Stress cracks on shell below motors

My never-crashed P3A has developed a crack under one motor. It is over a year old. Anyone know what DJI charges to replace the shell on an out-of-warranty P3A? I'll do it myself if it is too much. I'm in USA.

Well I am waiting on my P3A to come back from DJI in the morning.
It was under warranty so did not pay.
The invoice for repair was shell halves were €7 each and a €50 service charge.
Now I guess these are the factory prices not resale.

I would suggest you send some pictures to them and see if you can find out if they will do it under warranty.
 
Well I am waiting on my P3A to come back from DJI in the morning.
It was under warranty so did not pay.
The invoice for repair was shell halves were €7 each and a €50 service charge.
Now I guess these are the factory prices not resale.

I would suggest you send some pictures to them and see if you can find out if they will do it under warranty.

Thanks. I think I'll take your suggestion. Assuming those are resale prices, and would apply in USA, that is in the ball park of buying a shell and doing it myself. I would glue it but will eventually like to sell it when I upgrade to a newer model, and cracks or glue joints would make it less salable.
 
Here is the US, a shell cost around $60. Takes a couple of hours to replace it. Only tools you need would be a set of Torx drivers to fit the small screws holding the shell together and the motors to the shell.
 
Here is the US, a shell cost around $60. Takes a couple of hours to replace it. Only tools you need would be a set of Torx drivers to fit the small screws holding the shell together and the motors to the shell.
I have the tools and the time. Would be nice to have torque specs. I have a low-torque torque wrench.
 
I have the P3A and it's only two weeks old with three flights in beginner mode and I've already got one small stress crack coming off of one of the screws. Very disappointing. It's going back to Amazon.


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I've been waiting 4 weeks from the east coast and I still do not have mine. I also saw a $73 invoice so I'm not sure if I have to pay that or not. Drone is 7 months old.


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Yip looks like i can join the stress crack club to.phantom pro cracked bad..standed done more flights no cracks on it yet..waranty a pain to go through

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Received my drone and controller today and it's not the same stuff I sent. Different serial numbers. Wonder why it took so long if you're just going to swap it out?


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Motor mount screws are actually hex but you can use torx driver for it. The Allen wrench that came with the prop guard was garbage. Thought I had stripped them screws.

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Seems very hit and miss whether they will replace the shell due to stress cracks! Many on here have had theirs replaced and others haven't, myself included. DJI will not even acknowledge the fact that it was sent in to them due to stress cracks, and have refused point blank to replace the shell.
 
Seems very hit and miss whether they will replace the shell due to stress cracks! Many on here have had theirs replaced and others haven't, myself included. DJI will not even acknowledge the fact that it was sent in to them due to stress cracks, and have refused point blank to replace the shell.
I guess that it takes too much time to change-over the shell and so it's more economical to them to just change-over the AC itself.
 
I guess that it takes too much time to change-over the shell and so it's more economical to them to just change-over the AC itself.
They openly state that, at their option,they will either repair or replace when you send your bird in. Pretty sure that they replaced mine with refurb when I sent it in for stress cracks.
 
What's cool is that even though they may replace a component or entire unit with a refurb, they may charge you only for the parts needing replacing on your unit.
That's what they dif for my gimbal. Quoted replaced parts but obviously got a new gimbal instead as there's not a scratch on the camera body but mine had deep scratches. Cosmetic damage only there that I could tell.
 
Started getting cracks on one of the screw wells ahead of the motor screws. I think that's the arm that I found some clips popped out. Clips went right back in by only having to remove the 4 non-motor screws on the arm where I could easily press the clips back in. I took care not to overtighten those two screws.
I'll be using plast-aid to reinforce the cracks but the plastic the screw sits on also has a crack which if I applied plast-aid there, would misaligne the seating. I was thinking of a properly sized thin washer on the outside glued in by plast-aid but might have the screw sit too high.
What's interesting is that the screw has a collar behind the screw head with no thread. You'd think that would prevent overtightening and stress at that point.
 
Well I opened her up and found the crack wasn't that bad, looked worse in the screw hole than within the shell. Shell side pulled away from the screw well taking a small piece of the wall with it.
I tried using plast-aid. I probably was better off not messing with it.
First, make it thinner than the instructions imply. What does "enough to saturate" mean anyway? Second, be sparing with it as you need to make sure you don't interfere with the motor mount including those fingers. If you don't keep the stuff shallow you'll also interfere with the shell top being able to secure to the bottom. There's a skirt on the top she'll surrounding the motor that goes quite deep into the cavity. Also there are fingers on the top shell that stick out further than the seam between shells.
Stuff seems to thicken quickly. I don't think I had 2 minutes.
Now I have to dremel the excess plast-aid I stuck on. I only did the two rear (or was it front?). I'm not messing with the other two arms.
 
Well I opened her up and found the crack wasn't that bad, looked worse in the screw hole than within the shell. Shell side pulled away from the screw well taking a small piece of the wall with it.
I tried using plast-aid. I probably was better off not messing with it.
First, make it thinner than the instructions imply. What does "enough to saturate" mean anyway? Second, be sparing with it as you need to make sure you don't interfere with the motor mount including those fingers. If you don't keep the stuff shallow you'll also interfere with the shell top being able to secure to the bottom. There's a skirt on the top she'll surrounding the motor that goes quite deep into the cavity. Also there are fingers on the top shell that stick out further than the seam between shells.
Stuff seems to thicken quickly. I don't think I had 2 minutes.
Now I have to dremel the excess plast-aid I stuck on. I only did the two rear (or was it front?). I'm not messing with the other two arms.
If you had a warranty, you just voided it.
 
It's probably been voided already. I've had it repaired for a major crash, and a few weeks after that I had to replace one motor that was probably damaged in that crash but wasn't really noticeable but later got worse.
After a minor crash a small crack eventually developed which is why I attempted this.
I managed to clean up the excess with a Dremel tool to get it to close but not perfect. Tested flying a foot off my kitchen floor where it did OK but drifted some which is probably normal. Full test flight later today.
 

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