A Cheap Motor
by
Daniel J. Dyke
In the eternal quest to cut costs I have been looking at alternate sources for Mabuchi type motors and found one at All Electronics. It is the same basic can type as the Falcon and TSRF, but has no cooling holes. The cost was .$90 each in quantity and since I am a risk taker and had another use for them, I bought 25 ($28.50 with shipping = $1.14 each). It is available from other vendors for $3.00 each and if you wish to deal with them I will provide you with the link.
The first thing I did when they arrived was to tear one apart ($1.14 down the tubes). The bad part must be told up front and that is they use those metal "whiskers" and not regular brushes. Mabuchi calls these precious metal brushes. The good part was that I did the rest of the test. I put them in my ProSlot Toyota GT-1 as I had their adapter to fit this type of motor in that chassis and the car is the track record holder with a 7.569 lap (no magnets). I used a set of gears that were already broken in and made sure the pinion and crown matched up in the same position as on the Evo 3 motor they came from.
The car acted fine on the twisty part of the course and had a nice torque curve for my course, but on the straight I thought I was driving an NC-1. Undaunted I put the test laps in for three nights in a row. On the first night I could only get an 8.2 range lap, but on the second night it improved to a 8.0 and the motor seemed to be better all the way around the course. Last night the times dropped to a 7.8 and froze there. The motor did not get hot at anytime and never lost steam after 750 laps of trying hard to make it run. The lap length is about 65'. The improvement seems to have been a result of the motor breaking in.
Are they worth it? To me yes, nice cheap motor for class racing
or for a short course. I don't think it is on the same class as a
Falcon 3 but another example may prove me wrong. The "whiskers" give
no indication of being problematic so far. If you bought 10 it would
cost $9.00 plus $6.00 shipping which works out to $1.50 a motor.
Time will tell on the durability issue. I don't run magnets and so
I have no idea what a ton of magnetic force will do to this motor, but
that is someone else's experiment. I gave a bunch away to friends
to test find problems. I will keep you updated on the durability issue.
Addendum
The tests are being conducted with a 12volt/1 amp power supply.
The Mabuchi specs can be read here.
February 13, 2004: I have since bought many of their motors to try out but this is the best one so far.
DCM-204 - MINIATURE VIBRATING MOTOR (Too Small)
DCM-184 - VIBRATING MOTOR (Not Enough RPMs)
DCM-185 - TWO-SPEED VIBRATING MOTOR (Not Enough Torque)
DCM-209 - MINI-VIBRATING MOTOR (Too Small)
DCM-239 - 12 VDC PRECISION MOTOR (Has Potential)
The opinions expressed here are solely those of Daniel J.Dyke (ddyke). If you are not an adventurous spirit DON'T buy this product. For comments email the author at dan.dyke@goodnews.net. This is an unpaid and unsolicited review.