My DEX210 side-by-side saddle conversion....

[RichyUK]

Hi Guys,

I've done a lot of head scratching & cutting/bending/breaking lots of parts to try get this all to work out.

Cutting the plastic away and getting the saddles to fit as far back as possible was the easy bit. Then came the head scratching! As i'd chopped so much away to get the lipo's right back and as close to the motor as possible, i was left with no way of bracing the greabox/chassis back up, and it now flexed a lot!! Ops!

So, after lots of trials with various bits of plastics from my 210 & 410 spares i remembered i had one of the brass under lipo weights for the 210. I mocked up a rear 'bulkhead' out of card and cut & bent it from the brass plate. I also drilled and tapped the M3 holes to accept the screws. This, when bolted up, now allowed the top gearbox brace to be fitted back in place, and the lipo's fitted up against it lovely!

Next issue was the chassis flex, as i'd cut the raised ridges off the plastic side pods. More head scratching later and i decided to make the H brace in the pics out of fibreglass (with a rubber pad on the underside to hold down onto lipo), which is held down via the original grub screws which are relocated to the next holes up, and 2 screws i drilled and countersunk into the underside of the plastic gearbox brace. Once fitted this now brings back the chassis rigidity One main concern for me was to retain ease of fitting the packs, i didn't want to be messing about bolting it down with screws every time i change them, so reataining the original thumb screws was a must (2 more are on order, hence missing from the pics, there will be 4!).

I will try this out at the weekend and see how differently it performs. It certainly feels a lot weighter at the back in my hands!