S.O.S.... My first FLYAWAY... YIKES!

[RedFishChaser]

I flew my Phantom late yesterday afternoon. YIKES!

Yup, I lost connection with the Phantom! Started coming down just near the edge of a storm water pond. Started coming down and clipped some tall pine trees. Seemed something out of a movie watching it cause havoc on the tree branches one after another. And then, kaboom on the ground. I ran to retrieve it. Lucky for me it was 10-yards on my side. Otherwise, the Phantom would have gone in the water and all would have been lost with the GoPro too!

When I had grabbed the Phantom and accidently touching one of the motors... it was HOT! I mean burning hot! Yup, I burnt my hand on it. After it had cooled a little bit, I tried tugging at the motor to ensure that it didn't get bent or anything. Dang, the blade housing came right out of the coiled magnetic housing of the motor. I'd thought that was strange.

I'd brought it home and started disassembling the Phantom - the one motor that the half easily popped out. It turned out after hours with messing with it, I'd noticed a C-clamp had come off the shaft assembly. Got it back on. Spent few more hours.

Now, I CANNOT get the motor to turn. It appears that not enough electricity is going to the motor to generate the electromagnetic force to turn the motor. HELP! Do I merely connect to the PC and run that software? Is there a YOUTUBE video to teach me how to set the various parameters to get the motor going again? The motor is not "burnt" and I believe it merely needs adjustment.

I do want to buy a spare motor to keep around. Any suggestions would be helpful. Thanks!

 

[martcerv]

The only thing that can go wrong with the motor other then a pulled wire or short in the winding is you may also have lost a bearing or the esc is cooked. Check to make sure both bearings are on the still. If the motor is still spinning as freely as all others when no power is on the its either a broken solder joint, short or the ESC. Also there are the obvious physical issues is the motor gets dinged or bent it wont spin at all or very badly.

Motors and ESC's are fairly cheap parts and if they have a any issues you cant fix 100% best to replace the damaged parts before they cause you another crash.

 

[DeweyAXD]

Motors and ESC's are fairly cheap parts and if they have a any issues you cant fix 100% best to replace the damaged parts before they cause you another crash.

+1 - not worth the risk of a repair. I messed up one of my motor's windings just by removing it for a bearing repair... the wires in there are VERY sensitive to twisting motion.

Ask yourself this - even if you fiddled with it and it suddenly worked, would you really want to risk a £500 craft + £300 camera for the sake of maybe £50 of parts?

 

[Gizmo3000]

I had something of similar experience a few months ago,. my Phantom started wobbling terribly, and I too found that one of the motors was super-hot.
I played it safe and installed a new motor.

 

[dcoski]

I have had that happen twice. The first time that C (or E??) clip got up in inside the motor and I couldn't even turn the engine. So I pulled the top part of the engine and got the C clip out of it and fasten it back where it was suppose to be on the bottom and went back to flying. In your case you might have some dirt or some kind iron fillings stuck to the magnets. Also look at the bearings to make sure they are seated in there right. When it happen to me I almost popped the top bearing all the way out, but anyway I have been flying for a about month everyday and no problems that I can see so far.

 

[dcoski]

Sense my last post above I thought I would check my motors to see if I had another C clip come loose of which I did on my left rear motor. I pulled the prop and housing all the way off and this was after a susestfull flight. I also know that that there is enough magnetic pull in the propeller housing to suck-up that C clip and restrict that motor, which would cause the engine to overheat, or to freeze the engine up entirely. Ether way it could make for a bad day. You can't look at the bottom of the motor until you crack open the shell of which I did. I never did find the C clip, but I did find that my bottom bearing was starting to come apart, anyway plate that fits over the bearing race was laying loose. So I replace that bearing with a new one and went out and tested it. All is good here again. So from here on out after every hard landing (crash) that is going to be one of the first things I am going to check.

 

[RedFishChaser]

Thanks very much for ALL the great input!

I'm planning on upgrading the motors to Tiger Motor the white fancy type. I've read up on it and that appears to be a good investment for the long haul. I'm not looking forward to spending $210, but I'm too engrossed in this new hobby and I don't want a lost and/or downed Phantom.I'll keep the original motors for spares. I'm also planning on upgrading the bearings and clips on the older motors.

I hope the new motors doesn't require that I go into that NAZA or whatever it's called software and do anything. I have no clue how to use that. Need to study YouTube, lol!

Again, thanks for the inputs!

Cheers!

 

[marcus_canada]

Thanks very much for ALL the great input!

I'm planning on upgrading the motors to Tiger Motor the white fancy type. I've read up on it and that appears to be a good investment for the long haul. I'm not looking forward to spending $210, but I'm too engrossed in this new hobby and I don't want a lost and/or downed Phantom.I'll keep the original motors for spares. I'm also planning on upgrading the bearings and clips on the older motors.

I hope the new motors doesn't require that I go into that NAZA or whatever it's called software and do anything. I have no clue how to use that. Need to study YouTube, lol!

Again, thanks for the inputs!

Cheers!

You shouldn't have to do anything in the NAzza assistant but to be honest it never hurts to go in there and check things over. I run an IMU Calibration occasionally just to keep on top of the drift. I also run the TX calibration.

Just make sure you get the wiring right on the new motors, check they are rotating the right way before you commit to fist flight

 

[dcoski]

What you posted to me explains some of the fly-a-ways I have been reading about. Now don't get me wrong the stock motor is good little motor and very reasonably priced with a weak spot. Which is the C clip could pop off get up in the motor and restrict it on a hard landing (crash). You could possibly fly several more flights with no problems. Then your Phantom would just takeoff out of control and you left wondering why. It is a simple check, just pull on the prop and if the motor housing comes apart then you need a C clip reinstalled before you flight again.

I think the Phantom is great design for what it is for, but as we get more into flying. We want it to do more than it was originally design for. It was design to pack a GoPro camera and take a few videos, that is about it. Then we start hanging stuff on it, gimbals, more batters, where the list goes on and on. Which is exactly what we should be doing, to push this hobby to who knows where. So I think it is a good move on your part. I will probably be doing the same thing in the not to distant future. I am sure they will give you great service.

Thank you for your post. It made me very aware of what I should be looking for after a crash.

 

[asynchronism]

What you posted to me explains some of the fly-a-ways I have been reading about.

I just watched mine try to deal with a broken prop... I assume in much the same way the NAZA would deal with a motor failure. I agree that hardware failure could definitely explain some of the perceived fly aways.

If it had enough altitude, I think it might have recovered... it appeared to compensate by adding power to the failing corner, and then to the whole system to compensate for the loss of altitude. Could very easily have leveled off, but and gone off in the direction of the failed corner.

 

[RedFishChaser]

To the pain of my wallet, I had ordered an upgraded motors... The Tiger Motor (aka, T-motor) - Antigravity white colored motors. Supposed to have much more power from what I've read. Before this, I had ordered new bearings and C-clips to upgrade the stock motors. I'll keep them as spares or put it on eBay and sell them.

Good luck pilots! And NO to fly-aways!

 

[MrMediaGuy]

To the pain of my wallet, I had ordered an upgraded motors... The Tiger Motor (aka, T-motor) - Antigravity white colored motors. Supposed to have much more power from what I've read. Before this, I had ordered new bearings and C-clips to upgrade the stock motors. I'll keep them as spares or put it on eBay and sell them.

Good luck pilots! And NO to fly-aways!

They are awesome motors, but just to set expectations, they aren't "much more powerful," but maybe 8-10% more power. Not enough that you'll really notice it consistently. But the sound....you'll love the sound.

They make the stock motors sound like a bowl of rocks in a food processor.

 

[skipper1]

They make the stock motors sound like a bowl of rocks in a food processor.[/quote]

That is a perfect description for the DJI motors.
I've always thought DJI motors sounded like they were about to crap out. When I got my Phantom, the first thing I did was replace the motors with T-Motors and don't regret spending the extra money at all. Smooth, quiet and well balanced.
The only thing you'll need to replace the new motors is a good soldering iron, It might be best to just cut the wires on the motors leaving a decent amount of wire on the ESC's so that you can put bullets on the wires for easy exchange.

 

[dcoski]

Do you need to make a prop change or can you use the same props??

 

[MrMediaGuy]

They make the stock motors sound like a bowl of rocks in a food processor.

The only thing you'll need to replace the new motors is a good soldering iron, It might be best to just cut the wires on the motors leaving a decent amount of wire on the ESC's so that you can put bullets on the wires for easy exchange.[/quote]

That's exactly what I did, too. I figure I probably added another ounce with 12 solder-filled gold-plated bullet connectors, but they just look so darn cool inside there I don't care. I even used color-coded shrink tubing on the bullets to match the color coding on the ESCs. Lesson learned -- check each one for proper rotation *before* you apply the shrink tubing, if you want to go that route. I was surprised to discover that even though I carefully flattened out the wires on the T-Motors, they still didn't correspond to the "left-middle-right" wiring on the DJI motors; every one was dutifully running backwards.

Now yes, I could have just swapped the connections and called it done, but then my fancy color coding wouldn't match. So yeah, I cut off all that heat shink on the motor side and redid them. **** retentiveness is a bad (or good?) quality in this hobby.