so i binned my quad pretty hard into a concrete wall last week, my fault entirely, misjudged the gap in manual mode and just absolutely clobbered it. snapped two props, bent a motor shaft on motor 3, and cracked the frame a little but nothing structural i think.

anyway i ordered replacement motors, same brand same KV rating (2306 2400kv), swapped out the bent one and resoldered everything. but now in hover it kinda drifts to one side and the motor temps after a 2 min flight are noticeably uneven. motor 3 the new one runs cooler than the others which makes me think its not pulling its weight properly?

ive already rerun motor direction in betaflight and checked the esc calibration. props are balanced. im wondering if i got a dud motor or if theres something else going on i'm missing. didnt crash hard enough to mess up the FC i dont think but who knows at this point

check if the motor screws are actually torqued down properly. sounds obvious but ive had a motor that felt fine but one screw wasnt fully seated and it was causing just enough flex to mess with the thrust. also worth checking if the motor bell spins true ? put a prop on and spin it by hand slowly and see if you notice any wobble. a bent shaft isnt always obvious just by looking at it.

also did you check the esc telemetry in bf? if youre running blheli32 you can pull the rpms per motor during a test run and see if motor 3 is lagging. that would tell you pretty quick if its a dud or a setup issue

had almost the exact same thing happen to me a couple months ago. turned out one of the phase wires on my replacement motor had a really subtle cold solder joint that i missed. it flew but the motor was definitely starved. worth just reflowing all three joints on that motor even if they look fine visually. cold joints are sneaky