Helicopter fleet heavily damaged

[Jerrymac]

After a long winter of doing some indoor home repairs and some minor remodeling, I decided it was time to disassemble one of my 425's to upgrade it with the HeadHunter frame I got from Scott a few months back.
I generally just line up my helicopters on a table in the laundry room over the winter and leave them there in the basement all winter. I have an add-on wood/coal burner hooked to my heating system to save on gas bills, and it is also located in the basement laundry room so the helis stay warm and dry too.

Not this year. When I turned off the water valves for the outdoor spigots this fall, I didn't notice that one of them had a very tiny occasional drip coming off of the stem. Well, guess where it was dripping? Yep, on the edge of the table where my helicopters were sitting, and splashing up on them, although it was so small I didn't notice it.

Well, I noticed it today when I grabbed the 425 and the head would not rotate. I grabbed another, and the same thing, then another.
I decided to check out the HH 500 first and found the swash bearing rusted so bad the swash plate would not rotate. Worse yet, I could not pull the main shaft out as it was rusted solid to the inner races of the main shaft bearings. Couldn't pull the OW shaft out either as it was rusted to the inner bearing races. I set it aside and started looking at the "donor" 425 and found the same thing on it. Funny thing is that there was very little 'visible' rust on any of the metal parts, but they are all frozen tight.

At this point, I am not even sure what to do with them since I can't even get them apart. The bearings in the head must be rusted too as I can't rotate the flybars either. Simply put, nothing will move at all.

The little Gaui 200 and the Helipro 450 were spared though. They were sitting on the build bench in another room of the basement since I had started to do some off season maintenance on them in the fall. The new HeadHunter frame was also sitting there next to them, so it wasn't affected either.

Very frustrating, to say the least.

Jerry

[barryorbik]

Sorry to hear that corrosion has attacked your fleet Jerry. I try to fly every weekend, so mine are kept well exercised!! and as all are electric, my lovely wife allows me to store them in the 'helicopter hanger' (spare bedroom), so they stay nice and warm and dry throughout the year. Might be worth you carefully checking all of the electrical bits as well because the servo's, ESC's, gyro and radio receivers may have been effected by the moisture too.

Looks as though you may need to bathe the rusted mechanics in WD40 for a while to help dismantle them. I race 1/8th Nitro cars off road buggies and they get really mucky thrashing around in the mud and puddles and the only thing that keeps them race fit is a thorough bath in WD40 after the racing and a full relube and regrease of all the bearings.

Hope you get all of them repaired and ready to return to the air soon.

Barry

[Jerrymac]

Thanks Barry,

I haven't checked any of the electronics yet. I think I will probably just disassemble them one at a time, check everything over, order parts, then move on to the next one. I am not going to just tear them all apart at once. It might take awhile but winter is still in full force here so I will have lots of time.

I do have one spare bedroom that is sort of like a 'hobby room' but in the winter we have a large slot car track set up in there for the grandson and I to race during the winter. Guess I will have to make a 'wall hanger' in there to store my helicopters on.

Jerry

[barryorbik]

Hi Jerry, We are quite lucky over here now as the days are getting longer and (hopefully) the temperatures will increase and the wind will drop also!!
Might be worth visually inspecting the Rx board first if you can (as it is more open to the elements that the other electrics) to see if there is any visible corrosion, as if that's Ok its a reasonable bet the servo's, gyro and ESC will have survived too.

Have fun with the rebuilds and the heli hanger.

Barry

[Jerrymac]

Well, I bench tested all of the electronics from the HH 500 today. The servos, gyro, bec, esc and motor all worked. The only problem I saw was the led on the satellite rx did not light. Might have a corroded connection there, didn't check it yet.
I spooled the motor up to about 50% throttle and it spins fine but sounded a little noisy. Not sure how hard it is to replace bearings in a Z-30 motor, but it might be a good idea due to the noise.

So far the damage doesn't seem too terrible. Need to replace main, owb, and tail drive bearings, along with ow and tail drive shaft. Also need to replace the swash plate since it will not even rotate. All of the ball links are very tight on the balls, so need to address that too.

I have everything except for one set of main shaft bearings. The HH frame uses the same ones on the OW shaft, but I only have one pair of them on hand. Nobody here in the states has any main shafts in stock, so I am just going to polish it up with a Scotch Brite pad and reuse it.

On a brighter note, my 550 was the farthest one away from "The Drip" and seems to only have some minor surface corrosion on some of the screws and other metal parts. Everything spins freely in it as best I can tell just by moving things by hand. I think I will just remove the main and tail blades, then spool it up and check the motor, servo and gyro operation to see if all is ok.

I have a brand new HeadHunter frame to upgrade one of the 425's, so I shouldn't need any bearings for it, but will still need a new $50 swash plate.

Jerry