Changing motor bearings

By request, This is the method to change out the motor bearings, disclaimer this is not totally straight forward, and I don't think evolve would be too happy to replace broken motors due to tampering. Do this at your own risk.

1. Take motor off mount

2. Unscrew the 4 grub screws on the motor cover

3. Get brave and with a hammer and punch knock out the shaft. To do this hold the motor cover and gently tap the shaft. Three hands here helps.

4. Take the shell off, you will feel the pull of the magnets. There is a small spacer on the shaft here this just pulls off.

5. Knock the shaft out the rest of the way

6. You should now have access to the bearing, remove as you from a wheel, either tap it from behind or use a bearing extractor.

7. Reassembly is the reverse. Make sure the shaft is flush with the case before tightening the grubs back up.

Pics to follow

 

Pictures

 

Glad to help

 

Fantastic. Thanks for the details!

Looks like it has ceramic motor bearings that come stock, awesome to see. Appear to be Bones Reds. We should document the part number and bearing dimensions as well. I tried zooming in but didn't see anything I could grab.

Did you replace the bearings with the same type?

 

The motor bearings were not ceramic bones, I put those in. Bearings were generic Chinese bearings

 

Motor bearing size is same as a skateboard wheel bearing

 

Thanks Scott! Good to know and nice they use the same bearing size. That's the best bang for your buck going ceramic there. I'd honestly go with the full ceramic silicon nitride grade bearings there. They're the hardest and most precise out of the ceramic bearing lineup. But in all honestly, just like ceramic bearings in the wheels, I don't know if you'd ever feel the difference..... Could you tell the difference?

 

Only difference is in noise, I had a metallic vibration on street setup which has completely gone now, the old bearings were smooth but quite loose, which led to an annoying rattle

 

Thanks Scott.

 

No problem

 

I would like to give this a go but am worried about voiding my warranty. Has anyone got confirmation that Evolve are OK for us to be doing this?

 

I'm pretty sure evolve would not be happy for us to do this, it does however cure the problem, or one of the problems relating to noise from the rear end. If your worried about warranties, contact evolve and tell them you think the motor bearings are screwed and they may fix them for you. To be honest the noise was there from day one on street setup for me, so I think that the bearings used by the motor manufacturer are of a very low quality, or from a bad batch. Plus side is that the noise is fixable relatively easily.

 

Scott M, I've been trying to take out the shaft, but it seems like it's held in by four tiny allen screws which you need to unscrew first before hammering out the shaft. Is that right? Don't want to do to much to harm the motor...

 

Yes thats right loosen all 4 Allen screws and then tap out the shaft, it is quite stiff to tap out

 

Thanks!!

 

Thanks Scott, this was very useful.
A couple notes:
1: You don't actually need to pull the shell/cover off the motor, you can just drive the shaft out then stuff a punch through the motor to knock out the bearing.
2: If you do pull the shell/cover off the motor be careful not to damage the little wires and such inside
3: When putting the shell/cover back on be very careful the magnates want to pull the shell/cover back on really hard, which creates a pretty significant pinch point. Trust me it kinda hurts if it gets you.
4: I found that the stock bearings had a little adhesive to help hold them in, this should probably be replicated when putting new ones in, I used a little Loctite.
5: When reassembling you will want to put a little Loctite on the grub screws.

 

what are the sizes of the bearings pls

 

Its already been mentioned above...