Yesterday, I took my Blade 350 QX out for the first time in … forever. It’s developed the nasty habit of flipping onto its back and crashing.
I upgraded the firmware to 3.0 (a story in itself) so that I could test the motors one at a time and listen/watch for problems. I’ve clearly got some.
I’ve proceeded to tear the whole thing apart to try and diagnose the problem. This involves removing a ridiculous number of allen screws in three different sizes.
Motor #3 in pieces.
I found this thread on RCGroups about replacing bearings in the motors. While trying to follow the instructions and gently tap the bottom bearing out, I instead knocked the cover off the bottom bearing and inside I found what I can only assume to be a piece of bacon. No amount of prying with pins and tweezers will extricate this weird bit of detritus from my bearing.
I’ve ordered four new sets of ceramic bearings Fast Eddy Bearings.
The old bearings were really in there and I destroyed most of them in the process of knocking them out of the motor. One of them popped apart and this guy came out, so now I know the origins of the piece of ‘bacon’ I found in my first bearing; it was the chewed remains of one of these rings.
Fortunately, the new bearings went in with much less trouble. I was able to press most of them into place with my hand.