing at all, rollouts were right up there with theirs. They getting on average 16 to 18 thousand rpm out of their motors, they say its all in the running in phase and cant be done afterwards, I really need some advise on this matter, I heard of water and grinding paste, but what really works?....direction PLEASE

[Sammy]

Hi.

My club only runs 27T motors, but we can have modifieds, and this is what I run.

I've just got a new car, which came with a freshly skimmed quality motor - this needed to be broken in well.

The advice I gained, and what I did was:

Move the motor away from the spur gear slightly by moving the motor screws, or take the motor out of the car.

Set your ESC up, andplug batteries in.

Turn your throttle trim on your transmitter so that the motor is just moving.

Leave it like this for approx. 5 minutes, or until the sparks have gone from the communicator.

All is well, and you've run in your motor.

HTH.

Sam

[Type49rs]

The trick with the silver can motors is to bed the brushes in without ruining the commutator. When you buy a new motor, take a look through the slots in the can and you will see that the profile of the brush faces is completely different to the shape of the comm - infact there is very little brush contact at all. The idea is to get full brush contact in order to obtain good performance. The brushes in these motors are extremely hard and seem to take forever to bed in. Each racer has there own special way of achieving this.

The water dip method has been around for years and does speed up the break-in process but does affect the comm to a certain degree.

More recently I have been experimenting with the slave motor method. This is where you take an old motor and a new motor, couple the pinion shafts together and use the old motor to drive the new motor. The new motor rotates but does not have any current running through it, therefore no arcing occurs and the comm stays in good condition. End result (in theory) is fully bedded in brushes + nice clean comm =good performing motor.

Everbody has their own theories and methods (and some racers will never spill the beans), but this is what seems to work for me. I'm really keen to hear what other racers do.[]

My next plan is to try the slave method under water.[]

John

[sosidge]

quote:Originally posted by Type49rs

My next plan is to try the slave method under water.[]

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Hate to break it to you, but that won't work... it's the extra arcing in the water that accelerates the wear - no power=no arcing=no extra wear!

I bet your dry slave method takes a LONG time though!

[terry.sc]

Easy cheat is to buy a Mabuchi 545 5 pole motor. Illegal, but hard to spot and will give you five thousand more rpm until someone spots it.

First if you can try several motors and pick the fastest one as there can be quite a performance difference. A model shop owner I used to know who raced would test a whole box of 540s to find the best ones for himself.

Legal ways to get more speed.

If the motor is fairly new and not worn these tricks will still work, the motor doesn't have to be brand new. To bed in a 540 there are 2 areas you need to work on, the brushes and the bearings.

First the brushes.

The brushes are much harder than those used in other motors with external brushes, so need much more work before they are bedded in. Before water dipping came about you would run them in by using another motor to drive it or connecting a 4 cell battery to the motor and let it run until the brushes were shaped to fit the comm. This could take 2-3 days(no kidding!) before they were properly run in.

To bed them in by water dipping put the motor in a container of water first(less mess this way) then connect a battery pack to it for no more than 10 seconds. The extra drag caused by the water puts a huge load on the motor, but the water also keeps the motor from overheating. This gives rapid wear to the brushes and after only a few seconds the brushes are ready. Flush the motor out with motor cleaner to remove the carbon from inside the can and leave it to dry. The brushes are now bedded in.

BTW if anyone tries this with any other motor as soon as you have done this you will need to go out and buy some new brushes as they will be worn out after this.

Bearings.

This is where grinding paste will have been mentioned. You can buy motor bearing paste such as Trinity Bushing Buster to bed them in with, but most metal polishes or toothpaste (really!) will do. Put some paste on each bearing and spin the shaft to draw it in. Run the motor for a few minutes at a low speed to polish the inside of the bushings. Now you need to flush the polish out of the bushings with motor spray. This will remove the lubricant in the bushings, so now relubricate them with a light oil. To get the best performance use an oil designed for bushings not bearings, most motor firms make special oils designed for stock bushings.

Doing these two tricks should give you a better performing motor. Depending on your motor you might get more speed but if it isn't any faster you will certainly have more power so you can gear it up slightly to get more speed. You can also try running the motor with comm drops as the decent ones will help current flow between the brushes and comm which will give you more power.

[speedfreak]

Thanks to Sammy, Type49rs, Sosidge (its ok, you too can spill the beans) and especially Terry.sc. I will def. be trying your methods and will keep you posted! I have a dyno on the way, I will be able to check the results on different running in methods.

[WillyChang]

quote:Originally posted by speedfreak

...I have a dyno on the way, I will be able to check the results on different running in methods.

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What kind of dyno?

The load type (slave motor) or the modern type that spins up

a big flywheel and uses fancy computer algorithms?

[speedfreak]

Willychang, its a APS Dyno-charge 3309, its more of a charger than a dyno...will give you all the basics excl. torque!