The screws will come out and permanently damage the motor if you run them for more than a couple hours without loctited screws.
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Welp time to spend a day of my life fixing a factories mistake
This thread from 2020 describes the failure mode.
TL;DR: The failure mode is bad and teams absolutely need to make these fixes
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Would replacing the case bolts that get stripped out with an equivalent hex drive button or socket head bolt violate R502?
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This would be wild if this were the case. We’re actually interested in this question as it relates to the NEO cover screws, too.
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I am not sure if anyone is still interested in stats, but our torx wrenches arrived today, and we took apart four falcons (purchased December 2021). None had any loctite on the shaft screws, all seemed to have the spacers, and one did have loctite on the case bolts (all three). Our other four (purchased in June 2021) are still on our drivetrain, but we are going to swap them out next week.
It only took us about 45 minutes to fix the four motors (we have a fastidious member who did an excellent job independently after I dropped all the screws everywhere of the one I dismantled). The bottle cap method is the best for applying the loctite. Also, the washer on the shaft can keep the bolts in place if you are careful.
We only used the hand tools for taking apart the motors, and they worked well. I feel allen head screws of this size would strip way too easily. hex may work, but I actually liked the star. Any screw we thought we stripped was eventually wrenched free by pushing harder into the bolt.
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Sorry, bit off point but can you explain the 10.5 hours a week? That really is a Saturday for us.
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I’d imagine many teams have COVID restrictions on meeting times/availability. I certainly know this is the case for our team. Not all areas/teams are comfortable with the current situations without having precautions in place.
I know some teams in Canada can only meet during school lunch hours.
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That sucks. Sorry, didn’t mean to come off oblivious.
@Jon_Jack . I will probably ask Vex customer service, but anyway. Do you have a torque spec for the little screws. With the plethora of high end bicycles, quality low torque value torque wrenches are available. PSA Regular torque wrenches are dangerous to small bolts as any VW air cooled bug mechanic will tell you.
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M-W-F this month, 4 to 8, with a half hour dinner break. Oh yeah, week off coming up for midwinter break. We will put a robot on the field, BTW, but 5 ball auto’s probably off the table.
How have teams been getting the loctited housing off?
Currently we are using a heat gun to help release, and a vice grip on the screwdriver. Not fun. barely working. Very unhappy.
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Do you have the right sized driver for it? We didn’t have much problem with those ones. They take a T10 Torx driver.
Yes. We are using a T10 screwdriver. These bolts are loctited in as they are from the most recently sent out batch.
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BTW, I got the email blast from a last summer Falcon purchase… system is working!
Heating up the motor face with a heat gun can help loosen the loctite. I’ve been able to do it with a quality T10 driver and a lot of force without heat but heat makes it a lot easier.
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Same here. We are using this set of drivers.
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We had the same problem with the housing bolts being loctited. Soaking them overnight with WD40 applied to the bolt ends where they break through the faceplate did the trick, though it was still a close thing getting them to release before they stripped out. Use a very good T10 bit or driver to make sure it doesn’t twist or strip itself and destroy the bolt head. It doesn’t hurt to clamp the motor in a vice (with suitable padding, of course) so that you can apply maximum downward pressure on the bolts as you’re trying to break them loose.
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we checked two falcons yesterday. of the faceplate screws, only one had sufficient Loctite to require me to help the kids. the other 5 came off (too?) easily. Both shims were present. It did not appear that any Loctite was added to the shaft screws.
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How critical IS the shim? Almost none of our motors had them.
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