CC Blower....Blows
 

Thought I would give a quick review of the new CC Blower, all I can say is it does just that..BLOWS! After just three heats and the A main there wasn't a single blade remaining on the fan! Good idea but it will not hold up to the demands of 1/8th off road racing and yes there are several large chassis slapping jumps on the track that I race at, as all good 1/8th tracks do. Definitely not worth the money or the time it takes to install it.

Not doubting what happened to yours, but about 90% of our 1/8th drivers have them and never complained once about them.

Sorry for your bad luck with it.

must be like one of them new blade less fan designs :lol: they had them for sale at a local shop for moving air about the house, just a centrifugal fan in the base and a big ring on top in which air came out of the perimeter. they suc....err...blew as well. what a pathetic idea THAT was :lol:

I'm not giving up on the idea, just the bushing motor that Castle chose to use for reasons of cost I am sure. Found some 30x30x7mm "ball bearing" fans online for about 8 bucks shipped, so I bought two one to go in the CC Blows and one for my MMM that I discovered after tear down and clean up that the fan no longer works on it...go figure! I will just have to reuse the wires off the other two, no big deal there. Like I said, it's a good concept just a cheap fan. Even with one blade missing after the first heat my motor came back about 20deg. cooler than it normally runs, normally it's 155deg. with the fan 135deg.

if you change the fan on your MMM could you do a write up with pics??? Something i would be looking into doing but not sure what parts to buy etc....

I was also looking into the blower, but after seeing pics of it being quite cheap looking, i was a little hesitant... I may still consider one...
Thanks

Josh

The new ball bearing fans should be in this week. The only thing I will have to do is rob the wires from the old units and install them on the new fans except on the cc blows, instead of gluing the fan in the shroud I will use four M3 screws and nylock nuts to hold the new fan in. I'll take a couple of pics and post them up.

thanks a lot! Something i will def look into !

Well Josh the new fans showed up yesterday and they are a perfect fit in the MMM and CC Blows. As you wanted I will post a few pics as I go through the swap over, but first I want to explain why I do the wiring like I do. To begin I don't try and desolider and resolider the wires to the PC board on the back of the motor because the solider points are tiny, very close together and recessed in the plastic motor case. To me it's just not worth the risk of all the things that could go wrong like over heating the PC board or overlapping solider joints and on and on, so this is how we do it.

Here's what you get for the money
http://i882.photobucket.com/albums/a.../D8/D80013.jpg
http://i882.photobucket.com/albums/a.../D8/D80022.jpg

You will notice that the new fan comes with three wires, red, black and yellow. The yellow wire is not needed so cut it off as short as you can then cut the red and black wires leaving them long enough to work with.
http://i882.photobucket.com/albums/a...4/D8/D8004.jpg
Cut the wire to be reused off the old fan in about the same place that you cut the wire from the new one, this way the wire after joined will be about the same as the original. Then strip the insulation back on the ends to be joined about 1/8" apply flux paste to the bare wires and pretin with a small amount of solider, cut two pieces of heat shrink tubing 3/8" long and slide it over the wires back far enough that the heat won't get to it when you solider the wires together. Allot of people use the helping hands jig to solider wires together, I prefer a 1/4" thick piece of ceramic tile and a small lite weight clamp, a cloths pin will do. Now clamp the fan to the tile and solider the wires together, then slide the shrink tubing over the joint and shrink it with a heat gun or lighter. Slap that sucker back in the case, plug it up and you are good to go.
http://i882.photobucket.com/albums/a...4/D8/D8005.jpg
http://i882.photobucket.com/albums/a...4/D8/D8006.jpg
http://i882.photobucket.com/albums/a...4/D8/D8007.jpg
There are several differences that I noticed between the ball bearing and the old bushing fans, first off the motor is larger on the bearing unit therefore the blades are a little shorter and beefier, that's a plus also there is no up and down play on the ball bearing fan like there is on the bushing fan. Not sure what the CFM is but I can tell that the new fans are moving more air.
http://i882.photobucket.com/albums/a...4/D8/D8003.jpg
A side note on the CC Blows, when they made the fan shroud that fits over the motor they didn't allow any place for the air to exit after the fan pulls it in! So I cut away 5/8" between the two zip tie tracks leaving about 5/32" between the shroud and the motor. That way the air can exit almost as fast as it enters, taking the heat with it! Witch after all is the purpose of the blower....isn't it?
Hope this is of some help
GeorgeC

George, where did you order the fans from? Need to pick up a few.

My cc blower fan lost one blade in the first night of running. Like the blower, hate the fan. Already lost two fans in my ESCs too. Need a reliable replacement.

ben

I bought mine "HERE"

Awesome, just order 4. Thanks for the research, post and info.

ben

My pleasure!

damn, out of stock. i have a MMM that needs a fan and my castle blower broke a fan blade within 5 minutes of light bashing.

yep I just looked also and out of stock. my fan on mmm needs help.. anyone else know of another place to buy these fans? a reputable place?

You mite want to try these.

I have been waiting to post on the durability of the Evercool fan till I had a few races on them and after four races both are still working great! The one in the CC Blower runs all the time while the one in the MMM only comes on after about 5 min. of running and in this heat sometimes in 2 to 3 min. So far so good! :yipi:

The airflow is supposed to go between the fins on the motor can. When I first got my blower I was confused about that as well but after taking it out for a run it made sense. The shrouding is there for a reason, it directs the airflow around the motor for more even cooling. It's true that squeezing that air through that small space will drop the CFM's significantly, but I'm sure Castle did their homework with this. High airflow is useless if it isn't put to work.

It does feels a bit cheaper than I'm used to for a Castle product (very stiff plastic and wires), but it does the job. I haven't had any problems with it yet, although if/when the fan dies you've shown people a replacement option :smile:

What????...How can there even be "HIGH AIR FLOW" when it's being packed up in a box and forced back through the top of the fan? With over whelming back pressure there is no air flow and therefore no heat exchange! :no:

by cutting up the shroud you decrease backpressure and thus increase CFM, but because the shroud isn't directing the air around the motor, you can't cool the motor as effectively. the air is supposed to flow around the motor, between the shroud and the motor fins. If you wanted maximum airflow, you would just ziptie the fan to the top of the motor without a shroud.

What you're effectively saying in PC terms is that instead of having system/cpu fans inside the case, it's much better to take out the fans and instead put the entire case in front of a fan moving huge amounts of air. Sure, backpressure will drop CFM's but what's the point if what CFM's you have are not being used effectively?

By opening the bottom of the shroud the air flow is allowed to move across a larger portion of the motor with greater cfm therefore taking more heat with it!

If you want to relate this to a cpu, you can have as many fans inside the box as you want but if you don't have fans removing the air from the box you are doing nothing but circulating hot air in the box!

The shroud is there for a reason. Like I said earlier, if you wanted maximum airflow you wouldn't use the shroud at all, just ziptie a fan (probably a larger one) on the top of the motor.

Also, what you said about the pc (not cpu) is entirely correct, it's not the best analogy but that's what I've been trying to tell you. The shrouding ducts the fan so it will push air across the maximum amount of motor surface area while keeping a decent amount of airflow. Pull air through the case (ie. what has to be cooled) even though there's vents, cabling, etc. in the way rather than blast only one part of it with high speed air.

My Blower snapped when I tightened the zip-ties too tight.My fault,but its not that sturdy.Can a cooler motor effect the ESC performance/temps?

Well the bottom line is I'm not cooling a "PC" I'm cooling a 1/8th E buggy motor under race conditions. Before the mod to the shroud my motor temps after a 15min main ran between 170/180f after 160/170f but I believe I can do better than that by taking one of these and removing the nose piece and splitting the rest in half. With this fan bracket I can mount a 40x10mm fan instead of the 30x7mm. The reason I know this will work better is I already have this setup on a Tekno 2200kv motor and it temps at 150/160f after a 15min main.
Here is the Tekno setup on my O'Donnell Z01-Be

http://i882.photobucket.com/albums/a.../Z01-B/019.jpg

Yes! The cooler the motor the more efficient it is, not to mention longevity!

well the pc was an analogy. either way, a larger fan will do a better job of cooling...are the Monster and Blower fans the same?

I'll post up some pics after I have the new fan bracket mounted up. And I don't think it's your fault that the bracket breaks, plastic that thin has no place on a 1/8th buggy of truggy. That's why I'm making one out of aluminum.

Yes 30x30x7 5VDC

George,

I'm interested in your long-term testing of the Evercool fan. Keep us posted! It's not any more expensive than the fan we are using now (in high quantity...)

We do have a new version of the fan we are using now -- they made some changes to the fan to make it more durable (on the electronics side...) but it seems there is some variation in the blade durability.

I'll talk to our supplier about beefing up the blades a bit on the 30x30 fan.

Thanx!

Will do Patrick. This is only the second fan in three seasons, not bad considering the beating these things take in a race day :lol:

Have you guys ever used a Magnetic Levitation fan?I ran these on my MM when I ran 4s w/BEC back b4 the MMM.

No never heard of one! Got a link or pics?

yep Link is
http://www.alliedelec.com/Search/Sea...FVZL5wodzAu_Gw

Very cool! Good cfm and 5 bucks. How did they hold up to a good beating? The 40x10 I'm running on the Tekno is a Sunon BB motor fan and it seems to be doing well, but I paid like 15 for it :gasp:

another link
http://www.aerocooler.com/shop.cart?...d_id=FANSO483P

so what is the verdict?

As i am using the RCM UNIVERSAL motor/diff mount i can not mount my own fan in anyway unless i use the castle shroud.

I honestly thought the shroud would do more harm than good, but looks as if goodresults have been found. Is it worth using it but doing some air flow modifications and upgrading to a more powerful fan?

Thanks

Yes it's worth using, but I do recommend opening the bottom of the shroud between the ziptie tracks a bit to increase air flow across the motor and not by a huge amount but to where you have about 3/16 clearance off the motor. As for the fan the original didn't make it trough one race and none like to be ran on their side, so keep the fan as flat as possible.
This is a pic of the blower in my old D8, I think you can see about how much I removed from the bottom of the shroud.

http://i882.photobucket.com/albums/a.../D8/D80023.jpg

What motor is that??? It has longitudinal fins....that's why you had to cut the shroud. :whistle: A CC motor has the fins around the circumference and that allows the air to escape freely.

It's a Hobbywing 2000kv but I also have 2 CC motors and it's the same effect with those. Restricted air flow is one of the problems with this unit, the other is fan size..too small for the task at hand. A 30x7mm fan might do fine on a 540 but not the 670s.

The 30x30 fan that George recommended is still holding find for me in my Truggy.

Lost a blade on the fan in my ESC on my buggy and I'm going to use the same fan to replace it when I get a chance.

ben