My personal experience (and this is anecdotal), is that notchy = stronger. But all the most efficient motors I have are not notchy.

Put a Walksnail 1S VTX on this build with a beefy TPU canopy, but its been sitting disassembled over the winter. The bells on the HGLRC motors have slid up the shaft, creating lots of play on all four motors so I was planning to replace them.

Otherwise the motors still seem in good condition, so I decided to push back in the shafts with some clamps, we'll see how long that lasts. I replaced the heavy TPU canopy with the lightweight Betafpv HD one, I like how the VTX tucks up inside the canopy.



The frame is a Picklepick 3.5" bottom plate. Right now I have 3" props on, but will swap to 3.5" later. It is a little bit heavy for a 3" pick, but pretty light for a 3.5".

When I powered it up, the VTX would repeatedly reboot. I suspect the 5v regulator on the Darwin AIO is not performing to spec (rated 2A). Fortunately it was a V3 VTX, which accepts up to 3S, so I powered it directly from vbat (I usually use 5v, so this will be the first time directly powering from a lipo). After that everything was fine.

Love the feel of a light agile flyer and digital too. There is still some stutter when catching the quad, I suspect it might be the ICM gyro on the AIO, but I need to stay with BF4.3 since it has an SPI ELRS RX and I'm still running 2.x on my radio.

I have a couple rigs with motor bells that have “moved” up the shaft.. I usually just “tap” the bottom of the shaft while holding the bell/prop.. hasn’t effected the performance.. but I do check back on this either after a “light crash” or changing props.. cranking down on props will cause the shaft pull “up” against the bearing,(m5 nut)

If your motors have M5 mounting, assume they are not micro motors. I always though micro motors use a single shaft, it is 2mm at the bottom where it runs through the stator/bearings and tapers to 1.5mm when it comes out the bell. On most of my micro motors, probably end up wearing down the bearing or otherwise damaging the motor before I see any bell slipping. Not really sure what HGLRC did on these motors that have all of them slipping off, maybe their design uses two separate shafts.

Not sure I understand how cranking down on props will pull up the bell? M5 shafts are usually integrated into the bell, pushing down the prop should not be affecting the shaft?

1408s.. obviously these shafts were “threaded” further .. so by cranking on the nut, the shaft will pull up the stator or move the bell “down”.. on the opposite end, I’ve had motors were the shaft wasn’t threaded enough, bottoming out and the prop would still spin free..(or props not “thick” enough
As for micro motors, my Emax Tinyhawk freestyle and most Tinyhawk motors are “double shafts”..one inside another..this is stuff you can’t locate on the specs page.. you find out the hard way..
But as this thread states..”some motors will surprise you”…

(10-Apr-2024, 07:05 PM)Rob Axel Wrote:  But as this thread states..”some motors will surprise you”…

 ok I guess I got more surprises than I thought.

The canopy sits pretty low, and guess I don't fly with a lot of uptilt so really good view of the motors in the FPV feed. I guess I can monitor the bells closely while I'm flying... Just throwing it around, definitely need to work on the tune. This is the goggles dvr.