Statement Retraction, The Long Story:
One of the locals, lets call him Ricky, couldn’t wait for the Atomic BB motor to show up stateside so he paid EGR the big bucks to ship him one as soon as they came out. Wanting a comm. drop hole in this his latest baby he turned it over to me for the operation since I would unsolder the caps remove the end-bell and use the mini mill instead of the risky rotor drill method. I of course volunteered to perform the surgery because I was anxious to get my hands on one but too cheep to pay Atomic RC’s initial manufacturers suggested retail plus HK shipping.
Anyway when I took the end-bell off for drilling I looked and thought I saw a ball bearing just like this
but now I’m not so sure, hindsight is not always 20/20 and in this case it’s a little blurry, it could have been a case of seeing what I expected and wanted to see, I now wish I’d taken more time and a closer look removing the armature while I was at it, of course Ricky would have had a conniption fit if I had so maybe that would not have been possible, he’s bigger than me.
The problem is that after opening this motor purchased by another local from Atomic Mods up for the same comm. drop hole operation I noticed that it did not.
So now after stating emphatically that they did have ball bearings I have to humbly retract that statement and say that some or possibly even all do not. Am trying to get Ricky to let me open his back up to see if it did/does actually have ball bearings or if I was just hallucinating.
BTW the above Atomic BB with the ball bearing did not come with it installed after taking a close look at the Atomic end-bell I noticed that unlike the stock motor there was a sleeve around the bushing hole as if it was originally poured to take a 4x2mm bearing but for some reason the sleeve and smaller bushing was used instead. After reaming out the sleeve a 4x2mm ball bearing slipped right in just as if it was made to.
One possible explanation could be that since the motor turns at over 50K rpm they had bearing problems, and reliable 4x2mm high speed/temp motor bearing rated at 50,000+ rpm could be a problem in the price range. Just wild speculation but I’m still having trouble imagining why my favorite Mini-Z motor manufacturer would risk their rep by intentionally putting BB on a motor that didn’t have them, and like I said above I’m still not sure that the one I first looked at didn’t actually have them, won’t know until Ricky lets me dissect it and although he’s tentatively agreed I suspect it will take copious amounts of bear for him to actually let me do it. In the mean time I emailed Atomic RC (not Atomic Mods) hoping for a reasonable explanation.
Threaded Mode