Tweet
Well some of you may have read where I finaly managed to get some big air under my boat and do a major back flip and dunking my Spartan for about 15 minutes before I got the row boat out to it. I was glad everything was still there at least. I mentioned that I had removed the motor to clean it out with WD 40 and compressed air. I did that and all was good I thought. Before putting the motor back together "just the front end was off" I oiled the bearing in the front from both sides and put the motor together.
I oiled the back bearing the only way I ever have just from the outside dropping a couple drops on to the shaft in the center. I took it to the lake at work this morning and after a pre check to see all was good and then a fresh coat of grease on the drive cable, set it in the water.
I started off using the stock nimh's and ran them down pretty well and brought it in. The extra grommet that I have on the back of the drive cable holds in the grease and allows another run after just using the stock batteries.
Then I switched to the 8.400 mah lipos, and did some on and off full out runs for over 5 minutes, and all was fine, but while I was going fairly slow it suddenly just stopped. It must have overloaded the esc because it cut the signal from the transmitter. I just let the boat drift to shore, took it inside and pulled the motor out and apart and all the little 16 gauge shot sized ball bearing were everywhere inside the motor. The bearing race almost fell out and it was blue in a little spot.
I called traxxas to ask if there was a better motor for the Spartan "bigger" and he said I needed to ask Castle about that. He also said the motor in the Spartan is really just right for it, and though I told him I bought my boat the last part of November 2011, he emailed me the return info so I could exchange it no charge. The boat only has a 30 day warranty on the electrics I think. I didnt lie about what happaned to the boat before the motor failed, nor when bought it, but he said it didnt matter. And I told him I was running the big Traxxas 8.400's and he said " sure why not ? " He made no excuses just said it shouldnt have happaned.
I have been having a rash of bad R/C luck lately with my Helicopters, so why not the boat? In as much as this boat gets run hard every day at work as part of my job entertaining the special needs kids, I cant complain about the Spartan. There is no telling how many hours are on this boat. And if Traxxas is going to be behind me this way from now on, I'm sure not going to complain about that either! We'll just have to see about that, but Im very impressed with them so far.
I oiled the back bearing the only way I ever have just from the outside dropping a couple drops on to the shaft in the center. I took it to the lake at work this morning and after a pre check to see all was good and then a fresh coat of grease on the drive cable, set it in the water.
I started off using the stock nimh's and ran them down pretty well and brought it in. The extra grommet that I have on the back of the drive cable holds in the grease and allows another run after just using the stock batteries.
Then I switched to the 8.400 mah lipos, and did some on and off full out runs for over 5 minutes, and all was fine, but while I was going fairly slow it suddenly just stopped. It must have overloaded the esc because it cut the signal from the transmitter. I just let the boat drift to shore, took it inside and pulled the motor out and apart and all the little 16 gauge shot sized ball bearing were everywhere inside the motor. The bearing race almost fell out and it was blue in a little spot.
I called traxxas to ask if there was a better motor for the Spartan "bigger" and he said I needed to ask Castle about that. He also said the motor in the Spartan is really just right for it, and though I told him I bought my boat the last part of November 2011, he emailed me the return info so I could exchange it no charge. The boat only has a 30 day warranty on the electrics I think. I didnt lie about what happaned to the boat before the motor failed, nor when bought it, but he said it didnt matter. And I told him I was running the big Traxxas 8.400's and he said " sure why not ? " He made no excuses just said it shouldnt have happaned.
I have been having a rash of bad R/C luck lately with my Helicopters, so why not the boat? In as much as this boat gets run hard every day at work as part of my job entertaining the special needs kids, I cant complain about the Spartan. There is no telling how many hours are on this boat. And if Traxxas is going to be behind me this way from now on, I'm sure not going to complain about that either! We'll just have to see about that, but Im very impressed with them so far.
Comment