Epoch R&R Battery Mod Photo Tut

LBRC · Post by **LBRC** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 2:33 am

Finally completed most of the photo tutorial for the R & R battery mod.

Link to photo tutorial in my gallery.
Click on the thumbnails then scroll down to see the description and comment section under each photo, there are two nested albums one for the chassis modification and another for the wiring.

R & R stands for Remove and Replace, this mod allows you to quickly and easily swap out batteries simply by loosening the bottom screws and sliding out a battery pack that connects using polarized micro connectors.

With this mod your Epoch can have, use, and swap in and out a variety of battery packs; stock 3-cell,120 mAh 4.8 volt 4-cell, 195 mAh 3-cell, E-Tec 200 mAh single cell LiPo’s, 340 mAh parallel cell LiPo’s, or anything else under 5 volts that will fit in the opened up battery compartment.

With over 1/3rd more capacity than the stock pack my favorite everyday Epoch battery pack is the 195 mAh 3-cell NiMH it delivers more punch that the original Kan 180 packs I was making while being exceptionally resilient to charging abuse. Although I prefer to charging them on a digital peak charger it can also be charged on the Epoch charger simply by running it through two charge cycles.

Use a LiPo

Then remove the body, unplug it and swap in a 195 mAh NiMH in less than a minute.

Namuna · Post by **Namuna** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 7:48 am

Shotgun mod, now the R&R mod...Looks like you've got a little bit of a love affair going on lately with the Epochs huh?

...Which, of course, is a great thing cause I've got 2 that've been sitting in my toolbox for ages and with these mods it'll give me good reason to pull them back out!

Thanks.

ph2t · Post by **ph2t** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 9:00 am

Namuna wrote:Shotgun mod, now the R&R mod...Looks like you've got a little bit of a love affair going on lately with the Epochs huh?

Lately? lol, mate where you been for the last 12+ months? Epochs are LB's new muse.....

I like this mod, tempted to mod the whole fleet...

Namuna · Post by **Namuna** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 9:11 am

Yeah, I need to remember that just because I just found the info...Doesn't mean that info hasn't been around for ages...As, apparently the shotgun mod's been about for some time.

Eh, this is what happens when you've been out of the hobby for awhile and come back and try to catch-up again!

crazydave · Post by **crazydave** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 10:34 am

I'll definately have to look into this, my batteries are kinda jammed in.

LBRC · Post by **LBRC** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 7:05 pm

History, looking back I did get a little carried away.

December 2004 – LiPo Epoch then Turbo LiPo Epoch

First I put 290 mAh 3.7 volt parallel LiPo pack in an Epoch. Shortly after that Arfin showed me Microsashes Epoch Turbo so in late December I added my version to the LiPo Epoch.

January 2005 – Spud

Traditionally modified motor; larger wire, fewer winds, precision balanced, trued comm, better brushes, ball bearings the works, even gold plated brush hardware. Of course the motor was too hot for the stock battery pack but the Turbo LiPo Epoch could handle it. Great car the problem was that when you put a big block in a race car you are creating a dragster no matter what the scale. On the track the Spuds steering twitched and it wasn’t exactly efficient in fact it needed a higher capacity LiPo pack 290 mAh wasn’t enough for decent runtime with the hot motor.

June 2005 – The Super Zip Indoor Racer

Epoch CB on a streached ZZSE chassis, with LiPo battery and SuperSlicks body, the Super Zip is still a fun car to drive and to this day probably the fastest true 1/43 scale care in the world.

Also in June things were looking pretty bleak for the Epoch I’d run out of cars and it looked like there was going to be no way to get more, Apex the NA distributor had gone out of business. But in late June I got a message “Hi, I’m Mike I just bought Apex and the rights to the Epoch, call me or can I call you?”Oh yea you can I need more cars and parts!

July 2005 – Hair Ball

Started taking apart and rebuilding Epoch differentials, adding a ball bearing to some, while removing the hair and lint.

August 2005 – Birth of the Removable Epoch Battery Mod

By august I had 6 versions of the Spud motor and tried over a dozen armatures problem was that even with the ball bearings and the precision balance jobs more efficient Turbo motor drivers and higher powered batteries when you put a hot modified motor in an Epoch no matter what I did or tried the steering would twitch so even though they were hell on wheels in a large open area on the track it was annoying. So I put my first Iwaver CB on and Epoch and yes this was an improvement but still not quite what I was looking for. However while modifying the car for the IW CB it occurred to me that there was no reason not to cut the side of the battery boxy out and rewire the batteries with a connector, at first I didn’t have polarized connectors so you had to be careful, but it worked.

September 2005 – Max

Max was my first sponsored Epoch, one reason you don’t see more on her is that she was paid for by someone else. I can say now that Max stands for Maxon and even though the Spud motors where expensive at around $45 each they were down right cheap compaired to Max. Prototype motors are expensive and Max had/has the best coreless money could buy. Max was also my first complete ball bearing Epoch.

October 2005 – Abomination
The Abomination was the predecessor to the Shotgun motor mount, no posts on these, at least I don’t think there are, was a busy time, this was a major breakthrough and like many entirely an accident, I was just fooling around trying to figure out how to come up with an efficient and affordable modified Epoch with stable steering. The Max car proved that it was possible to have runtimes over 12 minutes using a 3.6 volt NiMH battery pack with a stable high speed modified Epoch but who could afford one. By this time I had accumulated and tried a huge quantity of motors, including almost every helo tail rotor motor on the market and although some were close the successes where inevitably too expensive to be practical. The problem was and is that the motor axle spacing is too tight to allow a small enough pinion without a third intermediary gear. Out of frustration I was just goofing around and made a single ZZMT motor mount and was surprised at the results, not great but much better than I thought it would do, the problem being that even small motors are inefficient when you put too much of a load on them, they also don’t last very long, burns the brushes right off. So ok why not two? And it worked of course then I felt stupid 10 months of wasted time and money when the answer was sitting right in front of me, stupid, stupid, stupid.

Steelwholegaundi has the best of the Abomination mounts, lol and still or is that “steel” owes me a couple of painted bodies for the car.

November 2005 – The Shotgun is born.

Although functionally great the ZZMT motor shafts were too short and the motor still sat too close to the axle to easily use ball bearings so I switched from the PMB type motors to the coreless SuperSlick motors and the Shotgun was born.

Jan 2006 – Windracer

Ya it’s a NASCAR, with prototype wheels and tires. The tires actually help hold the wheels on without gluing.

Feburary 2006 – First Epoch Ball Differential

Didn’t look like much but it worked and was apparently good enough to actually be stolen.

Mar 2006 – Anodized Shotgun Mounts

Fun and definitely an improvement.

Also in march the front ball bearing mod finally reached a practical stage.

Probably more but that’s about it to date

There are other mods and dates, like I’m not sure when I started replacing the steering servo’s Max had one so somewhere around Sep 2005. And Power ON LEDs

And of course Hobbycar’s video of a Super Epoch on an RCP track with Mini-Z’s.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 2185546624

MotorGong · Post by **MotorGong** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 10:58 pm

Cool LBRC, I went back and looked up/read a few of your posts that I haven't seen before. Just amazing!
Looks like you are doing exactly what you love to do, and it shows.

I know a ton more people would normally respond to your topics. But like me, I think most read, become just purely flabbergasted at your level of performance and knowledge, and just either forget to leave a reply, or just don't know what to say! LOL

LBRC · Post by **LBRC** » Fri Jul 28, 2006 12:37 am

SHAUN wrote:...can you buy the shotgun motor mount or do you have to build it your self...
... I have no clue what motor to use. I need to do more research.

You can buy them especially if you happen to have a couple of 7 tooth SS or ZZMT pinion gears laying around, if not you might have to wait a bit since I’m having trouble finding a reasonable source for the pinion gears.

Which motor is easy since they come with the motor mount, there is an option but the orange 20K is the overwhelming best choice since it's hard to make it to half throttle with the orange, the 22K are a little over the top.

Even though you don’t have to make one you definitely could if you wanted. It’s sort of like making custom jewelry every one is different and feels good when they turn out especially nice. I’m getting better at it even if I do say so myself.

MotorGong wrote:...Looks like you are doing exactly what you love to do.

Yep.

arfin · Post by **arfin** » Fri Jul 28, 2006 3:41 am

That post was great, Props to whoever sold you your first epoch, man they sure have come a long way. I remember the times when there were no real mods for an epoch, but you soon changed that.

I'm glad there is a demand for your Motor Mounts, meaning there are quite a few people with Epochs, which is always a good thing.

Also what do you mean stolen! Someone stole your epoch diff lol that's insane.

MotorGong that's so true.

Again thanks for that little bit of history, lets hope we see more of it in the future.

LBRC · Post by **LBRC** » Fri Jul 28, 2006 3:46 am

arfin wrote: Also what do you mean stolen! Someone stole your epoch diff lol that's insane.

Pocketed the whole car, one minute it was there then it wasn’t.

crazydave · Post by **crazydave** » Fri Jul 28, 2006 9:16 am

I got the 4 cell and turbo going in my Epoch, but I want more punch. I was eventually gonna get an Aquaspeed motor, but now you got me interested in your shotgun motor mount. It looks purty, and one of those motors propels a Superslicks pretty fast, soo....

Has anyone tried the Blue endbell 30k motor in the Epoch? I got a couple, but I was putting them into Zip Zap drag cars. If I go for one of these motor mounts, I think I'm gonna probably want to go back to TRU and see if they have any left on clearance.

Tuner1989 · Post by **Tuner1989** » Fri Jul 28, 2006 9:18 am

LBRC your dedication to the hobby is amazing. And your epoch mods are outstanding. You now have me hooked on these little buggers.

LBRC · Post by **LBRC** » Fri Jul 28, 2006 2:35 pm

Don’t know about dedication, but I do seem to have managed to replace all the descriptions in the Epoch section of my gallery with upload dates. Erasing all of the instructions and comments I have been working on. So the above and in fact all of my Epoch modification comments are now just a bunch of photo’s until I can rewrite the instructions.

beanoman · Post by **beanoman** » Sat Jul 29, 2006 2:03 am

LBRC, are 8 tooth pinions usable? As I'm sure your aware of, those are much more available.

I looked at some of the micro flight stores- they didnt have 7 tooth pinions available, too bad.. I think a company called Didel may be able to make you pinions, I dont know if they can do it at a low price for ya though. Buying this stuff in bulk must be horrible

I believe you got a case of the superslick motors, i dont want to know what that 'investment' cost..

LBRC · Post by **LBRC** » Sat Jul 29, 2006 4:16 am

I've made mounts for 8's but the 7's are noticeably better, in fact a 6 would be even better yet but would put the motors too close for ball bearings.