Some 450L mods

[SRJay]

I've had my Dominator for about 2 months now and am really liking it. I did a few mods I thought I'd share I feel improve the heli. The first mod was to change out the landing gear, IMO the tail sits way to low stock. I made the gear from an original set of landing gear from my Goblin 630 comp. It worked out well and all but the center mounting hole were pre-existing in the part.









The other thing I changed was the balls on the servo horns. I did not like the way the stock links sit at an angle. I used a set of extended balls from a TRex 550 DFC on the servo horns to achieve 90 deg push rod geometry.





I also dremeled out the plastic pieces in the frame sides in such a way that allows removal of the front boom housing without spreading the frame halves. I don't currently have pictures of that and it isn't readily visible on the finished model. I will get some pics of that next time I have it apart. It makes changing the front tail drive gears much easier as the hex's are no longer "keyed" into the frame sides completely. Though I haven't stripped a tail gear since switching the gear out gaining all that tail clearance.

[crashnrox]

The skid mod is pretty much needed on the 450l ,align didnt want to create a new skid for this bird so they just went with off the shelf 450 skids. I only had problems stripping front tt gears during setup. So the keyed plastic pieces did make it harder to change the gears. My question is....did you only remove the rear facing part of the white plastic on the inside portion of the frame so the tramsmission still has the spacer between the tranmission and the frame but slides out to the rear without spreading the frame? Hope that makes sence to you. Ive ben hesitant to cut off the white plastic key reciever as ive seen someone else has done . Removing all the white plastic would result in messing with spacers between frame and transmission . Not a good solution in my mind.

[SRJay]

You are correct. Just the rearward facing portion of the hex socket was removed. Align was also too lazy to make a new front tail case the correct width.

[Colin Broughton]

Skids are sick haha, good job man. How about posting a picture of the entire heli so we can get a better idea of how she looks.

[mamartin]

Here's a mod I did on mine to fit the KDE450FX motor in between the frames on mine

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N900A using Tapatalk

[BP58]

I built my first heli last december "the 450L" and every time I've set up blade pitch I've had to put the stock landing on gear so the main shaft isn't at an angle. Boy did I feel dumb after pulling out my hair wondering why things were so off the first crash rebuild. Just had a thought, would it work to zero the digital pitch gauge to the bottom of frame?

[SRJay]

Usually with this type of layout you zero out the pitch gauge while sitting on top of the motor. Shaft doesn't need to be 90deg off table, if that were the case every Goblin made would have problems as they sit with a slight forward stance like this.

[BP58]

Ahh, of course. Thanks for the tip.

[AlvaSpeed]

I did the ball link mod on mine too.
Like the landing gear on your heli...
Time for a TDR style canopy....................

[bwijk]

could you please show in a short video with the longer ball links how they flex? I have done it but i do not like the way the servo horn flexxes when i put my thumb onder the horn and push the link rod where it sits on the ball on the swash down, with my index finger. ( i hope you understand what i mean ) this way i simulate down force on the longer ballink when the swash pushes down on the linkage rod that connects the swash with the servo horn.

[jmerritt]

the 470L landing gear will bolt directly to the 450L! raises tail up much better.

[dsevern]

Originally Posted by jmerritt

the 470L landing gear will bolt directly to the 450L! raises tail up much better.

Yep, I never even mounted the original landing gear. Put the 470L gear on during the original build.

[ic-racer]

Some new items since this thread was initiated.

Upgrade Align Servos DS450M.
Mount for the above and other larger servos.
Rudder servo mount (smaller than orignial).
Low speed/larger blade tail.

[Indokast]

If you just want the tail off the ground more this mod to stock gear is also an option. This is a screenshot from youtube.. i got the idea there. Did this to my 450 pro last night and i like it a lot.

[onemorecrash]

That looks pretty cool.
My best mod by far has been the double bearings
on the torque tube. Inside the tail boom
I had one where I did not .it rub so much it cut in half
causing a bad crash
All my align helis have double bearings now