Question for belt drive owners please

[StrangeRanger]

I was hoping for some feed back on the HubDave belt drive set up. Are you glad you did it? I'm concerned about cutting the frame. It just seems so drastic.
Has anyone seen any real info on the Heliup belt drive version that is coming on rchover.com? I'm wondering why there is such a big price difference?? I'm tempted to order Dave's cuz I'm tired of staring at my Shogun instead of flying it. I've been thru too many tail gears to order more. But I don't wanna wait for rchover's version to become available. Just wish I knew more about it and why it costs so much more than Dave's. Can anyone enlighten me please?
j

[IML2860]

You might want to give this a try -- the parts cost less than $10 and it does NOT require you to cut the frame. I converted mine about 2 weeks ago and it flies very nice. Best of all, this conversion does not add any weight to your Zoom.

http://www.cuttingedgecnc.com/shogun400.htm#My%20Belt%20Drive%20Version!

Regards,
Henry :mrgreen:

[captain-pete]

Hi all

I also made the conversion listed in the link above, but made some changes because I didn't totally like what he had done with his mods,

First thing not to do is to flip the main drive gear around ( not needed )
also don't cut away any of your frame to lower the main gear ( also not needed ), and don't shave off all the plastic V parts of the elevator also not needed. the pulley mounted to the main gear needs to be no thicker than whats need to clear the raised part of the main gear near the teeth plus 3 mm for the belt, leave just enough of the flange to keep the belt on, you will need to shave off part of the plastic V area under the elevator, I left a shallower V on both side so it just cleared the pulley, drilled a new hole for the linkage above where the original hole was and I'm still using the original Z bend link wire to my servo, you'll need to set limits on your transmitter because the servo won't need to travel as far as before the mod, piece of cake ! right, I hand made an alum alloy plate to mount 2 guide bearings which I took out of the tail shaft, you need to raise that shaft up to allow the belt to center itself, the part that holds the bearings took care of that. Now at the tail end forget about the plastic pulley, spend a few more bucks and get and aluminum one and don't cut it down like on the link, on the side with the set screw take off material all the way up to the set screw but leave the set screw intact, that will leave you with about 4 mm or so left on that side, make the overall length 12 mm, I did all this work with my Drimmel tool, now comes the hard part if you can't work well with your hands, the rotor shaft. I used a guide rod out of and old CD Rom drive, there 3 mm in diameter and hardened to the max, with my Drimmel and a large flat grinding disc I cut the shaft to match the allen that was being used, Now I put the shaft into a hand drill a Makita to be exact and while turning the shaft with the drill I necked down one end to 2 mm with my Drimmel and the grinding disc so it fit into the bearing in the tail mount, then I marked off 12 mm of shaft I left untouched at 3 mm diameter and ground down the remainder of the shaft to 2 mm diameter, this whole process took me about an hour to do, on the end I did first I ground a small flat for the set screw to seat on, no glue no heat shrink, this is the best way to secure that pulley but some won't be able to pull this off, If you need to use heat shrink and glue you won't be able to use the set screw to secure the pulley, if you can find some kind of metal sleeve to take up the play between the pulley with it's 3 mm hole and a 2 mm shaft then you can still use the set screw. If anybody would like to see how the finished job turned out, send me an email and I will send you some pictures, One more thing I added a spacer above my drive motor to lower the pinion gear to top of the main drive gear so that it would not interfer with the belt, cost of this conversion is under $20 and it works great

Good luck to all
Pete

[stew007]

Hubdave belt drive works great, very nice, very smooth and as tough as nails.

I go as far as to say it's at least as efficient as the shaft drive, my flight times are the same.

down side is you have to put in a bit of work to install it but it makes for a far better heli in my opinion.

I wouldn’t bother arseing around with replacing those gears :arggg: