Ah ok I’m with you. I’ll see how I get on as its really impressive and its not like I use the smoker indoors under normal circumstances.
I resolved the speaker situation in the end by making a little pedestal out of Green Stuff with some magnets on the bottom and attached it to the speaker with some double sided foam tape.
The pedestal supports the speaker on one end while the hull, battery and battery cables support the other. The torsion bars under the electronics deck were enough for the magnets to grab onto, so I didn’t need to glue the bottom magnet in place. When I want to take the battery out, I just lift speaker up and out the way, and is very snug when in place so theres no movement or vibration. Not the prettiest solution, but very functional.
While it had the correct plug I opted to use some of the wiring that came with my new MFU and lengthen the wires for the rotation motor to make it easier when opening the tank up. After this and rewiring the machine gun to have the correct plug after a successful test the lower hull was complete.
Things got a bit trickier with the turret. Luckily the Taigen recoil system works just fine with the 7.1, albeit the wrong way round (the gun extends then retracts when firing). Luckily HL thought to include a button on the MFU to reverse the servo operation after which it worked perfectly, though the wiring could do with being a bit longer.
The mass of wires is quite intimidating to try and decipher but luckily with the help of this fine forum and some wiring diagrams what I needed to do was a bit clearer. The recoil control board, and killswitch were removed entirely, and the remaining components were all spun off into their own separate circuits. The only one left as is was the airsoft trigger, the elevation motor, coaxial LED and airsoft motor all got rewired. As before, to assist with opening the tank as well as to avoid any issues when rotating the turret 360 degrees without a slip ring, I lengthed the wires.
The gun with its new and much longer wiring.
I tested each system individually as I rewired them with little issue, although for some reason Taigen and Heng Long seem to have their polarities reversed on nearly everything. This isn’t too bad with the LEDs at least because at least with those you can just plug it in the other way round. Once all systems were tested and working, I then went to test it as a complete package.
Success! Now I just had put it all back together again. Seeing as the killswitch had been removed, I installed a magnet into the loaders hatch should I wish to mount a figurine at any point.
After that it was time for some test runs, and I’m happy to say that the conversion to 7.1 has been successful with zero loss of any previous functionality.
Its no exaggeration to say it has completely transformed the tank in terms of looks (in motion) and feel, and that’s not getting into the all the improvements over the years from the V2. I got pretty good at driving in as slow and realistic manner as is possible with the V2 and this in comparison is absurdly easy to drive and perform complex manoeuvres. I've still got to tidy up the turret wiring a bit and I'm experimenting with the various customisation options with the MFU, but count me as extremely impressed so far.
If anyone is reading this who is contemplating changing out a V2 or V3 Taigen for the Heng Long 7.1, go for it. Just make sure it’s a 7.1 and not a 7.0, as you’ll need the servo connections for the Taigen recoil to work.
Hello, are these metal sprockets that have broken? if so? mechanically a problem? Have you checked the power of the new one compared to the old one? if all times a reference or mark on it?
