130X Main Drive Adjustment?

[Apache]

Flying well and on third Lipo when control was lost. All gears are OK but motor pinion is not closely meshed with main drive gear. It drives but does some slipping. There are no missing teeth and they don't look to be worn. I have ordered a new main drive gear anyway but thought I would ask, has anyone managed to adjust the motor position in order to close up the meshing of the gears? I can find no reference to any such adjustment. Does anyone know for certain?

cheers,
Albatross

[SamS]

Can you not just loosen the screws on the motor, push the motor closer to the gear and tighten the screws.

I have never had any problems like this though :/

[Zeeflyboy]

130X Main Drive Adjustment?

There is no adjustment.

When I fitted an HP08 I needed to move themotorcloser though - pretty easy to turn the holes into slots.

[kylelnsn]

Im pretty sure the mesh is pre set and dictated by the frame. I would firstly check that your screws are all tightened and nothing has worked loose. Now if you still cant get it to mesh then you would need to elongate the holes in the frame to give you adjustable motor pinion/main gear meshing. The 130X is very free running so you need to make sure the mesh is spot on with a piece of paper etc.

I would consider before making any modification checking that your main gear is not worn, it may not look worn but it can be. You could always try a new main frame?

I do recall a thread about this on the freak... here 130x main gear mesh mod/fix a double whammy ! Woot! - HeliFreak there is also some discussion here Can we adjust gear mesh from pinion to main gear ? - HeliFreak

I take no responsibility for a c*** up here.

[Apache]

Thanks folks. Very interesting, especially when read with the referenced threads and associated videos on 'the freak'. It's obviously not an uncommon problem. I think, having read and watched and become aware of some off the possible causes, I shall await the arrival of the new main gear from Midland Helis; put that on and see if there is still too little meshing going on. Then will consider elongating motor mounting holes, if required.
cheers. Apache

[whittm]

What are the symptoms exactly? Loss of tail or does the head not spin up? If drive to the motor was a problem then neither the tail or the main rotor would spin so no loss of control. If the tail drive gears are damaged then the tail will be lost, and that is real loss of control.

[Apache]

Rotor spins up alright and Heli will take off gently, only to lose it immediately afterwards, the tail starts rotating counter to rotor. I have had problems with and fixed tail drive-train gears before and I am sure they are ok. If I hold the heli and advance throttle anything more that gently, I can see and hear motor pinion skipping main gear teeth. Close visual inspection shows that the gears are not in sufficiently close contact and yet the main gear does not appear to be worn down. I shall only know for sure, when the replacement main gear arrives and I can do a direct comparison.

[whittm]

Spins opposite way to main rotor? That sounds like a gyro problem. any slip in gears will cause it to rotate in the direction of the main blades. As I said if the main gear is not in mesh then the main rotors will not spin up or only partially. Tail spin has nothing to do with pinion mesh. It can only be one of 2 things 1. slip in drive to the tail(don't just check the teeth, the gears have flats inside which match up to the shafts, these round off, hold the tail solid and attempt to rotate the head gently, it should not turn!) 2. Problems with the main board, gyro might not be working(you could try re-binding the heli).

[Apache]

Sorry, my error. Tail boom spins same way as rotor. have checked and double checked tail drive train. All gears are sound and meshing, D shaped flats on shaft ends and gear centres are in good shape.
i have tried and re-tried rebinding, to no beneficial effect.

[whittm]

Cheking is no good - just replace them all with brand new! I thought exactly the same with mine and said exactly the same things as you and eventually bit the bullet and replaced the tail gears and instantly fixed the problem. The d shape on the inside of the gears looked fine but were worn enough to cause a tail slide just after take off, it's almost switch like - the way it happens at exactly the same time every time!

[Mike00top]

Hey Whittm, where is Treharris ? sounds like a location near us in cornwall

PS sorry to go off thread

[kylelnsn]

Hey Whittm, where is Treharris ? sounds like a location near us in cornwall

PS sorry to go off thread

I think its in Merthyr Tydfil?

[whittm]

Very clever kylesn, and a good memory! Yes you recently sent stuff to me. Treharris is near Merthyr and Pontypridd in south Wales. Treharris is similar to tregunnel and other towns that begin tre... tre means town I.e. Treharris means Harris' town, tregunnel means gunnel's town. I'm a fluent Welsh speaker and can understand someone speaking Cornish because Welsh and Cornish are very similar.

[Apache]

Much though I find the geography lesson interesting, especially for a Yorkshireman living in Lincolnshire, I thought I should be boring and let you know the outcome of my tail fix!
The new main gear arrived this morning and was fitted. While I had both old and new in my hands at the same time, I took the opportunity to compare them. To the naked eye, there is no discernable difference. Under a magnifying glass, the teeth on the old gear do show signs of wear; more in face angle rather than length i.e. the mating surfaces are slightly more sloping. This presumably giving the drive pinion teeth less grip and making it easier for them to ride over the worn teeth.

At this point I decided to try the heli, before changing any tail drive-train gears, simply because, if I had done both at the same time, I could not have been sure which had cured the problem -a well proven engineering diagnostic principle. Changing the gear worked perfectly.The heli lifted off cleanly and positively, with no vibration at all and was rock solid in the hover - no sign of the problem that started it all. The other good news is that I still have an extra set of tail drive bevel gears in hand. I know I shall need them one day.

Does anyone know whether or not anyone from Horizon Hobby/Blade, looks at the threads relating to their products, on main websites such as Heliaddict. It seems to me that they are missing an important trick if they don't - unless, of course, they think they know best!

Thanks for your interest and help, everyone. I hope that I shall be able to help someone else, in return, somewhere down the line.

Happy flying.
Apache