Turbo Shaft kit vs Xtreme aluminum upgrades

I originally posted this on Helifreak in the CNC upgrade thread, but no answeres. So I'll try again here -

Is the Turbo kit for Lama good? I'd guess the turbo shaft is better than the shorter Xtreme extended inner shaft, but what about the other pieces like the blade holders and swash plate?

I'm not averse to mixing parts from various manufacturers, if there's a place that sells both the turbo shaft and Xtreme parts. One could easily spend half the value of the Lama in shipping and handling alone buying from multiple vendors. No no no. I've yet to find a place that has everything I want.

I've read somewhere that this type of blade grips in not really reliable. Ball link pieces get loose no matter what you do. They recommend 2 part grips from xTreme that look more like the original plastic ones.

I didn't try any of them myself though.

I'm using this set on my Lama 4, and I love it.
It's more stabil now and more fun too fly.

http://www.rc711.com/shop/product_info.php?cPath=22_40&products_id=835
and these blades
http://www.rc711.com/shop/product_info.php?cPath=22_40&products_id=826

No problems with the blade grips?

If so, that's a great deal. Half the price of the Turbo Shaft kit and the 3DPro inner shaft is only .5 mm shorter than the Turbo Shaft. Surely .5 mm doesn't make any difference.

Hi

No I did not have any problems with the grips. But you should take them apart and use
thread lock on all the screws.
After I mounted it the heli is much more stabil than before, and as you say .5mm should not make any difference.

I think I am wanting that kit. Thanks for the tip!

BTW, what battery are you using? Are you still on the stock motors?

Glad I could help. And yes I still have the stock motors.
The batteries are two org. E-sky, and two Kong Power 850mah

Have you seen a similiar kit for HBFP? Buying the head pieces individually cost nearly as much as the whole heli

Sorry to say no, I've been searching for it myself
but I haven't found eny kit for the HBFP.
There's a kit for about any other heli, but nothing for FP's
I purchased some of the parts to my bird from these gays.

http://www.miracle-mart.com/store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=80_204_152&sort=20a&page=5

Actually if you want to fly outdoors there are only 3 mods that really matter. All of them reduce the stability and make flying e-sky coaxes more difficult.

1. Lighter/shorter stabilizing bar. Can remove little brass weights from under the rubber ends. Makes heli react faster, but makes it unstable.

2. Longer shaft. Doesn't do much, but reduces the chance of blade clash. Reportedly increases speed, but I didn't notice it.

3. Longer servo arms. Greatly increases roll/pitch rate, but makes it much more sensitive to controls and makes it less precise.

The rest of the mods won't affect much flying characteristics if the original parts all work properly. However stock plastic parts can develop slop, cracks, etc.

Yes you're right.
I can only speak for the parts that I'm using, and so far I haven't had eny probl. with it. No loose ball links, or eny slack on the blade grips.
The org. inner shaft on the Lama is very fragile, the holder for the stabilizing bar breaks of very easely.
The stabilizing bar in this set is adjustable, so you can adjust it for your likings.
So I think it was worth it.

First thing you definitely have to do is to replace the inner shaft with the head. So you won't loose your stabilizer bar in the grass every time you make a hard landing. On the other hand, stabilizer bar and the top of the inner shaft can get bent. However in most cases you can just straiten them by hand. Not a big deal. Just remove the blades, make it spin, look if it's bent and straighten it up. Inner shaft is held by two bearings - one on top and on the bottom. So it doesn't have to be exactly straight from top to bottom as long as the upper part is right.

Jack the R wrote:

Have you seen a similiar kit for HBFP? Buying the head pieces individually cost nearly as much as the whole heli

The place where I saw cheapest metal hb fp parts was www.heliguy.com . They are in UK.

Quote :

I purchased some of the parts to my bird from these gays.

Gays!?

Hey that was great, all in one place and to a nice price too.

Funny how the heliguy HBFP upgrades are half the price of U.S. stores, but replacement parts are twice as much.

Have any Americans ordered from the U.K. before? Are there any extra fees?

I think I know how longer inner shaft works. Basically upper blades with the stabilizer bar counteract the pitch/roll movements creating the opposite angular momentum. And when you move it farther out of center of gravity, it gets less effective allowing for faster roll/pitch rates. But it shouldn't affect the speed. I mean it will affect the speed, but only because you can change the attitude to much higher degree much faster. Stock Lama won't even let you change the roll/pitch by more then 10-15 degrees.

Brutus5 wrote:

I'm using this set on my Lama 4, and I love it.
It's more stabil now and more fun too fly.

http://www.rc711.com/shop/product_info.php?cPath=22_40&products_id=835
and these blades
http://www.rc711.com/shop/product_info.php?cPath=22_40&products_id=826

Ordered this stuff, looking forward to seeing how well the upgraded V3 flys!

Got my upgrade kit today - no instructions. I can figure out what goes where, but there are doubtless lots of less-than-obvious things it would be good to know.

Looking for tips and tricks for installing the upgrade kit.

BTW, the parts that are assembled, are they threadlocked?

One more question, is the blue loctite good enough or do I need the special tiny parts Loctite?

Hi again Jack the R!

Here is a place that explains the adjustments wery good.

One step Swashplate allignment for Lama and derevatives

The parts are NOT threadlocked. I used the blue loctite, and I haven't had eny problems yet.
I hope this info can help, and that you're gonna be satisfied with it.
Good luck, and happy flying

It's all together but there's one part I believe I did wrong -



I found one pic on Google, and this is how it showed it, but there's a lot of play and it doesn't seem like this could possibly be right.

On another topic, one of my motors is snagging on the inside. It still flies, but it's obviously messed up. I'm thinking about these aero-nuts motors as a replacement-

Link

Any thoughts?

Brutus5 wrote:

The parts are NOT threadlocked.

Figures - thanks for the heads-up. What about the brass looking pieces in the swash plate? Are they threaded in?

I couldn't resist firing it up.

FAR more responsive than I'd expected. Not as fast as the Honey Bee but I haven't moved the control links to the outermost holes of the servo arms, or done anything with the flybar. I'm impressed. It seems like a very useful step between the stock Lama and Honey Bee.

It's also noticeably heavier, requiring throttle along the lines of what the stock Honey Bee requires for take off. That's bad. I hope it's only because the front motor is going out. It sounds awful. I'm going to go ahead and order those aero-nuts motors.

Hi

I'm sorry too say, but no. Not one of the screws or ballinks are threadlocked.

Where is the play?? Is it up and down on the axle, or is it the bladegrips ??

There is a flat spot on the axle, be shure that the collar on the gear hits it, hold the axle by the rotorhead, and push the collar that you show with an arrow on picture down, and tighten it.


E-Sky Lama 3 Motors

Hmm..

You was too quick for me there

Happy too hear that you like it.
Did you find out about the play??

The play is in the inner shaft, in the area indicated by the red arrow. There's no support of the inner shaft within the outer shaft, except at the bottom of the heli. So the inner shaft can wobble back and forth, side to side, at the top of the outer shaft.

The wheel collar (did I have it installed in the right place? ) has a raised area on one side, which I put on the bottom, hoping it would help keep the inner shaft centered. Maybe it would do better without the plastic piece at the top of the outer shaft, but then we've got metal grinding on metal.

What am I missing?

Anyway from what I can tell so far it is a pretty awesome upgrade for the money.

Have you seen a site that has either the aero-nuts motors or the Xtreme motors, and the Dynam vortex flybar? Or do you have an alternate flybar suggestion? I'm looking for performance more than a flashy light show. What if I clipped the weights off the bar I've got?

Innside the black plastic house on the topp it should be a ball bearing, there should be ball bearing on the topp and one in the bottom

Like this one

This is the uppgrade, but you see the bearing

Motors

Led Bars

This is the on I use

I hope this will get you closer to your goal

I spotted the top bearing. It had come off with the old inner shaft, unnoticed.

And I figured out my motor problem was not a motor problem, but missing teeth on the outer shaft gear.

I discovered the Lama v4 outer shaft is slightly different than the Lama v3 outer shaft, but I was able to make it work by moving the v4 servo links to the v3.

So I got it in the air today and - not so great. It's snappier than before, but climbing power is only 1/2 to 2/3 of before and there are other problems. It eats batteries, It's not as fast as the Lama in the Turboshaft promotional video. I'm not sure it's much faster than before at all (but I flew in a wind and can't judge well). It needs the "proportional" adjustment turned all the way to the rear to reduce a clockwise spin it has developed down to a manageable level.

Let's try to logic this out. The upper rotor turns counterclockwise, creating a clockwise torque. The lower rotor should balance this with a counterclockwise torque. So the problem would seem to be somewhere in the lower rotor system.

The outer shaft came from the Commanche, which was also eating batteries, but didn't have a spinning problem and flew o.k. otherwise. I also checked the outer shaft in a drill before installing it, and it looked straight.

Could the grips be misaligned? When I took the screws out to put threadlock on them, I did it one at a time, trying to preserve the alignment. If they ever were aligned.

Well, I had stripped teeth problem too. Apparently it's quite common. In my case It was caused by the outer shaft collar getting loose, allowing the shafts to move down and the motor gears don't quite mesh.

So now I am doing preflight checks on every flight. Making sure that inner and outer shafts cannot move up or down. There should be absolutely no play. I also check all the links. Takes only 10 seconds, but can save you a lot of time and money on repairs.

And to prevent outer shaft movement I made a little flat spot on the outer shaft using dremel tool, so the collar can't move. You can clearly see the place to make it, as the set screw makes a mark there.

Also check that the servo links do not exceed travel limits of the swashplate. You do it with power on and moving cyclic. you can also spin motors on the slow speed to check for any other problems. If you see any problems, you may have to move the lower grip assembly up or down. To do this, you will have to either drill new holes in the outer shaft, or just make some flat spots for the screws using dremel grinding wheel.

Blade tracking looks good. I don't get it. The bottom rotor is visibly turning faster than the upper rotor. Lots faster. Is that normal? I suppose the upper rotor would have more inertia going with the flybar on it.

The bottom rotor seems to have a little more resistance in the gear train - but nothing like it did with the busted gear, and it flew tons better with the busted gear.

Jack the R wrote:

Blade tracking looks good. I don't get it. The bottom rotor is visibly turning faster than the upper rotor. Lots faster. Is that normal? I suppose the upper rotor would have more inertia going with the flybar on it.

The bottom rotor seems to have a little more resistance in the gear train - but nothing like it did with the busted gear, and it flew tons better with the busted gear.

If you have same blades and the same angle of attack on upper and lower rotors, they MUST turn at exactly the same speed to prevent heli from turning. Fly bar weight doesn't matter. Only thing that matters is the torque that is caused by drag. This is compensated by gyro. Fly bar does increase drag on the upper rotor. But not significantly.

When I fly my heli low to the ground on a sunny day, I can see the stroboscopic effect because of the upper rotor is putting a shade on the lower rotor blades. Pretty cool to watch. Looks like a cross that is stationary. When I try to turn, the cross is starting to rotate because of the difference in rotation speed between rotors.