Andys table garage

[Andy87]

Got a little bit of work done on the angry bee build.
Took me two days to setup the gear drives.
I‘d say that’s my personal record…
I stripped twice threads on the motor and had to take apart everything again to drill out and repair the threads with helicoils.
On the last hole I was a bit, lets say not concentrate enough and cut one of the windings with the drill bit.
I fixed that with some epoxy but one winding is definitely cut. As the windings run parallel I might have luck and it will still work.
I guess I’ll need to wait till motor detection to find out if it works or not.

I also had a nice ride yesterday with a friend from Moscow who has been in my city for the weekend.
44km and a nice slide out of nowhere 5km from home.
After a short brake my motors or one started to sound a bit different but nothing too bad.
5km later one side locked up and made me fly.
I could slide it out nicely without problems but couldn’t get the board up running normal again.
I did a power cycle which did help to get both motors running, but as soon as I did accelerate, one motor did start to behave strange again. I could run it for a bit more like that at around 10km/h till the point where I needed to cross a street. I stopped, got off my board, crossed the street and nothing at all worked after that.

First thought was that it might have been a temp issue, but motors and escs have been not more warm than 50 degrees C.
Back home I checked fault codes, but nothing.
If I accelerate on the bench now, only one motor does spin with very low rpm.
I had similar issue before at one point while setting them up.
Like the escs just lost configuration out of nowhere.
Last time I did load the FW again and that helped.
Will try that again, but I do not have trust in this escs anymore.

So looks like I need to sacrifice the escs from the angry bee build for my jump board and get a new esc for the angry bee.

It’s a never ending story

[Andy87]

Sooooo the reason why I crashed on Sunday was pretty clear….

Not so clear for me to find thou…
The AWG wire was broken under the isolation and with it not really visible.
That’s why I first took off the sprocket, which didn’t want to come off and I needed to drill out the grub screw.

Also took the motor apart which got stuck and I needed to pull it with a pulley puller…

Just to realize that everything looks just fine.

Good thing, the motor bell is now clean again.
Crazy what amounts of dirt I collected inside the motor over the last months.

Gonna redo all the bullet connector in the next days and check the other motor just to be safe.
Than everything should be fine again, I hope.

Still not sure how that phase wire could break exactly in this place thou.
Close to the bullet I could understand as that part sometimes is a bit stiff due to the solder, but the broken part was not that close to the bullet. There was also no stress or tension on the phase wires.
Might really just have been the constant vibrations over time (the motors are about 4 years in use already).

[JeffyJ]

What a bloody pain! And yeah, very weird to see it broken there under the insulation. It wasn’t tugged on somehow getting snared on something?

[Andy87]

Edit:
Did some analyzing….
Looks like I had a cable tie just about where it broke, or a bit below the broken area.

Maybe that was the reason?

[Andy87]

Not much building going on the last days.
More riding, but that’s not bad either.
Got my delivery from Full Send Electric.

Very sweet!
Excited to try the motors and i really like the hoodie. Very comfortable but a bit too hot the last days to actually wear it

We also started the Games of D.I.R.T competition finally… should have done it way more early! Didn’t expect that we will be so many participants, but damn that so nice.
First clip here:

@groza_esk8

[BillGordon]

@Andy87

We also started the Games of D.I.R.T competition finally

That came together quickly! Nice vid and the music really sets the tone.

[Andy87]

Disclaimer:
This post is @glyphiks fault

So I got my Reacher motors and as the one or other might know, after some motor issues some years ago I usually take apart new motors before I install them.
That’s what I did this time as well and i found some good and some not so good things.
But lets start with a small comparison to my APS 6384 170kV motors (Reacher 6388 173kV)

The weight:

The size:

The good things:

They are true battle hardened from factory.
Not the „but we used epoxy to glue the magnets in“ battle hardened that you usually get.

The shaft is locked with some grub screw thingy in the back so that he can’t rotate.

Not sure why they use a circle clip at the end of the can thou.

They have four small bearings in the stator (2 in the front, 2 in the back). Usually we have 3 bearings in the stator, or 3 small and one big one. I never had problems with just 3, but worth to mention.

They are also very easy to disassemble.
I think the most easy from all the motors I disassembled till now.

Copper fill on the stator is ok. Would say similar to the APS motors.
The windings are a bit more clean laid out and I couldn’t find any lose windings on the two motors I have.

The not so good things:
The windings are coming out of the motor for 4-5cm before they got soldered to the AWG wire. That makes the phase wires stiff in the place they might need to bend. This depends for sure on how you install the motors.

The M4 holes which have been drilled and tapped haven’t been cleaned up.

That shouldn’t be an issue, but the small parts could break up if you screw in the bolts and o do not like sharp metal parts in my motors.
Also one of the threads of M4 mounting holes is partially on the edge of another hole.

Similar thing on the end of the bell. The cnc cut outs are very bad cut and not cleaned up.

I‘m in general not a big fan of step down shafts, but in some cases they do make sense for sure. What don’t understand is why the step down here is not a corner but more like a cone.

One last thing and that I would recommend to everybody who owns a Reacher motor,
Check the grub screws at the end of the shaft.

I could remove mine without any problems.
It also seems like they sometimes do not use loctite on those screws at all.
That means they could come lose at any time.

The conclusion
The first impression is still good. The not so good parts are mostly easy to fix or no real problem for one or the other.
Easy to open motor and I’m so happy I do not need to battle harden them.
Looking forward to the vesc tool motor detection results and how fast they do get hot in use.

[glyphiks]

Thanks so much Andy!

[Andy87]

Not much new, but I changed to APS 6384 motors on my light jump board. The 6374 did start to go funky not sure why, but I thought better to change them.
Problem is that they are too long and the phase wires do get in the way if I turn.
Only mounting option is like that and that looks not good at all.

I have an idea that could work, but I need to print some tunnel riser first.

Besides that I had some more nice rides with some friends here. Really good to not always just ride alone. Always motivates to learn new things.

One guy from my city made his own barrels which are a bit harder than the stock etoxx/trampa elastomer damper.
As I was looking for something like that for my quad I asked if he could make a set for me as well.
They do look very good

Just need to install them now.
Not sure what’s the best way to change them without it being a massive pain.
Maybe I’ll just remove the kingpin
That’s the task for next week.
Together with getting the Reacher motors up on the 9“ board and nice wire management on the 8“ board.

I need to get so much shit done. Our living room is a mess right now and I definitely need to clean everything up when I finished all that.

[Andy87]

Changed the barrels.
Was pretty easy. Just removed the bolt which does hold the down part, did a good lean and I could slip them out easy.
But that’s also something I worry about.
I mean while riding and a hard lean I can imagine at one point the barrel could just pop out.
It’s now already way better than before, but I guess I’ll need Etoxx 400mm trucks on that board sooner or later…
… probably more later as it doesn’t look good for them to get produced.

[glyphiks]

Looks awesome. Why do you need wider trucks?

[Andy87]

Right now I run Trampa trucks with extensions, so not really need wider trucks, just nice side effect that I could get rid of those extensions.

More important would be to get away from the barrel/spring design of Trampa trucks.

[Andy87]

Reacher motors mounted.
Just realized I fucked up the orientation…

I like that mounting plate on the motors.
Nice to use long bolt. Hope with it stripped threads are a no longer a thing.

Vesc tool tested them to 70A, that’s a bit less than my APS 6384s.
There is as well a bit a strange noice when hard accelerating, but not sure yet where that came from.

Testing in progress…

[Andy87]

For all LiPo user a small heads up.
I always was wondering how the balance wires hold up under the heat shrink in this place…

Due to the shrink wrap they get pressed against the sharp corner of that plastic protection wrap.
This together with heavy vibration just never sounded right, so I did cut open the piece of heat shrink and I found several balance wires with deep cuts.
Some that deep that I could see the bare wire.
Which would lead to a short between the balance wires sooner or later.
I did not take pictures from that one which was really bad, but one picture as example where you can see small cuts already occurring.

I did heat shrink the damaged balance wires and covered the edges if the protection cover with some foam. After that I did rewrap the lipos with clear heat shrink.

I can just recommend everybody who do use lipos to check the conditions of the balance wires from time to time.

[Andy87]

First test ride on the Reacher motors was mixed. Chose some ski slopes to see what they can handle.

Not the steepest hill, but ok. With the 1:6.25 gearing the torque is just perfect on 9“.
I reached the top of the hill with about 65 degrees C on the motors. Would say that’s as well ok.

Unfortunatelly the helical pinion came lose on both sides. Even though I used keyway, grub screw and loctite.
As minimum that’s how it looked like…

Two days later:

One side of the gear drive I just opened and it looked like one of those copper washers got eaten up. Couldn’t find the missing copper washer thou, but the pinion did not move a millimeter.

My guess is that either I did miss one 10mm washer, or one 8mm washer got damaged as it was pressing on the angled step down of the motor shaft.
I really don’t like that angled step down on the Reacher motors.
Probably should just use 10mm washers than?

I also noticed that quite a lot of dirt gets into the gear drive through the opening of the motor where the phase wires coming out.

Definitely need to close it with something.
Maybe epoxy putty or something.

Also the venting holes in the back do suck in a lot of dirty air. So far that’s not an issue, but not sure if it’s beneficially in the long term.

My suggestions for improvement of those motors so far would be:
Termination of phase wires inside the motor, not outside
Straight step down to 8mm on the shaft, not angled
Sealing of the phase wire exit
Motor mount hole pattern drilled in different orientation so that no thread is just half cut

[glyphiks]

I believe the angled stepdown is there to prevent shearing at the step.

Agree on phase wire termination and mounting holes for sure.

As for sealing the exit hole, that would make it difficult to service the motor, so i reckon that should be left to the end user

[Andy87]

@glyphiks

I believe the angled stepdown is there to prevent shearing at the step

Makes sense, but comes with some draw back too. I guess doesn’t matter how to make it, there are always good and bad sides to it. Even a 10mm solid shaft wouldn’t always win.

@glyphiks

As for sealing the exit hole

Some kind of polyurethane plug would be an option. Either only pressed in or fixed with a stop of glue or silicone or what ever.
I have some gasket maker stuff, maybe I can get something done with it.

[glyphiks]

You gotta wonder if leaving it open might help air be drawn through it to help cool the motor too.

[Andy87]

@glyphiks

air

and dirt.
There is still the gap between motor bell and motor mounting plate where air can go through.
Other option would be to cut a slim sheet metal cover plate for the gear drive hole.
Looks like I need a strong laser cutter now as well…. Thank you Al

[glyphiks]

This definitely sounds like something you need. I cannot disagree.

But how much does dirt matter with a fully potted motor? i have no idea.