Need a new motor, any advice?

[Katalist]

I have a KA M4A1 and decided to open it over the last couple of days. I think I should also mention I'm a newb. I had some issues, resolved them thanks to the internet.

I was trying to re-assemble the motor into the grip and was having issues. I was pressing down on the motor plate and I guess it was too tight because the motor was stuck in the effin grip........So after 2 hours of trying to pry it out I gave up and hit the grip with a hammer. Grip is fine, motor not so much :/

Now I need a new motor, What would you suggest for a stock KA M4A1?

Today I learned that the plastic used on airsoft guns is indestructible.

[Blue-fish]

Just get a stock motor in the buy and sell part of asc.

[Katalist]

Okay that's good to know, Thanks. But if I want to upgrade for an outdoor aeg, what would you recommend?

[L473ncy]

Guarder Infinite Torque seem to be alright and are fairly cheap for what you're getting from it. Also the "Matrix 3000" magnum motors seem to be alright as well.

I've also heard that SystemA motors after some tuning are awesome but in stock form are pretty meh.

[MaciekA]

Firstly, note that the type of motor you're looking for is the "long type".

Secondly, the truth is that pretty much any motor with a pretty logo and a fancy name is going to be fairly badass in a King Arms gearbox that has been nicely shimmed and well-greased. Relative to your stock KA motor, they'll all be fairly "upgrade-ish". If you're wondering about your gearbox, I went into a KA M4 gearbox twice over the last couple weeks on behalf of a friend (the stock o-ring is a little anemic) and I was pretty impressed by what I saw: A nice lightweight piston, excellent shimming out of the box (no gear whine at all, very little play, no heat problems), good greasing, etc. That said, the rate of fire on the stock motor isn't super high with a 7.4V LiPo, and some workdesk testing confirmed that the motor doesn't have rare-earth magnets (i.e. neodymium, or "neo" if you are Googling/researching). If it gives you any comfort, you haven't lost an exceptional motor or anything like that

So there are a lot of interesting motors on the market that have various uses depending on what you want to do and what your budget is -- you have a lot of choices. Here are some I have toyed with recently:



G&P M120. It's a high speed motor and not a neo. I have found that even high speed motors that don't have rare-earth magnets are able to hammer out high rates of fire on strong springs (eg around the 400fps range) as long as you give them enough juice, use the right low-resistance connectors (i.e. Deans), and have good shimming/etc as mentioned above. This motor is an example of this. It's recommended by a lot of people and not super expensive either. I have a couple of these motors in both long and short formats and they're pretty good. This is a very safe choice.



G&P M160. High speed, high torque, and has some kind of neo or neo-like magnet (i.e. a lot stronger of a magnet than any stock motor magnet I have and stronger than the G&P M120). This is the stock motor in my G&P Canadian Carbine. It also sounds very nice when everything is properly tuned. More thwap, less whine.



Guarder Infinite Torque-Up motor. Similar to the M160 motor, but has a much stronger motor from my workdesk testing (seriously, keep this motor away from all steel items in your workspace ). It has a heat-treated (black) pinion gear. The G&P pinions use somewhat softer metals. If your shimming and pinion-bevel alignment is good, this won't be an issue. I am using this in my DBoys PDW and am quite happy with it. It is a little pricey though.



JG Blue motor (also sold as the Echo-1 High Torque Motor). Several US-based airsoft forums (airsoft mechanics, airsoft retreat, etc) have come to the consensus that the JG Blue is pretty much the highest torque motor on the market due to the very high quality neodymium magnets and a very high number of winds. The caveat of course is that your rate of fire will be fairly low, so if you want a responsive trigger with this thing you'll require high speed gears. This one is in my teammate's DMR, effortlessly pushing a spring that fires 450 - 460fps. This is usually the least expensive motor out of the batch I've mentioned here, but may be inappropriate for you if your gear ratio is stock and you wish for a decent rate of fire.

Personally, I suggest the G&P M120 long-type. Note that swapping the motor will REQUIRE you to ensure that your bevel-to-pinion gear alignment and shimming is correctly re-done for the motor's unique height (each one is slightly different!) or you could get very bad (noisy and damaging) results. If in doubt consult a gun doctor.

Hope that helps

[MaciekA]

Addendum: Anyone else who has that Guarder Infinite Torque Up motor will instantly understand when I say keep that thing isolated from all the metal junk in your workspace, especially small metal filings and little screws and shims and such.

I've had a few sessions with that motor end up like this:

[Styrak]

Get a TM EG1000. TM motors are great for anything short of extreme setups.

[Maethori]

Originally Posted by MaciekA

Addendum: Anyone else who has that Guarder Infinite Torque Up motor will instantly understand when I say keep that thing isolated from all the metal junk in your workspace, especially small metal filings and little screws and shims and such.

I've had a few sessions with that motor end up like this:

Haha, I know exactly what you mean. This is a great motor and I would recommend it. Also, that is a very strange game.

I recently tried a G&P m120 and had serious troubles getting it to work well...although that could've been the fault of the random, non-matching parts connected to it and my lack of gun doc expertise... Another gun I have uses a G&P m170 Devil Jet which works amazingly well, but is way higher torque than you need (so don't buy that one; just saying that my lack of success with the m120 doesn't mean I say G&P motors are bad).

[Katalist]

Wow thanks for all the info, really appreciated guys. I've read through the replies and so far I'm leaning towards the G&P m120. Didn't want anything too strong or too fast since I'm still new and need some experience with the internals. The only thing I'm worried about is getting the shimmings right, I guess I'll have to read up on that

Thanks again, this thread really helped me out

[THe_Silencer]

One caveat about the G&P motors is the the quality of the pinion gears vary VASTLY. I personally run 2 G&P M160 motors in 2 of my high speed (35+ ROF) setups and haven't had a single issue. However, I've looked over 3 M120 and they all had differently designed pinion gears. A friend of mine has run several G&P M120s in his DMR setup and they ALL stripped or chipped their pinion gears. He runs a much milder setup ROF wise than I do. I'm not sure if the blame can all be laid on the pinion gears but they are softer than they should be.
As for Guarder, their QC can be suspect. I've had guarder motors come with cracked pinion gears right out of the box. The high speed revolution is garbage as well and will not last long when coupled with a strong 11.1v battery.
If you're on a tight budget, JG, SHS, and Element make surprisingly good motors with strong magnets and pinion gears.

[ThunderCactus]

More importantly, figure out what you did wrong before you break another motor lol
Run both wires to the back end of the grip, make sure the longer wire is off to the side of the hole.
Press your motor all the way down before putting the end plate on to make sure it's meshing with the gears, otherwise you might tighten your motor right into a gear tooth and take out your gearset as well.
And now that you have a new motor, you'll have to learn how to adjust motor height.
Back off the screw on the end plate FIRST.
Then install the motor.
then tighten to screw until you feel the motor is at the end of it's travel, do not tighten it, this may bend the shaft.
Back the screw off one and a half turns.
fire the gun, and tighten by 1/6 of a turn at a time until it stops making that whiny gear clacking noise. If you hear a high pitch squeal, you've gone too far, back it off a bit.

Getting your motor height adjusted correctly is extremely important for the durability and performance of your AEG.

[MaciekA]

Originally Posted by ThunderCactus

More importantly, figure out what you did wrong before you break another motor lol

Follow ThunderCactus's advice, it's really important cause you'll never actually need to hammer your motor in, that's just a sign you've caught an end of the motor on something

Originally Posted by ThunderCactus

fire the gun, and tighten by 1/6 of a turn at a time until it stops making that whiny gear clacking noise. If you hear a high pitch squeal, you've gone too far, back it off a bit.

After Yogurting two G&P pinion gears using this method, I don't recommend it anymore. You never know precisely what result you're getting. The way I do it now is to take the "empty" half of the gearbox shell and to stage the bevel gear in there (fat side down), attach the pistol grip to the shell half, put the motor grip in and adjust the height of the motor and the bevel gear (with shims) until the contact is perfect. Perfect means that you can press the motor in until the pinion is past the outer (fat part) diameter of the bevel and it doesn't "disturb" the bevel's axial tilt by pushing it down, and adding height to the bevel until it does disturb it, then backing off (and testing).

This has given me some amazing (and very quiet!) results, the exception being when the pistol grip doesn't make a flush connection to the gearbox after the lower receiver is involved, in which case, you guessed it, I do crazy stuff like this:



(The pistol grip is attached in this pic and I'm about to put the motor in to test the shimming + motor height adjustment meshing combo. This method is a ton of work but gets really perfect results).

I should really get around to writing a more in-depth post about my experiences with this method and its potential pitfalls..

[iKliiu]

If are looking to spend under $50, get a Lonex motor from EBairsoft. Those are really nice, lots of torque/speed and runs very cool. If you are willing to spend under $30, get a China brand neodymium motor (SHS, Element, Hornbill, Dream Army, X High Tech, etc.)

[ThunderCactus]

Originally Posted by MaciekA

(The pistol grip is attached in this pic and I'm about to put the motor in to test the shimming + motor height adjustment meshing combo. This method is a ton of work but gets really perfect results).

I should really get around to writing a more in-depth post about my experiences with this method and its potential pitfalls..

Actually I have to highly disagree with your method, with only half the mechbox shell, your pinion gear isn't in it's final alignment. You need to have support on both sides of the gear to have it aligned.

[Katalist]

Hmm I like macieka's way of testing it out, but as Thunder mentioned, maybe they aren't in final alignment? Atleast it would get you close to the final alignment and from there you can adjust. As for motors, I'm starting to get confused haha! I think I'll take my chances for the sake of simplicity and grab a G&P. I'm not going to be using my aeg until spring/summer anyways so it can be changed later down the road.

As for the advice, I'll surely make sure to read up on the subject before attempting anything again with my aeg. I ordered a book the M4 book from airsoft press, don't know if it's any good, hopefully it will help.

Also, any recommendations for oil/lube? Don't know which to use for what. Thanks!