4th gear questions
 

i was thinking about doing the 4th gear mod and i wanted to know what the battery life was after the mod. i've done the zz motor pinion mod but i am still looking for some additional torque. i know the motor needs to spin more rpm to move it the same distance but is it neccesary to add more cells? is the runtime still comprobal to the stock time or at least to a reg zz? also i was reading at chili's site for my tut and i'm a little confused on where you would put the spacer for the motor and what else do you have to do to the motor placement to make it run right.

Runtimes are hurt a little, but not nearly as much as you'd think. You can't play quite as long, but you can play harder. Althought, if (before the mod) you were into trying to climb stuff that made your motor stall while climbing, this will gear you down enough that it does NOT stall out, and your runtimes will actually be a little longer than while you were stalling it out, but still shorter than if you were only doing flat-land driving.

Extra cells are NOT nessicary. But just about everyone that's converted likes them; tricell (series) for speed, quadcell (2 of the stock series packs in parallell) for LONG runtimes.

Runtime really isn't that bad, and what you loose with the gearing, you still can usually make up the distance by not having to back up and keep trying different lines hoping you can find a way through the trail.

Put the body-less zz-m (on it's wheels) on the table in front of you, remove the motor clip, remove the motor. Looking down at the motor bay, you see the floor of it? Your spacer needs to lay flat on that floor. It needs to be *just* tall enough to bring the motor pinion (6 or 7 T depending on your setup) out of mesh with the stock idler gear. I normally use a chunk of styrene flat stock, and file out a section to clear the "unnessicary raised thing" on the floor of the motor bay.

Hopefully I've helped a little, and only added a bit more confusion!

omg can you read minds? lol you cleared up everything up so fast i didn't even need to re read lol.

well i just did the mod and wow what a difference, it's perfect now. not to slow yet plenty of torque. thanks for the help.

I figured you probably wanted the full answers, instead of just the points you addressed. ;)

Glad it worked for you!

So, how far off was I about the run-time issue, or any of your other concerns?

well i actually feel as i have more runtime because i charge it when it dies instead of when it gets weak because it has so much more torque that even with the batt runing low it still has power. it's the perfect speed to, i used the blue gear too. thanks again for ur help i love it now.