Motor "Break In"

[coougarr]

I ran my stock motor pretty easy my first 2-3 flights as I was learning to fly then wot with no problems. A few weeks ago a bought a new motor and did the water break in. Afterwards I ran both motors with the same battery and I could not tell any difference in power. I also put a wattsup meter on it and the readings almost the same. I am definetly not an expert at this but after doing both water break in and regular break in I don't think it is worth the time, effort, cleanup, and d cell batteries to do the water break in. We are talking about a $10 motor here.
Just my thoughts

[diverdon]

Thanks for the concern you all i'm OK just don't like giving wrong advice .. I just want to help when I can .

I'm sure glad your all here . I've done 3-4 of the modifications to the super cub I just got and can't wait to try to fly it ..

Thanks again , Don J.

[mrmugen]

IMO the water break in is a waste of time also. It is supposed to shape the brushes better but I have never had a problem doing it the normal way....buy/install/fly.

[flydiver]

I think it does one bit of side benefit if it really doesn't do much to change the 'normal' break-in; it gets the new pilot to take a closer look at what's going one under the cowl. Sooner (likely much sooner) or later they are going to have to look.

fly

[patmatgal]

just my 2 cents: I read that 3 in 1 was not a good oil to use on guns. Has to do with it being vegetable based rather than petroleum based, the high temperatures and gases tended to gum it up. I don1t know what goes on in an electric motor but wouldn`t think that it becomes an concern here.

[diverdon]

Well .... I was the guy who started this thread about breaking in your motor ...and ... I went torun the plane and the motor burned up in about 20 seconds

One thing thou I was running it on a 3 cell lipo batterybut I thought I Saw Where Others were running on this .. Oh Well I just wanted to post .. the great water break in motor is gone u

[coougarr]

Look at the bright side, it's only a $10 motor!! Sorry to hear about that though. Oh and I run 3s lipo's all the time on my stock motor and have never burned one up. Maybe you just had a bad motor.

[andyj54]

This is my break-in procedure for my RC Car motors, I plan to do the same for the SC but I am not sure if the cheaper motor in the SC will take a full 2.5hour break in. Break-in for me is easy because I have a Kyosho break-in box.

My motor break-in procedures is to run the motor with NO load, this means NO prop, NO gear box, nothing more then the pinion gear. I run the motor at 3 volt for 30 minutes, check and blow the motor out then run it at 4-5 volts for 1-2 hours depending on how the brushes are handling the break-in.

Keep in mind that you need to keep the voltages down to limit the amount of arcing, this is the main reason for starting at 3V as well as using the water bath for break-in. Yes the water does keep things cooler, but its primary use is to keep things from arcing during break-in. If you use water, I would use distilled water to keep all the minerals from messing things up.

Seeing that I do not use water bath for break in I don't need to worry about drying the thing out, but I blow the junk out of the motor, spray some electric motor cleaner into the motor, shake the excess out and let it dry.

Personally I do not recommend the water bath, too much extra work to dry and lube it.

[flydiver]

One of the main guys that test motors in RCGroups.com did a comparison of a stock motor and an identical motor that had a water break in. There was no discernible difference.

That said there seems to be some times it is useful. I had a SC motor that was 'missing'. This usually indicates a TX/RX/electrical problem. I spent days troubleshooting that stuff without success. On a whim I did a water break in on a well used motor. Problem went away. I have no idea why.

Just a little bit ago I was doing some repair and maintenance on the Cub. On a whim I shot some electrical cleaner into the brushes while it was barely running. There was an immediate and sustained increase in RPM's. Once again, I don't have a good explanation for this but it seemed to be useful. Maybe it just cleaned 'gunk' out.

fly

[andyj54]

Jul 7, 2008 5:45:49 GMT 1 flydiver said:

I had a SC motor that was 'missing'. This usually indicates a TX/RX/electrical problem. I spent days troubleshooting that stuff without success. On a whim I did a water break in on a well used motor. Problem went away. I have no idea why.

Just a little bit ago I was doing some repair and maintenance on the Cub. On a whim I shot some electrical cleaner into the brushes while it was barely running. There was an immediate and sustained increase in RPM's. Once again, I don't have a good explanation for this but it seemed to be useful. Maybe it just cleaned 'gunk' out.

fly

In both cases you may have had some junk in the motor keeping the brushes from making good and full contact resulting in no, reduced or intermittant running. Both the water and electric motor cleaner will help to clean the junk out allowing for better contact. However, the break-in process is aimed more at reshaping the brushes creating a larger and more efficient contact patch which however slight, almost always improves motor performance and run times.

Because I am going to be upgrading to 9.6v batteries, I will be breaking in my cubs motor on my break-in machine.

[Dillzio]

Found a good little resource on breaking in motors.

www.wattflyer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5788&page=2

I'm thinking my motor might be a little haggard by now, on my last flight I bent the prob shaft, broke the firewall, and the screws that hold the motor in ripped through the gearbox, although I think at least some of the damage may have been done previously.

Anyway, I tested my current motor against a replacement I have laying around, the current motor reads less resistance (25 ohms vs about 60 ohms), and it draws more current when running (not under load), so I've decided to replace it. I might hold on to the old one for an airboat or something.

I'm running in the new motor by hooking it up to a 5v power supply, and running it 15 minutes in reverse, letting it cool a bit, 15 minutes forward , then running it in water in reverse for 5 minutes, then forwards for 30 minutes. After that the water was really gray, so I changed the water then ran it briefly in reverse, then forwards for a few minutes. The water filled up with crap again so I repeated the rinse step in clean water. I then hooked the motor up to a lipo and gave it a blast on the lipo for about a minute, and man did heaps of crap come out of the motor then! After seeing all the dust and crap that comes out of the motor during the run in process, i'm convinced that it's a good idea.

I then took the motor out the water, hooked it up to the 5v to dry it off a bit, lubed up the bushes at either end of the shaft, hooked it up to 12v to dry it off a bit, then left it in front of the hair dryer for 15 minutes to dry it off completely.

I may even consider running the motor in water periodically to clean it, i've heard that it can mysteriously heal old motors. I might even try it on my old motor and try for a resurrection ;D!

[flyan bryan]

 i have got @ 75 hours each of life out of 2 motors by water dip break ins. ( i dont do alot of full throttle flying, just at take offs )