Another thing regarding heat in these wheels. The reason you don't feel any heat coming out of your wheel is twofold. Firstly the stock heatsink isn't doing that great of a job getting the heat out of the motors, and second, as stated by a previous poster, air is a very good insulator. You will never feel heat in the top of your wheel housing with your stock wheel because the heat is only being transferred to the heat sink and pulled out the side of the wheel base by the fan(s). The air above that even gets any heat transfer is pulled right out of there and never reaches the top. A very large percentage of heat is still inside the motor can and in the windings, armature and magnets. A car hood is a very poor comparison since there's no sealed environment with fans pulling air out of the engine compartment. On top of that there is a huge fan pulling hot air through the radiator and depositing it on top of an already hot engine. Also this hot air is free to rise and radiate into the hood since nothing is pulling it out like the fans in a Fanatec wheel base. I invite the poster who thinks there is no heat problem because the heat isn't rising to the top of his wheel base to run a 2 hour race in a heavy FFB car with his clear cover off and to lay a finger on his motor can at the end of the race. I will maybe hear him scream from across the earth, lol.
One of the guys running my air cooling setup just finished a 2 hour endurance race with NO FFB fade at all. Within 3 - 5 minutes of the end of his race his wheel had cooled back to room temperature. Try that with the stock motors and cooling setup. With the pumped air setup pushing outside room air through the inside of the motor can there is a lot more heat exiting the important parts of the motors into the wheel base and you can feel it both above the motors and at the side of the base near the fan exit. This heat never gets removed from inside the stock motors with the stock cooling. Here's what he sent me after his race when I asked him how it went:
"I didn't do too bad, there were 14 cars that started 4 classes(Grand am/ALMS). I am driving the RUF Track. I Qualified 4 out of 6 and finished 4th and 10th overall. Wrecked twice and was 8 laps behind the winner. The wheel was AWESOME, was a little warm on the outside of base , but never weakened the FF. This wheel is now how I wanted it to feel when I first bought it. I can never thank you enough for tinkering around and modding these bases.:bowdown:"
Also, new armatures:
Used armatures. The Bühler armature was used for over a year. The stock armature for a few months:
Purple and blue coloring on steel or iron indicates 500°-600°F (260°-315°C) temperature was reached. The wire insulation on the stock armature is blackened from heat also. On top of that, the soldered-on ring from the stock armature visible in the "new" photo was found rattling around loose in the stock motor can - more proof that the motor was getting ridiculously hot - it melted the solder holding it in place - at least 220°C to do that.