Do brushed non-crawler motors need to be broken in anymore?

[OnTheTrail]

Doing a couple vintage (reissue) builds that are not crawlers but will be running brushless motors. Do these need to be broken in like the good ole days? Helpful, harmful if I did?

We use to hook them up to a single D cell battery and then let them hang from the wires in a glass of water for a few hours then blow them off with compressed air to dry and then oil the bearings. Not looking for race performance, just want to treat them well and avoid heat/arcing to extend the life.

Thx.......

[QuesoDelDiablo]

When we were breaking motors with the good old D cell/Glass of water technique what that was trying to accomplish was seating the brushes..

Brushless motors don't have brushes so no break in is required..

Even most brushed motor come already broken nowadays..

In my recent experience the only time break in is required is after you cut the comm and put new brushes in..

[durok]

We never broke in BRUSHLESS motors, only brushed. Brushless motors are typically not completely waterproof unless sold as such - and even then if they are sensored you'd likely want to put some dielectric grease in the sensor wire connection port if you thought you might be actually submerging the vehicle, even briefly.

I had one of the early Novak brushless motors and there were no break-in instructions whatsoever... there is no actual contact between moving metal parts unless you want to count the bearings on the shaft on a brushless motor.

[Phildirt]

I've 'heard' that the whole break in thing was just for big power/low turns and is not even really applicable to the crawler scene as far as what we are asking these motors to do. I flip my truck over and toggle the throttle trim until it spins at low speed for a little while after swapping mine out but probably more superstition than anything. Honestly I've never worn a motor out, I usually swap or destroy them long before that point

[Greatscott]

Yeah, that water break-in used the water as an abrasive to cut the brushes into their sweet spot, which produced the maximum amount of power. The problem was you'd take about 50% of the overall life of the motor away when you did that; and that was normally done with the hand-out motors for races.

Most RTR manufactures recommend just running the RC around at about 1/4 power for 10 minutes or so. After that the brushes take the profile of the communtator and you are good to go. I pull the motor, blow it out with air ( >30 psi), put a drop of light machine oil on each bushing/bearing, then reinstall. After that, drive it like you rented it!!!!

[OnTheTrail]

Thanks all!