Our team is considering switching from the NEO V1.1 to the Kraken X60 for the next season. We’re interested in the Kraken X60s’ repairability. Are these motors repairable in case of burnout or other internal failures?
Even as a low resource team, we don’t think of any motors as repairable. They may be (but usually are not) covered by warranty, but any motor that is burned or “hurt” is waste on our team.
(Replacing/extending a wire that was mechanical damaged is the exception here, of course.)
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My experience says no. If you remove the back cover to reveal the speed controller, you break a sticker that basically says you void any and all warranty in doing so. We took a major hit against a wall at our last district comp that shattered our 1/8" polycarb UTB intake plates and took out a swerve steer Kraken as well. After getting home, we were faced with a lack of parts and knowledge of the motor’s design, which deterred us from attempting any repairs. The motor now sits in a cabinet in case we wreck another one, in which case we might take them apart to see if we can make 1 work.
I have never seen motors repaired aside from external wires and falcon shafts(which are replaceable by design). I Have to ask if you ever repaired your neos, because that would be news to me.
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With the thermal protection on the Kraken X60s it should be pretty difficult to burn them out, aside from as the result of a manufacturing defect that would be covered by warranty. If you do manage to kill a Kraken, I would reach out to WCP/CTRE’s support, in our experience they’re very helpful and will often just replace the defective motor.
While I don’t encourage people to open Kraken housings, recent Federal Trade Commission rule clarifications make pretty much any “Warranty Void If Removed” stickers legally unenforceable.
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FRC motors now usually have a lot going on under the hood, so repairing them is near impossible. If you take apart the kraken you will lose the factory calibration, something you wont be able to get back. I will say though, ime krakens have been much smoother than my experience with neos/smaxes and when CTRE slips up, (like with the temperature issues early season) they usually do a good job with fixing the problem.
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If it’s similar to the way the falcons were setup you can disassemble MOST of the motor and not void the calibration. It’s the back electronics (the TalonFX) part that you should leave alone. You can only take it all apart on the front half down so far anyways before you’ll have to break it permanently to get anything else removed.
Having taken apart a v3 falcon even after you get it all apart there’s not much you could repair yourself anyways without replacing a sub-component entirely. There’s not a way to buy replacement/spare parts for the motors internals. The most you could do is take ‘good parts’ from ‘bad motors’ and possibly get lucky that some combination works correctly. I wouldn’t trust it though.
My best advice is let the manufacturer repair it if something is wrong because they have the parts and experience. Anything else you do is taking away time and resources your team could better spend elsewhere to fix a probably unfixable motor. If you do fix it, it’s not the same as the original and it will fail sooner or later and I wouldn’t want to rely on it.
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As much as I endorse the principle of “If you can’t open it, you don’t own it”, practically it will often come down to the question of whether you trust your ability to make a repair as good as the manufacturer for something your competition season depends on. I would love to see more FRC teardowns like this.
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I absolutely agree with what’s being said here. Hardware breaking down on Krakens is very rare. In our experience, constantly stalling the motor generates a crap ton of heat…as we discovered, around 70ºC 
(Motors were fine tho).
However, in the case you accidentally break a kraken, there is no better option than sending it back to WCP/CTRE. Taking it apart yourself is risky in the sense you have a very high chance of making your motor non-COTS and illegal to use at comps.
We broke a Kraken not too long ago by driving a longer-than-spec screw into the electrical connector. We contacted WCP, and they gave us step-by-step instructions to take pictures, diagnose the issue, and send it back to them. Compared to buying a new motor for $200, $40 for the repair wasn’t too bad.
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twice last season, one of our mentors repaired nonfunctional neo by opening it and repairing the sensor wires which were seemingly damaged by something spinning inside.