3573 replies to this topic

[havlicek]

All done and being sent out tomorrow. Neither of the 29's draws more than an amp and they spin up nicely, so they don't seem at all too hot. With good springs and brushes (what I have here is just what I use and reuse to test stuff) and a break-in, they should be lovely.



-john

[dc-65x]

Hmmmmmmmmmmm. Yummy Russkit Gold paint job. Nice looking armature too .

[One_Track_Mind]

Directional Arrows are a nice touch!

this will give it away if the mystery blogger ever shows these motors in a build!

[havlicek]

Thanks mucho Rick. The gold is about the right shade, but has more metallic than the actual color from what I can tell. These old Mabuchis sure are a hoot, even though the later Muras (the big-fat-wire motors) are the real "thrillers"

Hi Brian...yeah, little by little I'm trying to settle on a "look" so that (for better or for worse) my stuff is recognizeable. I have a few more old Mabuchis here...K&B, Classic etc. that I'm going to be doing up and I'm confident that they can go quite a bit hotter than these with an endbell and magnet upgrade and still be reliable. I have one K&B Wildcat that I did as a #26 with a can ball bearing that absolutely kicks!

BTW...I've asked Rick to make me a winder clamp for 26D sized arms so I don't have to turn those jobs down anymore. Does anyone know what a good average diameter for these arms is?

-john

[Horsepower]

I have a spare 36D clamp if you need one.

[havlicek]

Gary...if you don't need it, I'll take it for sure. I don't remember anyone asking me to do one of those so far, but I'm sure it will come up at some point. PM sent!

-john

[havlicek]

So I've been having so much fun with all these Mabuchis that I thought it would be cool to do one with all the doo-dads...sort of what a person might have come up with back in the 60's if they went "all-out". I didn't want to just stick modern stuff in a Mabuchi can...what would be the point? I started with a Russkit can that had been pretty badly mauled. The magnet tabs had been flattened to put some different magnets in there and the can was dented-up some because of that so I cut the tabs out and made rounded slots out of them. I also replaced the can "cup-style bushing" as I think I get better results with a regular "donut" bushing. Then I stripped and repainted the can with two coats of Rustoleum "Hammered Finish" in their "grey", baking it in between coats. This paint gets very hard and shiny, much more so than their regular colors so it seems like a durable and attractive option that is well-suited for painting motors. Then I cleaned-up a junk arm someone had given me and tossed the stack end insulators figuring that the same overall length stack without them would have more magnetic material. I radiused and polished the stack ends to get rid of any sharp edges and applied my white "secret sauce" to prevent shorts, baking it between steps. Then set a Tradeship com (back into my Easy Bake oven) and polished the stack in preparation for winding...and then did a #28 wind, guessing that was about as hot as they went back then. I have some can/magnet/endbell (Tradeship again) work to do, but first I have to tie/epoxy/balance the arm. Anyway, here's my "Maximum Mabuchi" so far":



-john

[don.siegel]

Hi John,

Nice looking motors, as usual! What would we ever have done without Russkit???

I've been looking back at the Car Model series in 1967, and the Arco 33 and Mura 44 magnets are already being used; the one race I just looked at had mostly 29 and 30 winds, with a couple 28s. I would think that with the stock magnets 29 or 30 would be as high as you could go... and it would depend on track power too: this race was on an American track with a power pack, and even at 80 amps, it would be less powerful than with batteries, maybe that would explain the milder winds.

But there was also an intermediate magnet solution: the French magnets, which were the earliest hopup magnets for the Mabuchis, and the Hemi magnets from about the same time (66 I assume).

In fact, have you ever seen a copy of the Tom Malone article on The Complete Mabuchi that ran in Rod & Custom in late 66 and early 67? That would probably be state of the art for that period, although it was quickly outdated...

Don

[havlicek]

Hi Don,

Thanks...and yes, the Russkit motors, particularly the "23" were (still are!) just begging to be hopped-up and are still worth the effort! There's something very appealing to me in doing this stuff to the early Mabuchis and as you know, the Wildcat (thanks again!) holds a special place in my memory. In fact it was the K&B you sent me that got me interested in these motors. While someone could just stick all kinds of hot modern stuff in these motors with a little shaving here and a little fitting there, the end result would have no relevance to what was going on then and would still not perform as well as going all the way with all new parts in a new can/endbell. I don't claim that everything I'm doing here is 100% accurate to what people might have done then, but I think it's reasonably close. It's sometimes hard to restrain myself

The magnets are a whole deal unto themselves as, even with solid power, the balance between magnets and wind can't get to far out of whack without poor results. In another thread, Rick pointed me towards some alternate magnet solutions and I'm going to go with the Muras. Main reason is that they're "right" for the period and the wind I've done here and I think the end result is going to be a pretty hot performer in mid-to-later 60's terms. Plus, I think it looks cool! Never saw the article you mentioned.

-john

[havlicek]

Finished up the arm (tied/epoxied/balanced/final polish/dye) for the "max Mabuchi" motor. I also tweaked the setup so the arm just fits the can/endbell with the slightest play using one washer on either end. While I'm waiting for the magnets to get here I have some stuff to do with the endbell...but this is pretty much "it" for now anyway:


Seeing the Lenz motor that Rick pictured in the Identify These Magnets thread of the Technical Advice forum (some sort of a double wind...maybe a 29dbl?)...it looks like I could have gone hotter than a single #28, but this puppy should be plenty zippy

-john

[dc-65x]

Hi John,

Beautiful arm .

The silver double wind Lenz I pictured is, I believe, a double 32. See the 32D scratched in the can by Dave Lenz:



The wire is really skiny and there is LOTS of it . It runs pretty good and is faster than I thought it would be. Now that I have my winged thingie body mounted I'll try for some lap times on Eddie's Blue King .

Keep up the great work and thanks for sharing

[havlicek]

Hi Rick,

Thanks again for the kind words. Yeah...I saw the 32D but that wire looks a lot thicker in the picture, but I guess it's just the closeup and me being a lousy guestimator Sure does look like he packed as much on there as he could too, and that com looks nice and beefy as well. I bet it does just fine on the King with a handling body on it too! Someday you let me know and I'll send you my Maximum Mabuchi so you can blast it around the King to see if I came close Meanwhile I'm stoked about the Mura magnet setup coming as I think it's going to work really well with this 28...fingers crossed because it's somewhere between .2 and .3 ohm on the meter . You wouldn't know what then Lenz meters at would you???

-john

[dc-65x]

You have a good eye my friend . I took this double 32 out of the package and eyeballed the wire size next to my Lenz motor:



The Lenz wire is indeed larger for sure. I remember it measured .2 ohms and this D32 measures .4 ohms. Good call. Here's a shot of the timing:



I thought you might enjoy seeing this:



A can drive single 25(!) with a Tradeship comm





I better clean this thing up and see if I can stop the corrosion process

[havlicek]

Hi Rick,

...maybe I'm not such a lousy guestimator after all?? Anyway, there's some neat-o old arms there! Not as beautiful as the Steubes and some others that are almost artwork...but very cool nonetheless. If you want to run them seriously, I think maybe having them tied and rebalanced might be a good thing unless that would kill the vintage appeal? What I found most interesting is that in the end shots of the Tradeship com, the com tabs seem centered on the segments the way you would expect. However I've gotten some together here for future arms (including this mabuchi) and on all of mine from several different sources the tabs are offset. Using the tab as a timing guide (I use the com segment gap) would produce an advance if the arm were spinning CW viewed from the endbell side or CCW when viewed from the can end...weird.

That 25S with the Tradeship com is pretty "optimistic" eh? The Tradeship stuff IS really nice, but I think that relatively slim com might be pretty heavily taxed with a 25. Oh yeah...this also means that the 25S has been soldered at the tabs. I guess I'm not the only nutjob out there

[dc-65x]

John,

Here are the Tradeship comms I have. They are timed 0, 11, and 22 degrees:



Left to right, 0, 11, and 22 degrees:





They are brown, grey and black colors too

[havlicek]

Bingo Rick...mystery solved. I'm learning here...slowly

-john

[Lenny M]

[quote name='havlicek' date='Apr 12 2009, 02:58 PM' post='159452']
Finished-off three for a blogger while smelling the Easter ham cooking...mmmmmm. Anyway, he had three blanks, two salvaged from Parma 16D motors and one Mura as well as three salvaged Mura coms. One of the salvaged coms had a tab break off when I went to crimp it closed so that one had to be undone and got a new com...stuff happens


-john

Hi John,

I received the arms , they look great.

I tried the 28 out on Friday night ,it ran GREAT , just the way I had hoped.
Fast but drivable.
Most of your other arms that you sent me are very fast but the best lap times that I could turn were in the 3.6 sec. laps (because of wheel spin).
My son and I were turning 3.3 sec. laps with the 28's
I'll let you know about the 29 when I try it.

FANTASTIC

Thanks
Lenny

[havlicek]

Hi Lenny and thank you for letting me know how they worked! The slavaged 16D arms are a great way to get good quality blanks and the Mura coms have worked really well for me...thank goodness at least one company is selling coms. Keep these winds written down and we can use them as a starting point for any changes you want to make in the future (I forget this kind of stuff all the time). The "big wire arms" (25 and under) do present a problem keeping the cars driveable as it can be difficult to avoid wheelspin. I'm not sure, but I guess either a car with more mass (like the old pro chassis...or just a bunch of lead) or lots of air control or both is the way to go...or a choke. Some of the people here who actually raced those things would have the definitive answers. Anyway, thanks again for the feedback and enjoy the arms!

-john

[havlicek]

Some more work done on the "Max Mabuchi" project. I added post protectors and shunted brushes and soldered the brush hoods to the brush carriers, this made a big difference in performance as well as spring heat. It seems the springs were carrying a lot of the current before soldering the hoods and adding the shunts and those puppies were getting hot. Not surprising when you think about it.

I played around with the can-in-a-can magnet setup and just didn't like the way things "sat". The whole fit and alignment seemed both precarious and inprecise, so time for "plan B". I fashioned some tool steel shims for the top and bottom of the magnets to better center them vertically in the can. Then I epoxied them into the can around a .530" motor alignment slug thingie with a single layer of Scotch double-sided tape to keep things together while the epoxy cured. For the epoxy, I used the same high-temp epoxy I use for the arms and wet the inside of the can with it a little. Then I added West System colloidal silica (mineral) to the rest of the mix to thicken and strengthen it to a "mayonnaise consistency". The silica is an incredibly fine "dust" (don't exhale around the stuff as it will all be gone in a puff)...not good to breathe but an excellent thickener/filler. I buttered the back of the magnets once they were stuck to the alignment slug in the correct position and carefully installed them in the can. These magnets are very strong (thanks Rick for the suggestion!) and now I can be confident that they're well centered with a decent air gap.

I still have to insulate the springs and experiment with different spring weights, but first I'm going to re-check the balance on the arm. I get a little vibration up to around 4 volts and want to be sure that things haven't shifted changing the balance. Anyway, this is what I got so far...draws around 2 amps and sounds very strong:


-john

[Dooner]

John,
The way you cut the post flush with the post protector or cut the post protector even with the post makes for a nice clean finished look.

[havlicek]

Hi Tom,

I can't take any credit for that. The post protectors simply slip on and they're the right length. Just to be sure they stay, I nick the plastic spring posts a bit and then epoxy the protectors on. I figure the epoxy probably doesn't actually bond to the plastic, but it will bond to the metal post protectors and will be "keyed" to the posts when the epoxy cures.

-john

[havlicek]

My first 26D wind. After getting some suggestions regarding winds, I settled on 42 turns of #26 awg. I added a Kirkwood com and these stubby arms are tough to get wire under the com as it is, but it all came out fine. Tried it out in a beat-up Champion setup before cutting the com and without zapping the magnets and it sounds aces! Draws almost exactly one amp...I think this one might live so I did some special effects in Photoshop


-john

[Horsepower]

As Paris would say "That's hot!". John, do you have the high strength 26D magnets for this wind? I think you might need them on one this hot.
By the way, it looks good enough to eat!

[havlicek]

Hi Gary,

First off...thanks again for the 26D clamp, it's a perfect "snap-fit". Yes, I have some Arcos, shims and a nice new endbell coming. I still have to figure out what I'm going to do about beefing up the endbell, but the arm stays surprisingly cool so far. I guess that even as it is, the larger com helps some. 42/26 turns out to be a pretty nice wind. Thanks for the encouraging words bud!

-john

[Horsepower]

Gee, and I thought it was a 36D arm holder. No wonder my 36D arms fit so tight! This motor of yours is going to be a gasser!