Have you ever taken apart your Minn Kota motor?
Some of you might already know the story of my Minn Kota motor from last year. Our motor was just past the 2 year warranty when it quit working. I sent an email to Minn Kota customer care and explained the situation. Here in the north, we can’t use our electric motors year round because of the obvious reason, ice. When the lakes freeze, our motor spends the winter in a warm, dry place in our basement. Technically, this motor was past the warranty period, but not by much. Minn Kota would not do anything to help with our brand new motor that we spent a few hundred dollars on.
And so, after talking with numerous people, we decided to order a brush kit for the motor to see if we could fix the issue. After just over a year of procrastination I decided to take apart my motor and see if I could fix it.
I’m not a mechanic, but I don’t think water should have been inside the motor itself. Brown water came gushing out when I opened up the end cap and I’m pretty sure Sarah has donated another kitchen hand towel to my fishing gear repair kit. It took me a while to figure out that one of the screws used was not a robertson screw but rather a “star” shaped end (what’s the proper term here?) There seems to be lots of corrosion inside and so I’ve decided to let everything dry out, then I’ll clean and wipe out what’s inside and dig into replacing the worn out parts.
I’m really hoping the brush kit I bought fixes the motor. It appears that the bearing has seized and I’m thinking this is what was causing my motor to stop turning properly.
If you have any ideas and can see that I’m missing something, please comment below. Otherwise, I’ll be making a YouTube video putting this motor back together and hopefully reporting that the brush kit was just what I needed.