Some of you have probably already stumbled onto this, but there is a way to service the motor in the T-33 without having to cut the hatch in the styrofoam as indicated in the plans. (And without having to use your wife’s tiny hands.)

My motor had started to sound funny, so I removed it, careful not to pull the motor leads all the way out of the canopy hatch area. This let me pull the motor about 4-5 inches out of the exhaust; plenty of room to work.

Found the positive terminal brush worn down way beyond the negative terminal brush, so I swapped them. Took the comm stick to the comm and suddenly it appeared much better. Brush dust everywhere!

After cleaning up, I threaded a piece of thread through the endbell and lowered the motor into the exhaust, holding nose down. The motor would only rest at the lip of the fan unit, so I took a long piece of 3/8 sq. balsa and simply pushed the motor into its hole in the fan unit. Problem is this is a fairly tight fit and the holes didn’t line up for mounting screws. After several attempts to re-align I gave up and gave it a good think.

Found a piece of 1 in. OD PVC pipe, cut a notch in one end so as to create a poor man’s spanner wrench. I simply put this over the end bell and twisted…. viola! kept turning until the holes lined up.

Re-assembled as usual. Motor sounds great now, too.