Conclusive evidence of ZZ's improvement...
 

When I tried my new ZZ against my old one, both with 1.6s, the new one was literally driving circles around my old one, that I had done the resistor mod to.

Looking at the PCB I noticed that there's been a capacitor added.
See the picture, the old is on the left, and the new one on the right.
http://www.erinsbaby.com/davesstuff/zzpcb.jpg

I don't know if the values of the other caps, and resistors have changed or not.

I got mA readings to see what the PCBs were putting out.

The stock ZZ, with the resistor mod, put out 140mA with a battery that was putting out 197mA. That's consistant with Namuna's reading of 115mA that he got in this thread: http://tinyrc.com/forums/showthread....ght=multimeter

When you consider the resistor mod promised a 25% increase. That's here: http://tinyrc.com/forums/showthread....&threadid=1736

By now I bet your wondering what the new ZZ put out, huh?

It put out 180 mA from a battery puttting out 196mA. That's a pretty good improvement when you consider that both my Bit and Microsizer put out 191mah from batteries that were putting out 199mA. Which is not consistant with the numbers Namuna got, but I'm not sure why he's getting more than the battery was putting out in the first place. If you want numbers you can trust, go pick up a multi-meter and test yourself. I'm interested to hear more input.

To test this in the real world, I tried a 3.2 in the new Zip Zap, and it handled it no problem. Very quick, but not quite as fast as the Bit or Microsizer. The Zip Zaps wheelbase makes it much more stable at high speeds, so it might have just seemed more subdued. Only head to head testing would tell for sure, and I don't have 2 of any motors, except 1.6s. Maybe someone else could help us out here.

So I'm concluding that the new Zip Zaps are still not as good as Bits/MSs, but close enough now, that their scale looks makes them contenders.

Dave

very nice write up and testing!!! :tup:

this makes me very proud to own a gold Honda Civic. now i need to get myself a nice motor and gears!

Thanks for posting this. I've read in another thread that there are actually 3 different boards out now. I've got one that I bought early jan.(blue civic) and then one more in mid jan. (gold civic) and another in late jan. (black mustang). I stripped the blue civic's pcb and swapped it, I have 4 loose zip pcbs and 1 of them (3 are 49mhz) has the new type pcb. The gold civic has no changes from my first zips and the black mustang also has the changes. I can't tell which loose pcb came from which car but the last one before jan. was 1 I bought in mid november. The guy at Rs told me that the blue civic was a return when I picked it up. So now my question is when exactly were the pcbs changed? Due to the shortages and the weird @ss gold civic I got and that other thread saying that there are 3 differant boards I'm getting real apathetic about the whole thing.:confused:

How are you testing?

When I did my initial test, I took the motor out, then put 1 lead each (from my multimeter) to the pos and neg on the Motor mount on the car and then hit the forward button to get the juice flowing...This should indicate the maximum mA throughput the PCB can put out.

As for testing the battery, well I'll try that as well...But that should be a simple connect to the pos and neg on the battery.

Your pictures prove there are in fact three PCB's out right now. Wonder if the one I have is better then the one you have. When did you buy it?

http://tinyrc.com/forums/attachment.php?s=&postid=60551

That is the exact way I did my test. These numbers are peak numbers, as when I hit the throttle they would rise then fall, and I was just looking for the spike. I would do this several times, until I got the same number at least 2 or 3 times. i don't know how accurate my number are, I just know what the meters telling me seems consistant with the performance of the cars.

I just bought it 2 days ago, so I was assuming it was the newest one, but yours sure does seem to have more going on. I need to get a hold of one of those now! When did you buy yours, and what car is it from?

Seriously, after seeing that, I would tell anyone thinking of buying a Zip Zap to wait a while until RS has got their stuff together.

I bought it early January. It's from a black mustang. I think your's is the latest. Yours appears to have everything my new one has, but it's neater. They doubled up on mine, while they separated yours nicely.

Ok, I see the same changes on mine now. Your right, it it is neater than yours, making it harder to notice.

Ok, so mine is the newest, I'm happy again. :D

Did you notice the thing where the motor wires meet the PCB? A new gold civic is on the left, a red porsche is on the left.

..fianly a faster zz i hade given up on mine!...

Carefull with that test, You are actually shorting the board and the battery and you might fry something!
amp readings should never be done across a power source, but in series with the original circuit!