Your wondering why the hell motor base plates need there own article.  Well that’s why! These are an important part of the gearbox, and typically I’m talking about base plates which actually push up on the motor, in gearboxes like V2 and New V2.  The base plate is in essence your motor cage.  Its what physically holds the motor in place both vertically and prevents the motor twisting or moving just like a cage.  And Just like a cage it has adjustment.  You can get several styles of base plates, the most common being either

A:  Grub screw adjustment.  Old school.

B: New style with wide motor adjust

Either is fine, but obviously the new style potentially is easier to adjust in the field and with the gaps may add a tiny degree of heat dissipation.  The old style needs to be used with a motor spacer, the new style has the ability to not use the motor spacer, a point worth making that when installing a new style often its just common sense to install the motor spacer but be warned the whole point of this article is to bring to light some of the compatibility issues we see on a regular basis and one of those is that the height may now be too close to the gun and cause either a high pitched sound or nasty grinding noise.  s with all motor height adjusting its part in parcel with regular AEG maintenance, its adjustable for a reason and its something that may move over time, and as a result its up to you to familiarize your self with this feature just like you would learn how to use a hop unit.  Else find your self being one of those players that has to run up to a marshal to showing him the crazy weird whining his gun is making and inevitably demonstrate it to every player on the way back to the safe zone no doubt turning a small problem into big problem.

Basic motor height setting up:

So back to basics what your trying to find is a sweet spot between too tight and too far away.  The only way to do this is while firing the gun tighten it, till it sounds worse, then loosen it till it sounds worse.  Then you know the area of sweetness.  Find somewhere in the middle and your sorted.

Obviously it can be more complicated after a re shim.. because there’s always a chance the bevel gear height is either too low or high and unfortunately the only way to find out in most gearbox cases is testing testing testing.  typically major issues show them selves with in 500 rounds.  So if your gun lasts more than that and sounds good you can be fairly confident it will last through a game day.  For amature gun techs i cant stress the testing enough, even if it means wasting a thousand rounds when you think its definitely done.

More advanced base plate mods, based on incompatibilities:

What i mean by incompatibilities is you’ve changed something, in the engineering world we call it part swapping.  The basic art of swapping one part for another part and hoping it cures the problem or in the case of aftermarket parts “upgrades” what your upgrading or changes what your changing.

In airsoft terms an example would be fitting a magpul grip possibly the single most common grip change that is happening nowadays, traditionally you would buy a part and assume its a perfect fit for your gun, well you couldn’t be further from the truth.  Yes you can get away with it and most do but what about those that don’t.

Examples:  You fit the grip and your bearings break shortly after.  We had a customers gun in which this had happened he was cursing the day bearings were invented but no the grip he had installed sat much closer to the gearbox shell as he pushed it on and screwed it in it was basically solid against the bearing, which resulted in heat and eventual disintegration of the bearing.  Answer was to dremel / sand back the offending part of the grip.

Example, magpul grip install customer complained of grinding noise no mater how much he adjusted the motor height.  In this case the magpul base plate simply didn’t allow the motor to properly sit in it, thus it was pushed way to far in and actually motor adjusting wasn’t even touching it … thus adjusting had no effect.  Answer dremel back the offending parts of the base plate resulting in the motor sitting correctly.

Those where just two examples of customers installing grips , basic cosmetic enhancements for there aegs and getting compatibility issues.

This is why the motor base plate and making sure the motor sits correctly in it is so important and a little thought to why your part isn’t working right as apposed to just out right slander off it on the forums before even trying to make it fit right.  Yes should the product fit straight away.. yes maybe.. but from a manufacturers point of view there is a lot of aegs out there and no way to make it fit them all.  but you can.

Base plate issues and there resolution.

1. Short circuit or blown fuse after installing a new motor.

With the prolific amount of motors out there now many using the same factory origins and maximising there can sizes for high torque winds you will see this issue on a lot of motors.  I think a picture specs a thousand words.  Take a look below notice the housing at the top of the motor and how with the motor base plate sat over the end the metal base plate is touching both the left and right sides of the motor, that’s the + and -, ie:  duck and cover if your using a lipo.  Well actually the picture below has been pre modded so “imagine how where you can see the dremeled area normally it would be much wider and there for you can easily picture it touching the motor, my bad cant seem to find the touching photos and its 3am..   What you’ll see is repeated popped fuses and it may even be intermittent like during game play and you cant explain it.  If you have defused you may see your motor heating up excessively or wires heating up or excessive battery drain from it being intermittent and of course melted wires and or witch contact or worst case blow battery, literally.  traditionally something else with give before that happens though.

Its rare and random and catches even the best techs out due to its intermitant nature, becuase when you wind the motor height in to adjust it properly your actually moving the motor away from the base plate thus no short circuit, and maybe its running in a forest or falling over thats needed to short it.  or an in the field height adjust or the second Tuesday of every month when the moon is full, or what ever…. you get the idea.

So if the motor height pushes it away whats the problem? well you shouldn’t have to rely on maybes to keep your gun going we all know loose spade connectors are a common cause of gun stopping in the field so why not spend a little time in this area future proofing it.  With the advent of mosfets and electronic control circuits its even more important to prevent short circuits as mosfets simply can not handle a cross circuit or reverse polarities.

here’s a few pictures of modded base plates the general concept is to remove material from the outside of the bottom of the base plate, don’t remove from the inside as this is your cage which holds the motor and you don’t want it twisting as you stop and start the gun.  You could actually technically remove the middle sections and it would still grip it in extreme cases but usually just making the base plate thinner is enough.

Benifits include:

More leeway from short circuits against the motor.

More freedom for the base plate to fit in between the spade connector on each side and the motor… This is a nice feature as sometimes when installing base plates customers fit the base plate on top of the motor wires / spades and thus it sits too low.

more freedom should the heat shrink around the spades deteriorate.

Long and short of it there are zero cons from performing the mod apart from having to use a dremel.  Once again this is eagle6 airsoft bringing you practical mods for the every day airsofter.

More photos: