Check your Actro bearings and motor shaft for retainer!

[OICU812]

Well a few including recently myself have had some bad luck with Actro motors. I was chasing a vibration in my heli that I finally found..

In short it appears there are several Actro motors that have been released that have no bearing retainer on both the bearings outer race nor the inner race to the motor shaft. The outcome for me and a few others was the shaft basically eating itself away at the bottom bearing due to spinning inside the inner race of the bearing. Worse part is that Actro is impossible to get ahold of as they do not have an email you can contact them by, nor do any vendors have the replacement shafts or bearings. It gets worse,,,, goto get the bearings and see how hard they are to find,,, at an oddball size of 6mm ID x 16mm OD x 5mm width you will have fun. I located some finally through Boca Bearings, they were the only ones I could find that have this size. The shaft well,,,,, I will likely have one made as I can not seem to find anyone who sells them.

My particular motor is the 24-4 Actro, I have now heard of this on a few others and in different sizes. If it is not caught it could result in major damage to the model due to this creating a lockout, the shaft breaking etc,,,,

The fix is to simply take yours apart as it is real easy. Use a 5mm punch at the top after removing the 4mm bolt and gently punch it out the bottom from top, you do not have to remove the bottom c-clip, pinion etc. Then simply apply your bearing retainer product such as 609, let set and you should be fine.

Here are some pics of mine and how fast and bad it got chewed up before I noticed this. If Actro would only take a few minutes in assembly and 10 cents and apply a good reatiner this would be avoided. I wish I knew how to contact these guys to tell them to smarten up!!!

You may find yours are fine. I would rather post this and save someone else from having a major wreakage though, just in case!! :mrgreen:

[OICU812]

NOTE* I had this now happen to (TWO) Actro 24-4s'! Their bearings are sloppy. I oredered new shafts as well as some Boca bearings, hopefully with some red loctite, new shafts and quality bearings I can end this sillyness. Good Lord Actro, great motor but why cheap out and not get this shaft issue resolved???????

[aristo]

here is a source shawn
http://www.vxb.com/page/bearings/PROD/6mm/kit825

[satsuma]

WAS going to use a large Actro motor in my Vario Cobra, after reading this, i think i will buy an AXI instead, great thread though, thanks for passing this info on


SATS

[Jill74]

Originally Posted by aristo

here is a source shawn
http://www.vxb.com/page/bearings/PROD/6mm/kit825

I'll check on it so that i will have some idea on how this thing works.








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ToYs FoR ThE BiG MeN

[helicraze]

I got a heli with a actro 32-3, its 8MM shaft stepped to 6MM, shaft appears to be solid, there was a lot of endplay so I removed the clipped and shimmed it out.

After a few flight i noticed 1 of the winding when viewed above had touched (slightly worn, just a small amount). So i pulled it apart and shimmed it from the top bearing .4MM instead and added some CA to the exposed enamel copper wire.

After 35 flights from the previous owner the bearings were not so smooth, i suspect that the mesh was too tight. I replaced the bearings 8X16X5 (same as henseleit grip bearings how convenient)!!!
The shaft seems fairly hard.

[heliguychris]

Hey Cheers for that shawn, i was searching for shafts for a 32/3 helimax, and came across this thread. Ive got Non retained bearings as you describe, nearly 4 years later.

Im a bit over the aloof manufacturer thing. It would be nice to be able to contact a manufacturer, or team member, when ya need a shaft or whathaveyou, instead of a much slower proccess of third party convos back and forth.

Im inpatient, i cant wait weeks

Anywayz, today i have a friend making me one up in his engineering shop.. 4 cuts, and a flat, and 4mmtapped hole in the end. An hour and a half, be prolly free.

My snapped shaft looks like it has a blob of slag in the break. Not a clean snap, but a bit blob of suspicious looking slag, slightly ofset from the middle, covering about 20 % of the surface . Not happy Jan.