Trying Out Some Low Cost Brushless Motors from eBay

Trying Out Some Low Cost Outrunner Brushless Motors from eBay

Posted on September 13th, 2010 in Radio Control

These outrunner brushless motors were shipped straight from China and took about two weeks to arrive and cost about $12 each shipped. Here are a couple of high resolution photos of these motors, they have a nice flat gold color to the ends and the bell is chromed a good overall appearance at first look.

The motors were recommended to me by a fellow Radio Controlled FPV flyer for use with the Skyfun jet-like foam glider from HobbyKing. I bought two of the gliders and had tried a couple of different motor combination with not too much luck. When I saw his video of his Skyfun with this motor, I sent him a message and found out what he was using.

These motors are relatively cheap so I had assumed that the quality would be questionable. I wanted to see if this was a viable option to use for a cheaper radio controlled airplane and for various small projects that I didn’t want to risk more expensive motors or where it simply doesn’t make sense to spend a lot of money for a motor.

The machining quality overall does look pretty decent on the motors themselves, but unfortunately the prop adapters are a bit mangled. The one on the left has the cross cuts way off center and the one on the right has the hole off center it appears.

I also checked the motors against the specifications.

Specifications for BC2826-6 Outrunner Brushless Motor from rctimer.com
Model: BC2826-6
Motor size: ?28*26mm (I measured 28 * 28. This was measured from the base of the motor to the exposed part of the shaft)
Shaft size: ?3.175*37mm (3.17mm x 42mm)
Weight: 50g (50g with no accessories, near 60g with back plate and prop adapter, this scale only shows 10g steps)
KV(rpm/v): 2200 (untested)
Max Power: 342W (untested)
Battery: 2-3Li-Po
Test Prop: 7×3/7×4 (untested)
Ri(M ?): 0.033 (tested under 0.1 ohm)
ESC(A): 30A (untested)

I thought it was pretty odd that both the motor can length and the shaft length are longer than specified by the manufacturer and markings on the can. I tried to measure the can a couple of different ways but nothing came up to 26mm. In the end I measure from the base of the motor to the top of the motor where the shaft exits.

Once I get some leads attached to one of these brushless motors I’ll test it with and without a prop, disassemble it to check out the magnet mounting and winding quality and dump some CC-ICE graphs in this article as well to see how it matches up to the specs.