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I bought an Admiral 40" Catamaran for my 12 year old son to get his feet wet in the r/c boating hobby. Well, the boat was a big disappointment...tooo slow! It has 2 550 motors, runs on a single 7.2 v 3600 mah Ni-Cad battery, and utilizes "vector thrust" for steering. He likes the boat, and I'm wondering if anyone knows a relatively cheap way to improve its speed, such as new motors, or increasing the voltage. I have not been able to find out anything about the motors such as max voltage or wattage, or who made them. Since one motor runs backwards (counter-roatating), can any brushed or brushless motor run backwards, or only neutral-timed ones? How does "vector thrust" steering work...it looks like it cuts out one motor at a time. Seems like an OK idea, but I don't know the limits of voltage or amperage it will handle. Are there "vector thrust" ESCs with higher voltage and amperage limits? It doesn't have a servo for steering, and the reciever is in a "black box" with the ESC. Money is very tight, but I'd like to do something for him to keep him interested in the hobby. Any ideas?
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Hi Plumloco,
I've done this mod about 2 years ago for my brother in law, we changed the 2 550 by a pair of 700SC or 700TurboC 9,6V, a Robbe Navy70 ESC and 4 packs of 6x4000mAH NiMh cell (2S2P so that's 2 times 12cell in parallel), we change the original drive lines with some home made rigid 4mm shaft and used 45mm carbon prop (left and right), single rudder.
We recently tryied this boat on 3S2P (2 2600mAH in parallel), it was not as fast as before though it was a lot lighter, cheap 4S Lipo would do it.
You can try increasing the voltage, I've done it before the mod, up to 12V, but it doesn't produce anything better but heat!
PM me you email adress, I can send you tons of pics and links about it!
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