Motors from the crypt

[GeneralZod]

Came across this recently and had to pull the trigger. Not too sure what is in it - check. Well aged yellowed plastic case -check. Small bits of dog hair tangled around parts -check. Attempt to bring them back from the dead? Sure, why not?

I think I can work with these.

This was a pleasant surprise. Not sure which Trinity model this is but it has the cool aluminum end bell and can/label is in good shape. I will need to fab the missing parts. King Kong motor? Dunno.

This is kinda neat too. An old Bolink that will go nicely with my future Eliminator 12 revival.

Never seen this one before. Look at that comm! That one is toast. I will get this one running once again too.

All the arms still have more life left in them. This will keep me from getting bored for a while.

[GeneralZod]

Working on the Trinity. Installed new bearings from Avid.

Had to fab the missing isolators from frp board. The holes had to be drilled spot on. I went through several pieces to get it right.

painted them black with a sharpie

Finding the little screws was difficult. Managed to locate a few that worked.

Sacrificed an old Yokomo motor for the proper brush hoods.

Aligning the hoods.

Installed a Trinity 9 turn arm along with new brushes and purple springs.

Set the timing mark about where it should be and applied 4V. Hot damn! This motor screams at only 4V! Maybe try it in my 4 cell pan car? Now on to the other boneyard motor's........

[GeneralZod]

Had some time to bring this one back to life. I put in a little used arm with a unknown wind. It looked like an old twisters arm but who knows. Anyway, I did the usual clean, oil, fitting of brush hoods, shimmed the arm, matched the springs and installed new brushes. I then applied power and tweaked the timing. It slowly spun up and then roared back to life! Neat, this unknown wind motor is a hot little number. This is fun, moving on to the scrappy lookin twisters can.....

[SteveMax]

Nice. I love bringing old, dead, brushed motors back to life

[dinglem]

Great post! Thanks for sharing the pictures, making it very clear to the uninitiated what you are doing.

Are you also zapping the can magnets and flagging to re-centre them?

I am going through the same rebuild process with a fair few of my old brushed motors.

[jwscab]

definitely miss playing with the motors for fun, definitely don't miss rebuilding them because I had to. nice restore there.

[dinglem]

We used to just clean them and buy new brushes... I was too young to know any different at that time. We used to buy new ones pretty regularly and eventually got sent them for free from my sponsor (MG). I have learned more in the past 12months about old brushed motors than I ever knew bitd! Loving it all over again

[GeneralZod]

Great post! Thanks for sharing the pictures, making it very clear to the uninitiated what you are doing.

Are you also zapping the can magnets and flagging to re-centre them?

I am going through the same rebuild process with a fair few of my old brushed motors.

I wish I had a zapper, doing everything but that. It did cross my mind wondering how much strength was left in the magnets.

One thing I always make sure to do when rebuilding is to shim the arm so that it is centered in the magnetic field. It takes some patience and many various thicknesses of shims to get it right. It really makes the motor run more smoothly.

BTW - Is there a source for new labels for the cans? My Twisters label is really chewed up.

[SteveMax]

MCI racing makes repro motor decals.

Another source is UltraHive - he has LeMans and Trinity decals - the site is a bit confusing, but the quality of the decals is very high (they are a bit expensive though)

[SteveMax]

MCI has twister decals too! i tried them ... they are 'good'. You can definitely tell they're reproduction - real twister decals are foil - so the repops look different.

I bought twister, trinity, and leMans from MCI - The MCI trinity decals are a very nice match, the LeMans decals are also 'good' - easy to tell they're repops, but nice to fix up a bad label.

[GeneralZod]

Thanks for the leads! I checked UltraHive site and you are correct. It's a bizarre layout and I couldn't find anything related to RC there. I will check MCI but sounds like the Twisters decal is missing the foil backing to make it look more authentic. Currently re assembling the vintage Bolink motor. I enjoy these old power plants!