lubricating brushed motor
 

after killing a few motors, I am going to break in my new traxxas 775 using the water method.

After running it in water for 10 minutes or whatever, should I clean it out? What should I lube it with. I thought of wd40 but that stuff is not really a lubricant. Wears off rather quickly. Lithium grease? Motor oil? I've got synthetic brake lube... ideas??

Re: lubricating brushed motor
 

i use a couple drops of good ole 3in1 house oil

Re: lubricating brushed motor
 

1-DO NOT DO A WATER BREAK-IN!!!!:shock: If you must do a break-in, use ~3VDC for ~3-5 minutes with no load on the motor. Lube bearings/bushings and install motor.
2-brushed motor bearings/bushings can use 3in1 oil or similar. Just a drop or 2 is fine.;-) Too much (on the brush end) can get on the comm.

Re: lubricating brushed motor
 

Breaking in your motor with water isn't going to stop you from blowing them up. You are blowing them up because something else is wrong (gearing, binding in drive train, or simply too hard on the trigger). A properly broken in motor will simply perform better and last longer before wearing out....

A dry break in of 15-20 minutes or so at 3 volts is more than enough to properly break it in....

99% of the time more harm than good is done with water break in....why people keep doing it is beyond me.

Later EddieO

Re: lubricating brushed motor
 

I did the water method to try it out but only 6-8 mins. Where abouts to I drop the oil??

Re: lubricating brushed motor
 

The only place you lube on a motor is the bearings or bushings....

Later EddieO

Re: lubricating brushed motor
 

Cool thanks bud. I'm a mechanic by trade, but I'm a complete n00b with these rc's Common sense would be my best bet but hey! Just figured out the servo fighting, and been tweaking everything for a good run tomarrow. Gotta buy some lipos but thats gonna kill the budget on this toy for atleast a few weeks. And these tires gotta go, way to soft. Might get the trenchers or boggers. still unsure

Re: lubricating brushed motor
 

I would have stayed away from water break in. It is good for racers that are still using brushed motors and change the brushes on a regular basis. The brushes in our summits are not replaceable... I used to do water break in years ago and it drastically reduces the life of the brushes. Did not matter at the time as the hobby store was close and i always had spares.

Re: lubricating brushed motor
 

What voltage are you running? Usually anything above 2s will eat sealed motors fast. If you're going to run big power you need to step up and find a motor that will handle it.

Re: lubricating brushed motor
 

I'm curious why the brushes aren't pre machined or made so there will be no need to break them in? Why don't companies do this already? I just bought a summit and looked at the brushes and saw they are shaped like a W. So looking at it I see there are 3 contact points. I'm guessing over time it will wear down to one big contact point. I'd post a pic of what im writing about but I'm not up to 30 posts yet. Slowly getting there.

Re: lubricating brushed motor
 

Because comms are not always the same size. A standard comm starts out life at 7.5mm....but after you cut it, the diameter goes down. As the comm wears, it goes down. Brushes are made to one generic size, so they need to break into the proper curvature of the armature. Trying to make brushes that would of been every know size to speed up or minimize break in would of been extrememly costly and would of just added more confusion to racers, especially in the sealed can era where you didn't have an easy way to measure the comm.

There is a device called the fussy brush that had multiple size cutters that you could use to cut them into as close as you could. They were not fun to use though, as they added and extra step to the process and a big mess....so they never sold well. I won a few national titles with them though.

Later EddieO

Re: lubricating brushed motor
 

Thanks Eddie for responding. Have you seen how the brush looks in the Titan 775 motor? They are W shaped where the brush contacts the commutator vs Carbon brush for DC motor use this type.

Re: lubricating brushed motor
 

I've never yanked apart a titan. There are other motors that use the W style brushes. ...they typically do that to minimize wear by limiting surface area touching the comm.........

Later EddieO

Re: lubricating brushed motor
 

So as it wears down it turns from a capital W to a lower case w then eventually a _ I'm guessing? When it wears down (is this what they call broken in) would you get more power since there is more contact?

Re: lubricating brushed motor
 

Broken in just implies that brush is full seated and wearing across the full contact path. Often this takes a bit as the comms are different sizes than the brush curvature and not always perfectly round.

Many of the brushes we use have serrations, which are like a ruffles chip on the face of the brush. Originally these were there to speed up break in, but we found over the years the motors run better in many cases with them, so bigger serrations were installed on them.

Once everything is touching that should be, its broken in.

Later EddieO