ICS L85 Motor Issue (I think)

[MrMoo]

Hey folks,

I've got an ICS L85A2, which I bought used from another user here. Shortly in to my first game with it, it stopped working entirely. I took it to a repair shop, who after a month still hadn't looked at it, so I finally decided to take it back and pull it apart myself to see what was going on, and try to diagnose the problem.

Here's what I discovered:

With the motor disconnected, and with power connected directly to the motor, the motor spins
With the motor connected to the gearbox, the gearbox does not turn.

At this point, I figured that my gears were jammed, so I pulled the gearbox apart. It all looked good, so I put it back together. Out of curiosity, though, I hooked up the motor again and tried putting power to the motor with the spring removed. Now, the gears were turning.

After inserting the spring again, the gears won't turn.

It looks like, in my completely uninformed and inexperienced opinion, the motor isn't producing enough torque to turn the gears while the spring is installed, even with the spring at it's lowest tension setting. During my testing the motor performance seemed a bit unstable (sometimes it wouldn't spin the gears, even with the spring removed).

Is it possible that the motor is just worn out? I only ever gamed it once, and only for about an hour before it quit, but maybe it saw heavy use under the previous owner.

Should I buy a new motor? Is there another way I can test the motor I've got to see if it really is the problem? Where would I get another motor like this?

Any help is appreciated.

[cetane]

What battery are you using and what spring. Pos battery with a low voltage isn't going to pull a heavy spring...

[MrMoo]

It's an 8.4v battery, and I'm pretty sure this is the spring that came with the gun. It was working fine, for a little while, then eventually quit.

[ThunderCactus]

Try it on a 7.4v lipo, that will supply your motor with maximum amperage, and amperage = torque.
If that doesn't work, it's entirely possible your brushes could be worn out. Wouldn't be the first airsoft gun to have a bad motor, either.

[MrMoo]

Aha, of course.

I think I found my problem. So, originally, I think that the anti-reverse arm thing on the gearbox was jammed. When I pulled it apart and reassembled it, I believe it fixed it. But, to eliminate wiring issues as a possible problem, I was just wiring a little standard 9v battery to the motor to see if it was spinning. It was fine for testing the motor, but of course wasn't giving the amperage to pull the spring. So, I hooked up my 7.4v LiPo from another gun, and off it goes.

Think it's fixed now... I'll have to put it all back together to be sure.