So I just tried this with distilled water and at first it seemed to work with a small 9v battery, then I stepped things up with my 7.4 lipo and my motor began shredding the brushes down to nothing.
This was with a 5+ year old VFC motor which I am replacing anyway.
I'll have a video up by tomorrow, hopefully. I have a hypothesis of what happened but maybe others have more experience with this.
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Taylor
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