Hello, I just completed my crawler build and as I was installing the wheels I noticed that the motor axles seem loose on 5 of the 6 motors. And as soon as I tried to drive it, the motor gear box is clicking on the middle axle. I’m concerned on the quality of the motors and gear boxes - the job of this crawler is to be a reliable inspection tool for a crawl space that otherwise may be too small or dangerous to enter. If these axles are loose and gear boxes are stripping - I’m concerned I could lose this in a crawl space - much to expensive to lose!
Please help.
Thank you
Nolan
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Hello, Nolan.
I am sorry to hear you are having trouble with your Wild Thumper chassis. Can you let us know how much additional weight you added to your Wild Thumper and post a video that demonstrates how loose the motors are? The forum does not allow users to post very large videos, but it does work well with videos linked from other sites (like YouTube or Vimeo). Also, do you hear the clicking from the middle motor if you rotate that motor manually instead of driving it?
- Patrick
Oh! it’s really disappointing. Such an expensive crawler is too good to be wasted. As per team pololu’s suggestion, I think you’d better send the video ASAP. If you do not want to upload on youtube or vimeo, you can use google docs too. Let them take a look so that you can get replacement or refund ASAP.
Patrick, thank you for your forum reply. I’ve uploaded 2 videos to a dropbox folder - Link below where you can see/hear the motors/wheels.
As far as weight - 3 1/2 - 4 pounds maybe?
Thank you for the videos. Those motors definitely do not look or sound okay, and we are looking into this on our end. Can you email us with your order information and a reference to this thread?
- Patrick
Thanks to team pololu for prompt response. Hope this crawler will get life soon.
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Hello, have you solved your problem? I have the same problem with my Wild Thumper… My original gearbox is a bad copy of the one you can see in Pololu catalog and photos and all 6 gearbox make the same thing I see in your videos.
Hello, macgyver76.
Unfortunately, we were not able to get Dagu to resolve the problem or commit to avoiding these lower-quality motors with their future production, so we pulled all of the affected units from stock a year ago and have been discontinuing the different versions of the chassis as the remaining good inventory is used up.
Is the unit you are having trouble with one you got from us?
- Patrick
Hello, thank you very much for the fast answer. I bought it “as new” from an Italian guy, I don’t know where he bought it. It was never assembled, I bought the only chassis with motor and tyres, but with poor quality gearbox it is impossible to use it…
The original poster in this thread was able to get his Wild Thumper chassis working by replacing the problematic gearmotors with some of ours, so that could be an option if you want to get your chassis up and running. Here are links to the motors we recommend as replacements for the Wild Thumper motors:
- Patrick
