The official 36" zelos twin modding thread

[Mightynova63]

If the water is like glass what should I set my struts to?

[Erroneous]

So, no one modding? Oh and thanks to Travis, looks like im changing the whole fleet from the 120a ec5 connectors to the 200a 6.5 polarized castle connectors. Just got 16 of em in female, now on to males and de-soldering.

[Crazykev]

I just got my Zelos a couple days ago, so the mods aren't too crazy yet. First up I made a heavy duty harness and ditched the EC5 connectors. CC 6.5mm connectors with 8G castle wire soldered to 10G wires at the split with 5.5 CC bullets. I have a couple 9,000mah 3S packs on the way and already have two 7,200mah 3S packs. Also have one Maxamps 150C dual core 6,500 3S that I'm sending back to swap to 8G wires with CC 6.5 connectors and ordering another set up the same way for stupid fast runs.



The other mod I did was to ditch the crap stock servo. I haven't seen a servo that slow since the early 90s! I currently have a Savox SV-1270 ti gear servo that on 6V is pushing 361oz. and .14 transit. The servo is as water resistant as the Spektrum that was in it with 4 silicone seals in the case and shaft. It was a servo I already had and plan on swapping it to an Xpert WR-4401 brushless IP67 servo that is rated at 255oz. and .08 transit on 6V here soon. Also added a 4700uf 10V cap to make sure I don't have glitching with that Savox servo. Once I get the WR-4401, I'm going to power only the servo with one ESC and the other ESC's BEC to power the Rx and brushless pump I'm gonna add.



That little beast is rated at 40gph, is brushless, can be ran on 3V to 12V and only burns 1/2 amp.

[Yellow]

NICE! Where do you get the pump? Have a link?

[Erroneous]

Now we're talking.. Good stuff.

[Mightynova63]

That's a nice pump and for $140.00 it could be worth the price to save some parts. And now the but I am a HVAC chiller mechanic for 12+ years. In my work One of the most common problems people have is water flow. So it is important to know if you have to much water flow, the water will travel over the heat sink so fast that heat will not transfer. That being said my question for Rafael_Lopez would be when the where the heat sink's actually engineered to do a designed delta-T @ xx gpm or gph. If not i would love to possibly get some blem heat sink's motor and esc so i could do some testing.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Micro-Submersible-Brushless-Variable-Speed-Water-Pump-3-to-12-VDC-40-GPH-HP400S-/331471640217?hash=item4d2d3fd699:g:FKwAAOSwq5lTrKui

[gman350]

I seem to recall Rafael warning about pushing water thru the cooling system too fast as it wouldn't soak up any of the heat.

On my boat, if it is moving fast enough to get the nose up a bit, I can see water coming out the outlets, a pretty healthy stream too.

And I have never seen any particularly high heat readings after a hard run, so I assume that it is cooling just fine at speed.

Seems like the only concern would be if you stop the boat right after a run. If you were running telemetry, you might see a spike in temps due to stopping the flow of water.

I guess if you start changing motors and escs it might become an issue.

[Crazykev]

I run my boat with my daughter and her boat, which means at times I'm not ripping the boat around at 60mph because I'm running along with her boat that only runs 25mph max. I run with both of my daughters at times with the older one running my modded Blackjack 24. We have way more fun running the boats together than the cars. I used to let them run the helis with me, but that got expensive, LOL.

I plan on running it at 6V at first and it will be feeding everything. I doubt that pump will be able to push the water quick enough to not soak up the heat. It is expensive, but if the pump fails, your screwed and I think it's well worth having a $140 pump when your protecting $450 in ESCs and motors, plus possibly $340 in batteries when I'm running the 150C 6,500 Maxamps. Really the ESCs are what get hot when not running over 30mph and I'm considering only running the pumped water through one circuit of the ESC heatsink. I'm gonna mess with a couple different setups if just adding the pump to the existing cooling system doesn't work well. I'm going to use a Turnigy 10 amp Rx controlled relay to power it by mixing the Aux1 with the throttle with 100% negative expo because it needs 50% travel to energize the relay. So once you hit about 5% throttle it will turn on the pump and I also have it linked to switch E on my DX4C so that I can run it at zero throttle. Hooking it up this way makes it impossible for me to forget to run the pump. It will always kick on at anything above 5% or so throttle yet I still have the option to turn it on continuous duty. Plus by doing this, the pump doesn't run dry unless you pull the throttle while it is out of the water and if I did do that, it would only be for a second or 2.

If 6V isn't enough, then I plan on adding a CC BEC Pro epoxy potted to make it IP67 waterproof to run the pump.

[Crazykev]

I'm willing to bet the brushless motors in those pumps are the same that are in our servos. I'm sure they could be made cheaper, but a good chunk of the cost is that they are CNC'd aluminum and have top of the line viton seals in them. Pretty much the most bad ass little pumps you could possibly make IMO. They make cheaper ones that flow less and run on 6V and I believe 4.5V. I haven't ordered one yet and it would be sweet if we could get that info from Rafael. The reason I believe the 40gpm one would be the best choice was because that is also 2.5LPM. I would imagine that both of the water outlets together would empty a 2L bottle in less than a minute? Maybe I can take a 5 gallon bucket, tap a hole in the bottom for a hose, connect it to the boats lines, fill it with 2.5L on top of my deck down to the boat and see if it will empty that in a minute or less with a stream out the exits similar to when it's running? The good thing about the type of pump that these are is that they will not restrict nearly as much as maybe a gear type pump when running at 60mph. Plus this type of pump won't push more than 5.5psi, so I didn't think it could over flow the heatsinks.

[fweasel]

I love gadgets and extra switches, but all I can think about when I see that pump is a water line breaking loose and your Zelos going from cat to sub mode in the middle of the lake. I suppose it goes without saying to use some zip ties or clamps on all the connections.

[Yellow]

If too much water flow wouldn't absorb heat from the heat sinks, perhaps a coil of silicon cooling tubing could act as an accumulator and slow the flow of water.

[Mightynova63]

20160905_081815.jpg20160905_081853.jpg20160905_081621.jpg[ATTACH=CONFIG]146162[/ATTACH
This is a really cool tool i made up to quickly set my struts. the block are removable with a range of 1mm to 6mm.

[kfxguy]

So, no one modding? Oh and thanks to Travis, looks like im changing the whole fleet from the 120a ec5 connectors to the 200a 6.5 polarized castle connectors. Just got 16 of em in female, now on to males and de-soldering.

I like them a lot better than ec5's

[kfxguy]

I'm willing to bet the brushless motors in those pumps are the same that are in our servos. I'm sure they could be made cheaper, but a good chunk of the cost is that they are CNC'd aluminum and have top of the line viton seals in them. Pretty much the most bad ass little pumps you could possibly make IMO. They make cheaper ones that flow less and run on 6V and I believe 4.5V. I haven't ordered one yet and it would be sweet if we could get that info from Rafael. The reason I believe the 40gpm one would be the best choice was because that is also 2.5LPM. I would imagine that both of the water outlets together would empty a 2L bottle in less than a minute? Maybe I can take a 5 gallon bucket, tap a hole in the bottom for a hose, connect it to the boats lines, fill it with 2.5L on top of my deck down to the boat and see if it will empty that in a minute or less with a stream out the exits similar to when it's running? The good thing about the type of pump that these are is that they will not restrict nearly as much as maybe a gear type pump when running at 60mph. Plus this type of pump won't push more than 5.5psi, so I didn't think it could over flow the heatsinks.

Do you have a link for the cheaper one?


Ditch the maxx amps batteries. They are overpriced garbage. They are the the weakest batteries I've ever tried, confirmed in back to back gps testing. Your paying for a warranty and very cheap under powered cells.

[Crazykev]

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3 day weekend and I got my new battery's to start my mods. Im shooting for 65-70 on stock props (Im still waiting for the x447 to come back in stock) any ideas for mods to try, I'm going to sharpen the rudder, try some timing and strut tinning.

Damn! Your gonna run 4 at a time? I plan on running 2, but never would have thought that 4 would be OK weight wise. That's 6 pounds of battery!