[sanddrag]

The endbell in the back of the motor made up mostly of black plastic. The endbell contains the brush hoods, the brushes, the springs, the places to solder the power wires, and the bearing for that end of the armature.

We too put setscrews in our 2002 gearboxes so they would'nt slip. It did work very well. The thing is, we didn't have to with the '03 ones. If I remeber correctly, you would remove the clutch assembly and outer plate. Then dump all the balls out. Then tap the holes the balls were in for an M6 (?) thread. Then insert the setscrews into the tapped holes and they would press on the inner clutch plate preventing it from slipping.

As for us using 8 gauge wire on the motors, they pull a lot of current so we didn't want the losses of resistance, we already had enough losses due to friction and binding. As a general rule, my team uses high quality finely stranded wire, one size larger than what FIRST requires for everything. Likewise, we used 4 gauge from our battery to the main breaker and to the maxi block and 6 guage from the main breaker to the little fuse block.