After many joyful hours of flying my little Align T15, I noticed that my main motor appeared a little wobbly. The flight time also was down about one minute. Too, the tail motor was a little hesitant to start up. So, I decided to replace both motors. I bought both motors first from another vendor only because they had another part in stock that HeliDirect did not at the time.
It was pretty easy to change out the main motor. Not so much for the tail motor.
I started to install the tail motor, but before I even got it mounted to the tail motor mount, I discovered that two of the three tiny little motor wires were broken. I passed this along to the vendor (again, not HeliDirect) and asked them to check with Align to see if they would replace it. It quickly became clear that they weren’t into satisfied customers, so I abandoned that approach and ordered another one from HelidDirect.
It’s a real chore to install the tail motor. It’s not too hard to worry the three little tiny wires and connectors through the tail-motor housing, but that’s just the beginning of the effort. You will soon find that you have to continue feeding the wires through another little hole at the other end of the tail boom – dire near impossible for me. However, I did finally succeed with the three tiny little wires still intact.
I did a little research and see that Align came up with a new tail motor and cable arrangement for the Align T150. The motor itself has a short pigtail with a connector that attaches to a separate longer cable that routes through the boom on to the ESC. This allows you to tread the cable through the boom without risk of destroying the motor by breaking a wire. The cable is also available separately and is cheap. Align needs to make a similar option available for the T15. They might want to take a look at the OMP M1 EVO tail motor which also uses a separate cable.
As always, HeliDirect shipped my order straightaway with no issues.
