Replacing a Tail Rotor Motor
While flying the Silverlit MX-1 in my lounge in did it’s dropping out of the air trick and landed in some “old man’s beard” Christmas tree decoration. This stuff is like loose cotton wool and tangled itself in the tail rotor.
To remove the fibres I had to pull off the tail rotor, but I wasn’t gripping the motor hard enough and pulled it out of the housing, breaking off the power wires in the process. Inspection of the motor showed that it would not be possible to re-attach the wires.
Finding a New motor
A search around the Internet located a source of replacement motor from http://www.servoshop.co.uk/. They are currently selling for £3.99 plus p&p. I bought two so I would have a spare.
Fitting
The blue and red lead on the MX-1 where pulled out of the motor housing and the ends where scrapped to remove their insulating enamel coating. These leads are multi-stranded and each strand has it’s own coating, so you are never going to remove all of it. You are just looking to remove enough for the solder to bond to.
The new motors come fitted with two short leads, also blue and red, so it seemed logical to match then blue to blue, red to red with the MX-1 wires. The motor was pushed into the housing with it’s wires exiting through the vent holes at the back.
I twisted the MX-1 and motor leads together and applied a drop of solder to form the joint.
A quick test showed the tail rotor was spinning the wrong way, so with solder pump in hand, I removed the solder and rewired the connections blue to red. Small wires and big fingers don’t make for the neatest job ever, but it’s working.
The replacement motor, wiring and solder has added some extra weight to the tail rotor, requiring the addition of some extra BluTak under the nose.
I can’t say if the new motor is an exact replacement for the old one. I feel that I need a little trim than before, but once added, flight performance and handling seems the same.
