A month or so back I bought Gaba's 700E frame. I've completed buying up parts for it, just waiting on them to arrive. Pieces have been coming in though so it's getting close to time to finish this build so thought I'd post a thread on it.
Rebuilt frame. Gaba had a bunch of upgrade parts on this heli, including a frame stiffener at the bottom rear of the frame, the metal nose mount, upgraded motor mount and lower motor shaft bearing block, and more.
The head was locked down super tight. Took it apart and found I couldn't get the radial bearings out of the blade holders in order to clean and relube the thrust bearings. So ended up trying to pack some grease in without removing. Don't know why they were so difficult to remove. Possibly the holders got slightly deformed and it is pinching them in there? Wouldn't expect any kind of locker/adhesive on the outer ring of the bearings that would be holding them in place.
In this test fitting the rotor assembly spun very freely, more so than the 550X's did at this stage (which itself seemed fine). Perhaps higher quality bearings. Or this heli's two bearing block arrangement didn't bind at all whereas the 550's three bearing block setup was slightly off causing a slight bit of friction?
Interior shot. Seems like a lot of room, but there is a pretty complex elevator/ail/pitch control arm arrangement on this that will end up filling it up quite a bit near the head.
Took these all apart and reassembled and lubed. The front tail gear case (left) had a sticking point in the gear travel before I stripped things down. It was odd and once having it apart I didn't find anything that would explain it. All the bearings spun free. I pulled the radial bearings off the torque tube driver gear cleaned things out and reseated them, put it all back together and the binding is gone.
RCBooyah canopy mounts on the top rear mount points. These will be nice. However, there is an option for either front or rear battery loading. ESC mounts on the rear diagonal plate from the looks of things. I'm planning to run a BEC that can be fed by the 12S main batteries so I'm not sure I'll really need to take the canopy off and on very often.
Going to be running an Ikon controller and DSMX sat receivers for my DX7s tx.
Not yet pictured: Bought a scorpion motor off gaba that he used to run in this heli. Got the shaft swapped out on that yesterday and used some liquid tape on some frayed areas of the motor leads, so that's all ready to go. Also bought a ds655 tail servo off super bad.
Got a deal on a castle ice2 HV 120A ESC on ebay (hopefully it works!) which should be showing up in the next couple days. Cyclic servos and BEC should hopefully be at the LHS today sometime. Also have some odds and ends coming in from A Main Hobbies today sometime.
So with any luck I'll be able to finish this build off this week and weekend and get it in the air sometime soon!
Rebuilt frame. Gaba had a bunch of upgrade parts on this heli, including a frame stiffener at the bottom rear of the frame, the metal nose mount, upgraded motor mount and lower motor shaft bearing block, and more.
The head was locked down super tight. Took it apart and found I couldn't get the radial bearings out of the blade holders in order to clean and relube the thrust bearings. So ended up trying to pack some grease in without removing. Don't know why they were so difficult to remove. Possibly the holders got slightly deformed and it is pinching them in there? Wouldn't expect any kind of locker/adhesive on the outer ring of the bearings that would be holding them in place.
In this test fitting the rotor assembly spun very freely, more so than the 550X's did at this stage (which itself seemed fine). Perhaps higher quality bearings. Or this heli's two bearing block arrangement didn't bind at all whereas the 550's three bearing block setup was slightly off causing a slight bit of friction?
Interior shot. Seems like a lot of room, but there is a pretty complex elevator/ail/pitch control arm arrangement on this that will end up filling it up quite a bit near the head.
Took these all apart and reassembled and lubed. The front tail gear case (left) had a sticking point in the gear travel before I stripped things down. It was odd and once having it apart I didn't find anything that would explain it. All the bearings spun free. I pulled the radial bearings off the torque tube driver gear cleaned things out and reseated them, put it all back together and the binding is gone.
RCBooyah canopy mounts on the top rear mount points. These will be nice. However, there is an option for either front or rear battery loading. ESC mounts on the rear diagonal plate from the looks of things. I'm planning to run a BEC that can be fed by the 12S main batteries so I'm not sure I'll really need to take the canopy off and on very often.
Going to be running an Ikon controller and DSMX sat receivers for my DX7s tx.
Not yet pictured: Bought a scorpion motor off gaba that he used to run in this heli. Got the shaft swapped out on that yesterday and used some liquid tape on some frayed areas of the motor leads, so that's all ready to go. Also bought a ds655 tail servo off super bad.
Got a deal on a castle ice2 HV 120A ESC on ebay (hopefully it works!) which should be showing up in the next couple days. Cyclic servos and BEC should hopefully be at the LHS today sometime. Also have some odds and ends coming in from A Main Hobbies today sometime.
So with any luck I'll be able to finish this build off this week and weekend and get it in the air sometime soon!
have fun!
