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Hey all,

I’ve got some motors on the way and they’re the green or teal label (faded green?) pre-Ultra, chonky Yokomo endbell variants with the Edinger address and in seemingly red dot flavor. I didn’t waste any time asking questions when I found the ad since I knew that they’d be nice to have in the collection regardless of turns and wind, but does anyone want to take a stab at telling me what these older pre-Ultra color codes that Mike was using adhered to? Perhaps he carried that system over to the Ultra series later which would place these as 17 doubles? Whatcha thinkin? And thanks BTW, I’m really excited to pull the arms out of these to confirm what they are but that’ll be a bit since USPS decided to put them on a barge instead of air mailing them out.

Cheers,
—XOID

Oh, just for giggles I did contact the seller again and he has no idea what the provenance is other than an earlier eBay buy.

Trying to identify motor specs can be frustrating. So many have no markings. I've had a few of those teal green label motors and none were marked with anything useful. Maybe the red dots are correct on yours and they are 17 double motors. If they are double wire at the comm terminations, that would feel like an identification win to me.

Frankentruck wrote: ↑Mon Jul 15, 2024 5:41 am Trying to identify motor specs can be frustrating. So many have no markings. I've had a few of those teal green label motors and none were marked with anything useful. Maybe the red dots are correct on yours and they are 17 double motors. If they are double wire at the comm terminations, that would feel like an identification win to me.

Good to know about the likely variation, thank you. I think that I’ve got a ~decent gauge (without using a micrometer I mean) for judging to about 13T as heavy turns are easier to see, though am surely curious why nobody has ever figured out what Mr. Reedy was using for his system back when he was fabbing these early Modifieds—perhaps it was an evolving standard as his gear caught on mainstream?

17T and up I give myself approximately no credit for discerning anything accurately without comm-comm ohms and known wire gauge. Hopefully they’ll at least have a mark on the stack and yep, will be counting winds at the comm tabs for starters. Will report what they end up being in the hope that we can get a standard established for other vintage can collectors and users. The list from the motor database has all of the Ultras well documented so I guess we’ll see.

Would you say that aside from their early place in the Reedy lineage that these are intriguing for any other reasons? What I’m hoping for is some life left on the arms and to zap the cans, then see what I missed as a kid when this sort of kit was unobtainable to us. They do look well cared for but right no idea of how hard they were run. Thank all,

—XOID

There is definitely the possibility of them being good runners (paying attention to motor temp and run time limits). Being in that nice condition, I would be hopeful that was an indication they were taken care of and had little use. For early modifieds, I don't get the impression that they were built to be 12x4 screamers very often though.

Frankentruck wrote: ↑Mon Jul 15, 2024 5:37 pm There is definitely the possibility of them being good runners (paying attention to motor temp and run time limits). Being in that nice condition, I would be hopeful that was an indication they were taken care of and had little use. For early modifieds, I don't get the impression that they were built to be 12x4 screamers very often though.

Yeah, kinda where I’m leaning; a responsible user with experience maybe used these. BITD anything around the 15T or less mark was “you’re crazy” or a dedicated oval guy. We did put hot motors into our speed boats and early electric aircraft as well, and cooked every type of ESC imaginable in the boats with those. I don’t even recall the nice motors that got tortured but it wasn’t pretty. Nothing could handle the amps that the bigger surface-piercing props were pulling so it was large, tandem microswitches and a servo horn for maximum arc damage! Derp.

Thanks @Frankentruck for chiming in with your thoughts. In a surprising turn of events these are now showing as arriving as soon as tomorrow so the suspense may yet come to a more timely end than anticipated. The Delivery Gods brought an aluminum-endbelled Monster Horsepower mod today so there’s something else to investigate, though removing that black endbell timing tape seems kinda devaluing. Meh, I’m sure it’ll need a skim anyways. Sorry to cross the streams. I’ll go poke around in the Tri ity forum for that one and to figure out about a missing decal for another one that saw too much Dan’s motor spray.

1/4" wide pinstripe tape is a good replacement, if you decide to open it up.

Well OK boys and girls, we have some curious results here. TL;DR version is that two of the teal Reedy Mods with red dots are 16x2, while the third, missing its dot is a 17x3.

I think that this was either a sponsored driver who used motors once and then swapped out, or someone who drove extremely seldom and perhaps liked to run 4 cells nicad class in 1/12th. My guess is based on the fact that their comms have almost no wear at all on them, just a tiny bit of burn which I polished off using 800 grit and a drop of oil, plus each motor appeared to never have been opened. One had a bonus E clip inside of it, and every set of brushes is broken in then just set aside.

My biggest question remains in that I have no idea why Mike Reedy was making Teal Green Modifieds while over at Edinger St. were these meant for RC10s and old pan cars? I’ve added a photo comparing just how blue the labels are compared to a regular green reedy mod decal.

Construction is otherwise really nice. The NMB bearings are smooth as can be and an early take on combining a single teflon spacer under metal shims was employed for centering the arms inside their cans’ respective magnetic fields. They’re otherwise totally normal Reedys and you see the typical steps of hand wound quality such as some expose offset, the telltale reinforcement winding under the brazed comm tabs to each group of windings, and every stack is numbered.





That’s a bit weird: the 17x3 just had a number seven on it so it took some macro lens time to suss the winds. One 16 double is simply labeled as “16” on its arm, and the other 16d is old school winds-turns nomenclature so it reads ”26” on the armature stack. This was of course long before anybody dared make a 6-turn 540, so I suppose everyone just assumed it’d be in the teens when looking at a rotor made by this group.

Here are some fun pics of today’s restorations. Thanks for chiming in with any thoughts about these old guys:




Here’s the worst looking can. It had some tiny bit of surface corrosion to my disappointment but it polished up using 800-grit and shock oil just fine. It’s actually not too noticeable but it sure would’ve been a score to get three motors this old with nearly virgin comms, cans and arms. Do t get me wrong, this is a good lot. They’ll likely see some use in the future and in the meantime I’ll set them on display until I can turn the comms for their first times. Have a bit of a backlog to do there so that’ll be one of those ‘whaddydiddone RC today?’ Where a hot shower makes lots of sense.





Anybody make sense of the Dyno codes on these things? Every motor has a hex set of numbers. 3x2 pairs, on the red tags below the little timing decals. Neat stuff. Somebody was tuning.

Cheers, and thanks for coming along on my YA Reedy Mod motor adventure here.

—XOID

I hope you aren't planning to use that MCI label on any of these nice original motors.

Frankentruck wrote: ↑Wed Jul 24, 2024 12:26 am I hope you aren't planning to use that MCI label on any of these nice original motors.

Dear lord no!

Xoid wrote: ↑Wed Jul 24, 2024 12:19 am...
That’s a bit weird: the 17x3 just had a number seven on it so it took some macro lens time to suss the winds. One 16 double is simply labeled as “16” on its arm, and the other 16d is old school winds-turns nomenclature so it reads ”26” on the armature stack. This was of course long before anybody dared make a 6-turn 540, so I suppose everyone just assumed it’d be in the teens when looking at a rotor made by this group.

...

I have to question that logic. Sure, a 6-turn motors probably wasn't a thing back then, but a 26-turn motor could have been.

Phin wrote: ↑Wed Jul 24, 2024 10:29 am

Xoid wrote: ↑Wed Jul 24, 2024 12:19 am...
That’s a bit weird: the 17x3 just had a number seven on it so it took some macro lens time to suss the winds. One 16 double is simply labeled as “16” on its arm, and the other 16d is old school winds-turns nomenclature so it reads ”26” on the armature stack. This was of course long before anybody dared make a 6-turn 540, so I suppose everyone just assumed it’d be in the teens when looking at a rotor made by this group.

...

I have to question that logic. Sure, a 6-turn motors probably wasn't a thing back then, but a 26-turn motor could have been.

Yeah, for sure, @Phin I thought it was going to be a really mild rotor though it is more or less identical to the first 16-double that I worked on. Same four wires per lug, same (surprisingly) hefty gauge wire and differences are looks like it was spun by a different employee who wasn’t as clean with his silver soldering, and a different type of epoxy-impregnated cordage is used per Mr. Reedy’s standards for securing the turns just below the commutator tabs.

I could read the images differently and say, “one guy had good, ANSI drafting skill and wrote out clearly legible and standards compliant “26”, and the other one that I think shows sixteen could be a squashed numeral two aside the six.” All three rotors squeeze the sharpie demarcation to the left of any balancing bore holes.

Oh, an afterthought: all three motors are likely doubly balanced (or more) at the early AE/Reedy motor shop as both some epoxy packing and machine bores into the armature webs are used. Perhaps the epoxy is there for ensuring a stably balanced rotor as it is not packed in daubs as seen specifically for balancing, but rather loosely spread around the winds on each opposing face of a wound pole. Nicely made kit! Built to last for whatever that was worth BITD.

From the brushed motor reference stickie, the 17x3 appears to be quite an oddball. These are the teal cans’ successors in the gold heatsink Yokomo cans called “Reedy Modified Ultras” and note the difference in dot color alignment and the missing 17x3. They must’ve been working on this as an evolving standard. Anyone else with teal cans able to pull their arms out and to peak at the color dots for us? TIA if so—it’d be groovy to get a reference chart put together. Dang, I wish that the 17x3 had arrived with its sticker still in place. That would’ve been a good start to update this:

6521 21x2 Ultra Silver Dot
6522 17x2 Ultra Red Dot
6523 15x2 Ultra Pink Dot
6524 19x2 Ultra Gold Dot
6525 14x2 Ultra Gold Star
6526 12x2 Ultra Blue Dot
6527 13x2 Ultra Green Dot
3522 20x4 Ultra Silver Star
3523 19x3 Ultra Brown Dot
8100 16x4 Ultra Yellow Dot

Oh and the 16x2 looks to have been abandoned as a winding as well. Odd, that’s a nice 4WD buggy spooling if not a little bit tame.

—XOID