troubles installing pjacq kit

[sethf8403]

so i'm having issues with my brushless nano, it flies, but it is super boggy, the rpms are higher at first, and the hover is even more stable than before, but it just doesn't have the punch... after 2 minutes the thing will barely stay in the air...my regular brushed motor was WAY more powerful, like somewhere in the order of 2 to 3 times stronger...so something must not be right...am i right in assuming this setup should be at least a little more powerful than stock? id be happy if i could just get it to be comparable to stock...


anyways the motor will only start like 1 in 5 times, and the mesh is kinda tight, and the pinion barely reaches all the way down too the gear, is this common? are there any tricks to get a looser gear mesh? is gear mesh the only thing i should look at? i oiled the bearings on the new motor and im using brand new 35 and 45c batteries...my head is properly tuned and the same heli was flying great this morning with a stock setup...part of me thinks its the mesh and part of me thinks that the mesh couldn't be affecting it as much as im seeing, and that maybe my issue lies in the programming or something? all of those beeps i keep hearing but don't understand?

also, this thing just randomly starts beeping and junk, i have no idea what any of the beeps meant, those dumb video instructional's of his are next to useless, i used asteroids instructions just to get it running. is there somewhere that details what all the beaps mean?

[sethf8403]

ok, well it turns out it isn't the gear mesh causing my motor too bog, it's the motor leads...i cut them all short to solder, but they keep breaking in crashes

i noticed all the sudden i could get screaming power by squeezing the motor wires, but it wouldn't last....these motors have 2 stranded leads, that are apparently super brittle, i am not good at soldering but i should be able to solder 2 wires together...

i get them all soldered in and then i notice one wire has broken, i go to fix that one and realize i broke another...

i have now soldered and resoldered the dumb thing so many times the little plastic plug is melted and im going to have to solder right to the board which i didn't want to do

i managed to take the esc off one board and install it on another board, that should be the hard part...im not terrible at soldering but i can't seem to get a single good solder connection on these motor leads..... why are they so brittle and thin?

can i solder regular wires to the old stumps of wires? like real actual wires with insulation that dont break every ten seconds???

how do these things work? i don't get it, 3 leads, none are insulated or enameled, all touching each other as they leave the motor and then separate into 3 leads? in a normal motor that wouldn't work, i don't see why this doesn't just short it out...magic i guess, im so excited to fly this thing, it's driving me nuts...

[daveapplemotors]

Ck the mcpx bl thread. I think someone posted a nice explanation and chart of the beeps.

Sorry about your motor wire. Those wires are super small at only 0.012 mm diameter including insulation. Yup, insulation that you just burn off before you solder.

I have been rewinding. 36 gauge works on wild nano motors.

And yes, you can solder any larger wire to it that you want to fly around with.

[Guapo131]

those might look like bare wires, but they actually have a coating (enamel?) on them to keep them from shorting out. If you cut the motor wires shorter to solder to the ESC, you will need to etch/burn off the insulating coating. FYI, you may have not done that (burned off the insulation) and so the solder is only making an electrical connection through a small crack in the insulation to get to the wire to carry the electricity to the motor.
HTH

[sethf8403]

haha well that explains a lot! lol i have been having such a hard time figuring out what was happening, the fact that the motor wires are enameled solves all of my questions...

now i understand how the motor works(didn't make sense without enamel) and i also understand why my solder connections are so bad(i left on enamel) and also, knowing they are enameled i also know i can solder them to newer wires.

i actually have to solder new wires at this point...i got it running yesterday, and it was flipping really fast, although still not as fast as the first time i soldered it, while squeezing the connecters, so i knew that i wasn't all the way there...guessing i had a decent solder job but just neglected to sand off the enamel. it would have been an even bigger issue because i soldered the wires i cut off back on, so i soldered the enameled stumps of wires coming from the motor to the enameled pieces i cut off, and then to the esc, so there would be two enameled joints to jump in every wire...

im actually a little surprised it flew at all yesterday in that condition, i can only assume that the soldering gun burned some of the enamel off. well i am off to the electronics surplus store to buy some wire and one of those solder stations with the clips on flexible arms, and a magnifying glass...maybe that will give me better luck, i drink about 3 pots of coffee a day so i don't exactly have steady hands to hold the wires still while they cool...

so i have been having such a hard time soldering this wire, is that because of the enamel maybe? all my joints are cold joints on this wire but not on any other wire...

of course i was out today right after work to fly and within 2 batteries one of the wires gave way mid air, so i have to start over anyways, maybe i'll remove the plug and do it right since im adding new motor wires anyway.

[sethf8403]

well success! i must say i feel really dumb for not assuming the leads were enameled, and if i had known ahead of time it would have gone a lot better, i will probably get a new motor eventually and do it right...

anyways it has all the power it should, yet at full pitch it gets really loud, like the pitch is way too much, but that doesn't make much sense to me, since the stock motor didn't do this...

is this normal? do i just need to adjust my pitch curve to 85? i set my travel adjusts to 80 to see if that would help and it did a little but not much, and now it's flipping way slower so im going to set them back...

could this noise at full pos and neg pitch be nothing more than too extreme of setting in my tx? so far ive always run everything at 100% with a 100% flat throttle curve and no expo. what are the preferred setting for a brushless, and do you guys hear this noise if you set your brushless nano's to 100% everything in the tx?

[sethf8403]

ok update, i am SUPER confused...im pretty good at fixing heli's, and this one more than most...

i changed my throttle curve to flat 85% and my pitch curve to 15 25 50 75 85 but im still getting the same loud noise at full pos and neg pitch.

it's like a clacking, pulsing noise, ive put a new feathering shaft, new blades, ive tightened and loosed blades and feathering shaft, checked the swash, lubed everything...i have no idea what it could be, im going to put an entirely different head on it from another nano too see if it's that...

i almost wanna say it's the motor and not the head, cause it doesn't do it without the blades on, so it only does it under a high load, maybe blade grip bearings, though they seem super smooth, i use microheli metal heads...

[daveapplemotors]

Can the grips touch the AR guide? I trim off the tops of lots of them.

You can adjust gear mesh with that kit, no? Did you change the gear?

How much pitch do you use? (degrees or linear measurement at the tips)

Could it be a bad main shaft? - my most commonly replaced item - check for soft feeling by holding gear in one hand and head in the other and applying a little torque.

I would check the frequency of the noise using an old earbud and Audacity to track down the source. If you see a spike at say100Hz, which is 6,000 rpm, then perhaps it is in the head. The motor vibrations will show a visible spike about 10 times higher.

see http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1996241 to learn how to set it up and use Audacity freeware.

Video? If you share the audio I can tell you the frequency.

good luck,
Dave

[Guapo131]

Seth, that clicking/clacking sound is probably a worn down gear tooth. It only shows up at full pos/neg pitch because that is when the blades are providing the most resistance. The gear tooth may not be completely gone, but one (or two) geartooth may be worn down a little bit more than the rest, then the pinion skips that tooth causing the unpleasing clicking sound. It's happened to me before. You can either tighten up the mesh (but you risk getting too tight and causing all sorts of other problems), or you can change gears. Watch out for those pesky oval main gears from HH. I have a main gear success rate of around 1 in 3 (yes, >50% of their stupid gears are not round) in my sample-set.
Good luck!

[sethf8403]

The ar guide and main gear sound promising, ill check em when im done working, ive never damaged a main shaft, not even sure how thats possible lol although i can see how a brushless motor could chew up a main gear like they do on bigger helis.

[sethf8403]

omg! it was just the dumb gear! i swapped it out and bam, nice and quiet, screaming power...omg i love this kit! i feel really stupid for not checking the gear, brushless motors eat gears, everybody knows that, ive gone through dozens of main gears on my 450, i guess i am just used to the brushed motor, it's never hurt a gear so i didn't even think of it as a possibility.

honestly i could already do most of my tricks with this heli stock, tic tocs were kinda impossible, but now i can't see that i'll have any issues with any tricks, especially the ones i haven't learned yet...it's SO POWERFUL!

i don't get how people are flying around with the wild kit, that thing must be impossible...im already crashing much more often again because all the sudden im flipping so fast im having a hard time keeping an eye on my orientation...gonna take a while to get used to that, but i love it...

i highly recommend this kit, i only had issues because im apparently an idiot, they were stupid mistakes and i should have known better. the mild kit has SO MUCH more power than the stock, and i can look foreward to this motor never dying on me...

i have decided that i will never fly another stock nano, i have a stock one coming in the mail tomorrow hopefully and already am doing what i can to get another mild kit for it...i have a third one that is down with board issues, i may decide to get a new board for that and go wild brushless with a tail brushless too...

if you have a properly adjusted head and have good collective management the mild kit doesn't seem to have tail holding issues...mine is rock solid anyway...

this thread started with me having a tight gear mesh and no idea how to fix it...i also had a pinion that only reached about 3/4 of the way to the gear, which is why it stripped so easy im sure...i had no idea how to adjust the mesh or get the motor all the way down, after swapping everything to a new frame with flex canopy pins i figured it all out, when you cut away the old motor braces you should file the stumps smooth, i must have been in such a hurry to install the motor i didn't even pay attention, the stumps of the motor supports were keeping my motor from fitting all the way into the motor slot. i was much cleaner with my second frame and everything went together super quick, the motor mesh is PERFECT, and the pinion is in the exact right place, and this kit has a ton of room to adjust the mesh if you need too, though by the looks of it when properly installed the mesh is spot on!