Another Rotor Thread...

Just following up on this thread. I contacted Ricks Motorsports Electric thinking I'd be sending in my rotor, but they said that they don't do that any more, that they have new ones. Traded them $150 for a rotor which was shipped in about 4 days. Looks quite nice, runs true and charges perfectly!

I appreciate the advice, thank you!

Is there a timing mark? Maybe it is well hidden.

I believe so.... there at the base of the palm in the black plastic indents , in the other pic you can see fine marks.....i think.
....thanks guys I learned allot reading this ! LOL
Bob...........

I have two Rick's Motorsports rotors on two different Hondas, they've worked well for me.

Scott

Looks good. I think I am going to give rewinding my rotor a shot. I have it out on the desk with the slip ring plate off of it. I just need to press it apart now and get the wire. It's a lot easier to wind one big coil than to rewind all the legs on a Suzuki PMA for instance.

FYI, a crapped out rotor that measures 2.4 Ohms still generates enough magnetic force with a 2A battery charger to allow you to pick it up by sticking a wrench to one of the hooks in the rotor. Pretty impressive. I was toying with the idea of just sticking a big neodymium ring magnet in there and making a home brew PMA out of it, but I doubt it would pull as hard as this rotor will at full jam. The magnets are also very expensive at those sizes!

MacMcMacmac said:

Looks good. I think I am going to give rewinding my rotor a shot. I have it out on the desk with the slip ring plate off of it. I just need to press it apart now and get the wire. It's a lot easier to wind one big coil than to rewind all the legs on a Suzuki PMA for instance.

FYI, a crapped out rotor that measures 2.4 Ohms still generates enough magnetic force with a 2A battery charger to allow you to pick it up by sticking a wrench to one of the hooks in the rotor. Pretty impressive. I was toying with the idea of just sticking a big neodymium ring magnet in there and making a home brew PMA out of it, but I doubt it would pull as hard as this rotor will at full jam. The magnets are also very expensive at those sizes!

Click to expand...

Anyone that rebuilds electric motors can rewind a rotor, but the epoxy used to keep everything in place at those high RPMs and excessive heat is the key to making it last. I would recommend someone with a good rep to do this, someone who has already sorted out which epoxy to use and how to apply it. Rick's had their problems with epoxy, but they have that sorted out now.

Scott

Well, screw that, I just found a new rotor on Ebay for less than a c-note out of Quebec. 40% off sale!
I'll take my chances with the RM Stator unit and rewind mine at leisure.

And for the record, I probably did kill mine by running it with a bum battery a few years ago.

Got my rotor from RMStator.......wow.....

The workmanship on this thing is atrocious. I can file my fingernails on the slip rings, the tooling marks are so deep.. There is copper flash along the edges of the rings, like the "machinist" neglected to take a few thou finishing cut. There are uneven globs of epoxy in all the screw holes and one misshapen one over the magnet. The whole thing has an unpleasant burlap stink to it. It's also about 4mm thinner than the stock rotor, so brushes will be unusable that much sooner, unless it doesn't go onto the taper as far. And for a finishing touch, no timing mark. The old rotor is a work of art compared to this hunk-o-shite.

Ohms out ok, which is all I can say for it.

Got some pics?

Here's one. Notice how amazing the fit is between the copper rings and the micarta plate on the OEM rotor at left. Heck, you can see a shadow being cast by the copper rings to the "new" one. The backing plate also looks like it's some kind of impregnated cardboard, not micarta.

Just a piss-poor effort.

Now, I just noticed on my invoice and on the side of the box, that the words "semi-finished" appears on both, so it just might be a case of something not fully completed making it through to the sales channel, but I have my doubts. I have opened a ticket, so we'll see what transpires. I was really hoping to get it installed today though. The weather has been very nice!

That's terrible workmanship.......The old addidge.......you get what you pay for...........I guess your paper work won't blow away now

check the ebay add to see If they state it is "not a finished product" on there as well..........If they have you may not have a leg to stand on.

Why the f*** anyone would sell something in that condition for such a crucial part is beyond me ..............no morals, purely a money grabbing exercise.

Got a link?

Looks a lot better in the ebay ad, so maybe it's a mis-shipment. Still nothing to write home about though.

Just following up on my post. Kirk at Custom Rewind swapped the rotor that didn't fit for another. He was very helpful and a pleasure to work with.

Well, I tried to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear and threw the RM Stator unit in a lathe to true up and finish cut the rings. As you can see, it went pear-shaped pretty quickly. I didn't even get the run-out out of the face of the slip ring plate before the outer ring was cut through. This is less than .020" off the face at this point. The slip rings were slightly thicker than tin foil it seems. It was also damn hard to find any true surface on the whole thing. I resorted to installing the puller and using the outer surface to true it up in the four jaw chuck, that way I at least knew I would be perpendicular to the taper. There was still quite a bit of wobble in the pole faces at this point. You can't see it here, but the magnet was alrady showing and starting to turn to dust.

Well, considering my warranty was now out the window I decided to press this one apart to see if I could at least salvage the coil. It came apart cleanly, and I found the coil was wound around a nice plastic bobbin with locating tabs between the "hooks" in the rotor to keep it from rotating. I measured it up, and found I needed to take about .100" off the inner hub of the iron halves, and square off the lower radiused corner on the inside of the hooks to get clearance for the bobbin. I pressed it all together, (and then pressed it all together again when I found I had missed the proper location for the wires) and re-attached the stock ring plate. I soldered it up and applied epoxy to the wires. Ohms out at a perfect 5.4. So maybe it will work out ok after all, and I get to keep my timing mark. For reference, it took only 2 tons of force to get the halves apart, which is not much at all.

Overall experience---not pleasant, but RM Stator did RMA it with no questions asked, so I can't fault their customer service. I still think I got something that some farm boy in China threw in a crate to make up the numbers even though he knew he effed it up royally. RM Stator seem to be a legit company, and I can't see them selling something so poorly made on purpose.