[ChrisH]

While I wasn't exactly around our pits much, (too busy inspecting or helping other teams) I don't recall hearing about any problems with this year's motor and gear box from our pit crew. We replaced the output shaft with a custom version and somehow locked the clutch. I think we used the method in Dave Lavery's white paper. We also used the "stock" mounts but mounted them on a sub-plate to allow for our shifting mechanism.

We replaced the wires before we got the word not to, but the guy who did it solders for a living, so we got away with it. It took one look for us to figure out that was going to fall into the "skilled labor" catagory. We did not change the wires on our spares.

Over all I think we liked this year's motor better, but it certainly is more finicky. One of our rookies had a damaged motor when it came out of the box. The keys are pretty simple:

1) Protect the end bells from damage at all times
2) No cantiliver shafts. All shafts need to be supported on both ends.
3) Make sure your drive train runs true and you pick your gearing appropriately. Unnecessary drag from misalignment or working your motors too hard by gearing too high can both cause overheating.
4) Make sure the motor is installed properly in the mount, and the gearbox is installed properly on the motor. There is a right way and a wrong way to install them. The right way works much better. But the wrong way isn't obvious. If the brushes are parallel to the bottom of the stock mount, you did it right. If not, you might want to do something about it.

As an inspector, or just running around helping teams, the wrong way motor was something I looked for. Correcting it was not a requirement, but it did seem to solve an awful lot of drive train issues. There were almost as many teams with mis-installed motors as there were missing numbers. I think the installation instructions could have been alot more clear on this point, either that or the hardware could have been more confusion-proof. I didn't say fool proof because in most cases it was simple confusion, most fools stay away from FIRST.