Bearing Lubrication???

I understand your concern but it is hard to put an hourly life on a bearing when it has different environments to work in. One pilot may fly easy and in cool weather and another may fly in hot climates like a bat out of hell. If DJI said 100 hours life, someone with 98 hours and a failure would raise all kinds of hell. They couldn't possibly state every single thing that could happen to a Phantom in life. Re...how many hours can the Phantom fly in the sun before uv affects the shell.....list every cleaning material not to use on Phantom. ...how hard is too hard to hit something. ...etc. They won't put themselves out for such liability. They have enough as it is. Does your car manual state how long your wheel bearings will last?

I just meant that dji must have collected a lot of experience flying Phantoms and bearing are a critical component so they could at least say something in the manual about. "bearings are sealed and are not designed to be serviced" or "operational life can vary depending on air temperature, humidity, dust and salt spay etc. as well as your flying habits". Treat it gently and it should last for 150 hrs of whatever . . drive hard and it won't. . . If I was editing the manual I'd at least add a similar statement. Instead their documentation lacks a lot.

My car manual at least tells me when and what I can service and I expect it to last longer than the warranty mileage. I get it's a "toy" but dji knows much of its whole lineup of machines are be purchased as professional tools. Owners should have some clue as to what "life" to expect.
 
I understand your concern but it is hard to put an hourly life on a bearing when it has different environments to work in. One pilot may fly easy and in cool weather and another may fly in hot climates like a bat out of hell. If DJI said 100 hours life, someone with 98 hours and a failure would raise all kinds of hell. They couldn't possibly state every single thing that could happen to a Phantom in life. Re...how many hours can the Phantom fly in the sun before uv affects the shell.....list every cleaning material not to use on Phantom. ...how hard is too hard to hit something. ...etc. They won't put themselves out for such liability. They have enough as it is. Does your car manual state how long your wheel bearings will last?
No they don't, however they do provide a maintenance schedule for critical components in order to maximize time before failure. This is not a new concept.
 
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I have touched on this subject also, point being if there was a known, or approximate number of expected hours the P4 motors have before failure, then I would want to replace the motors at an interval with a generous safety margin built in. Say if that number was 200 hours, I would replace them at 100. The most likely thing to fail when used a lot is the motors or battery, although there could be that relatively unusual electronic failure. But without combined experience of all users on motor failure rates or anything from the motor maker who knows when would be a good time to replace. These batteries have gotten better, but there replacement interval is no so clear either. I just want to preclude a failure while flying, other than my spastic controls ability!


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I have touched on this subject also, point being if there was a known, or approximate number of expected hours the P4 motors have before failure, then I would want to replace the motors at an interval with a generous safety margin built in. Say if that number was 200 hours, I would replace them at 100. The most likely thing to fail when used a lot is the motors or battery, although there could be that relatively unusual electronic failure. But without combined experience of all users on motor failure rates or anything from the motor maker who knows when would be a good time to replace. These batteries have gotten better, but there replacement interval is no so clear either. I just want to preclude a failure while flying, other than my spastic controls ability!


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I'm with you. Let us know if you find any data . . for me 45hrs . . "Maintenance Free"
 
That's a lot of time, encouraging, I have about 20 flights on 2 batts, and 4 on 3rd, maybe 10 hrs? But I'm sure that data I would have liked will never happen since they change models so often, and getting reliable data from this forum is sometimes hit and miss, but overall I have greatly benefited from the serious flyers on here. If in the rare event that I don't crash before I reach 75hrs, I'll replace the motors then.


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That's a lot of time, encouraging, I have about 20 flights on 2 batts, and 4 on 3rd, maybe 10 hrs? But I'm sure that data I would have liked will never happen since they change models so often, and getting reliable data from this forum is sometimes hit and miss, but overall I have greatly benefited from the serious flyers on here. If in the rare event that I don't crash before I reach 75hrs, I'll replace the motors then.


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I have 2 batteries each with about 43+ charges . . nothing to report but I may try to do a maintenance cycle on them soon. My motors sound like they are squealing a bit ( very high pitch maybe ~15+khz) but I forgot to record what they sounded like new. Not sure if I'm just imagining it. I'm hoping 100-200 hrs is practical . . we'll see.

Let me know how you plan to change motors . . none to easy in the P4 . . not easy to get into that case without special tools and some know-how . .there is a YouTube video . . and so many delicate connections inside. I tried opening just to get at one motor yesterday and . . . after finding there is NO WAY to oil bearings top or bottom I stopped and put it back together (with blue locktite). It flew fine. but with that high pitch squeal that I did not notice until recently.
 

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