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Custom/Light Weight GT Picture

C

Critterhunter

New member
Here's the progress on my light weight GT with custom upper/lower shaft, hand grip, and remote pinpoint switch. The lower shaft is a Whites Tall Man carbon fiber coil rod ($10 at Kellyco). Since that was so much longer I was able to cut the length of the upper shaft down more to save even more weight as the Whites rod is even lighter than my new aluminum upper shaft. Even if I had left the upper shaft to stock length it was still lighter than the stock one. The Whites rod, despite it's extra length, is still .2oz lighter than the stock lower GT rod as well.

I tested the flex of this Whites rod versus my stock lower fiberglass GT shaft by trying to torque a bend into them by hand and found there was little or no difference between them in stiffness. I was a bit concerned about that after hearing it might not be strong enough but I don't see any problem even with my 15x12 SEF coil mounted as shown. Everything is very rigid and strong. I'm thinking down the road I may try replacing the upper aluminum shaft with a carbon fiber one to drop even more weight.

The stock upper/lower rod weighs 12.2oz and my new upper/lower weighs in at 6.6oz so as it stands right now I've dropped 5.6 ounces total. That more than makes up for the extra weight of the SEF coil compared to the 10" and the machine will still be lighter with the SEF coil than a stock GT with the 10" on.

I have further plans to drop more weight on the machine (and coil by replacing the cover with spray on liner) in various ways, including replacing that pig of an arm cup which I think weighs 8.8 ounces (half a pound!), shortening my cables, and doing a few other things down the road. All in all my best guess at total weight savings over a stock GT with the mods I have planned will probably be somewhere in the 20 ounce range or more, meaning 1 and 1/4th pound. That's a lot of weight when you think about swinging it around all day.

Just replacing your stock upper shaft alone will save you more weight than the 15x12 adds, so it's a good easy option for people who want to lighten the machine up to below stock weight of the machine with the 10" coil.

Now I just have to strip all the parts off and give the upper shaft and meter mount a nice black paint job which will really clean up the looks. Further details and pictures will be posted in the mods forum in the next few days, and later when I do more mods I'll be posting those as well.
 
Also, the great thing is nothing on the original shaft or GT is being modified in anyway, so I can always throw everything back onto the stock shaft for re-sale value if needed.
 
by removing that arm cuff setup which is pretty heavy, installing a whites armcuff with strap and mounting the control box mount under and through the whites arm cuff with rivets. you will have to drill out the arm cuff holes to accomodate the minelab 1/4" nylon bolts as you mount it to the rod. that alone has gotta be about a 5 or more ounce savings. also I dont know what your using for a lower rod, but the tesoro lower rods are a little on the short side but they are as light as it gets, have a hole right through the middle of them for draining when you wade and the difference at the end where the coil meets can be made up with a thicker washer. if youve made your aluminum rod long enough the difference in the lower rod length doesnt even matter.
 
I'm using a lower Whites carbon Tall Man Rod (not the middle tall man rod people use, this is the coil rod and only $10). Can't see how it can be any lighter because this thing is lighter than the stock GT lower rod despite the Whites rod being maybe twice as long. I've cut down the upper alluminum shaft I made because it's unneeded at stock length with this Whites rod.

That's a good idea on the arm cup and I'm way ahead of ya on that. I already weighed the stock arm cup and it's 8.8 ounces! Ouch! That's over half a pound! I'm not sure what I'll replace it with yet but I like your idea about using the Whites arm cup and how to mount the control box to it. I just don't want to drill or modify the stock arm cup's box mounting bracket in any way as I want to keep all the old GT parts stock and unmodified so I can throw them back on the original shaft in original form for re-sale value some day. <-----Wow, that's a long sentence even for me. :biggrin: You're guess at about 5 ounces of weight savings on a replacement arm cup is right in line with what I'm thinking. I may go the route of using a plastic drain pipe if I can find one light enough. Somebody gave me that idea. That hardest part is trying to figure out how to mount the control box without the stock arm cup. Like I said, I do not want to modify or destroy the stock arm cup or the box bracket in anyway. Anybody have any ideas?

The upper shaft/meter mount is hanging in my basement drying right now. I sanded it. Primed it. Sanded it again. And put a final coat of black enamel appliance paint on it. Looks awesome. As good or better than a shaft from the factory. I'm going to weigh all the stock GT parts with 10" coil in a box on my scale so I have an exact number of what a stock GT weighs to compare to. I don't trust the numbers listed by Minelab on the net. Interestingly enough, the stock rechargable pack is 10oz. Talk about an anchor. Going lipo will drop about 1/4th to 1/5th that weight I figure.

Also, it's probably most important for a machine to balance right at the hand grip. If you can balance the shaft with one finger right under that spot I bet that would give the least amount of fatigue swinging it all day, regardless of how heavy the machine is. I'm shooting for balancing this thing out by doing or moving various things to where it will do that. I think I've got that worked out as well.
 
Here's a better picture after painting the upper shaft/meter mount. Now she's looking mean. Took it out for it's first hunt yesterday (and also first 15x12 hunt) and the custom shafts, grip, and remote trigger all worked to perfection. SO much nicer having a remote pinpoint switch in the field, and also having the meter mounted on top of the grip. Much easier to see than even when I had it elevated in it's normal spot further down the shaft. Good news is I haven't hunted in almost two months and yet after 3 hours yesterday my arm feels fine! I'd say the machine feels lighter/better than the stock GT with the 10" coil on. I can't wait to do further weight saving mods to this thing. I told my friend I'm going to have the lightest GT on the planet. :biggrin:

The only problem was I noticed when I bumped the coil with my foot it would wobble on the shaft for a second. At first I thought maybe that was the Whites tall man rod but then noticed it was the Whites rubber washers flexing at the coil. Minelab coils are a little wider where they mount so I had to use two thin plastic washers behind the Whites rubber ones to make up the gap difference. With them behind the Whites rubber ones on the shaft the rubber washers are sticking out a bit further than they would. Normaly they'd be mostly inside the two holes on the Whites shaft. I figure if I switch the plastic washers to the other side so that they are between the rubber washers and coil it should solve this. That way the rubber Whites washers will have most of their body inside the mounting holes like they should. It's not really a problem as it is. The coil is stiff and all. It just will wobble a tiny bit for a split second should you bump it into something.

Read the "Deepest Large Coil" thread for a new review I'll be posting today on my impressions of this coil on it's first hunt. All I can say is WOW!
 
Here's the latest update on my light weight Sovereign build. I installed a detector stand on it this morning. I was planning to use a very light weight bottle holder for a bicycle but ran across something that I felt would work better at my local hobby store. I ended up picking up an aluminum landing gear for RC airplanes. It was $7 so still cheaper than commercial stands and probably much lighter. The spread was too wide to offer ground clearance of the box so I just bent the legs a little more straight in a vise. I then epoxied another piece of aluminum to the top of it bent into a "]" shape to offer both good ground clearance and also to mount securely to the shaft.

I could have just attached it to the shaft via a bolt but opted to use two zip ties to keep the weight as low as possible and also not put an unneeded hole in the detector shaft. I drilled two holes to the top of the piece of aluminum that just clear the width of the shaft and then attached to zip ties in a crossed pattern. Meaning, one zip tie goes into one hole and around the shaft at an angle and the other in the other hole the same way, producing an "X" pattern wrapped around the top of the shaft.

I have plenty of ground clearance to where I could bend the legs wider apart but as they are now they are as wide as the control box so I don't seen any problems with stability. It's very stable when I sit it on the ground. I also attached two rubber feet to the legs that you simply peal the sticky part off of and then stick them on. If I find that this doesn't keep them secure then I'll screw two small screws through the base of the legs and down into the rubber. The landing gear already has a hole drilled into both feet that will allow this quick fix to be done.

The landing gear weighed 1.4 ounces before adding the other piece of aluminum, painting it, and installing the rubber feet. With all that done it now weighs 2.1 ounces. Not bad at all, and probably much lighter than any of the commercial ones or what Minelab supplies with some GTs. I have plenty of spare weight to burn anyway with my custom upper/lower shaft that already makes the machine lighter than stock even using the 15x12 coil, and the machine will probably be a good 1 and 1/2 pounds lighter than stock once I'm done with my weight dropping mods on various other things.

I sanded the aluminum down with fine sand paper, wiped it clean with mineral spirits, primed it, sanded and then wiped it down again with water on a damp paper towel, and then gave it 3 coats of durable black paint. Pretty happy with the results.

I also got rid of the zip ties I was using to secure the coil and meter cables and picked up some nice velcro loops from Home Depot. As with the other Minelab parts, the stock velcro loops on a GT are way overkill being thick and big and adding yet more unneeded weight. I know the extra weight of those is minuscule but every little thing adds up. She's starting to look like a sports car now and I'm ready to take her for a spin today. :biggrin:
 
Found out the epoxy wasn't going to hold the two pieces of aluminum together. I didn't want to bolt them together because that would add a little bit of weight. I ended up drilling a hole through the two pieces and then using a rivet gun to join them with an aluminum pop rivet. Much lighter than a bolt and I think it keeps the looks cleaner than some ugly nut and bolt being installed. I ended up putting two tiny brass screws down through the legs and into the rubber feet to make sure they wouldn't come off, using some CA on both feet and screws to make sure they never come loose as well.

Took it out for a spin this weekend and it works great. There is a little play where the two zip ties secure it to the shaft but not enough to even notice when the machine is on the ground. If in the future I feel it needs to be more secure I'll probably pop rivet it to the bottom of the shaft or at least drill and tap a bolt hole. I'm avoiding doing this because my remote pinpoint stereo cord runs through the shaft here and I'm afraid I might damage it. A hose clamp around the shaft would be another option without drilling, but it would also add more weight than I have to.
 
Neil said:
by removing that arm cuff setup which is pretty heavy, installing a whites armcuff with strap and mounting the control box mount under and through the whites arm cuff with rivets. you will have to drill out the arm cuff holes to accomodate the minelab 1/4" nylon bolts as you mount it to the rod. that alone has gotta be about a 5 or more ounce savings. also I dont know what your using for a lower rod, but the tesoro lower rods are a little on the short side but they are as light as it gets, have a hole right through the middle of them for draining when you wade and the difference at the end where the coil meets can be made up with a thicker washer. if youve made your aluminum rod long enough the difference in the lower rod length doesnt even matter.
Click to expand...

Neil, have you seen this Whites arm cup used on a Sovereign? If so, how did they do it? The only way I can see doing this is by drilling through the side of the Minelab box clip and then mounting that just below the arm cup via some kind of bracket that will allow it to bolt through the Whites arm cup bolts just above it, as I can't think of any way to mount the box clip inside or between the arm cup. It isn't split in half like a Minelab arm cup and even if it was there wouldn't be enough gap in the pole mount area for the box clip to ride inside like it does on the stock Minelab cup. Just trying to figure out which way I want to go with this. Whites arm cups are only $10 and come with the arm strap and I figure it's probably half the weight or less than the stock 8.8oz arm cup, which is over half a pound when you think about it.

I still haven't ordered one. The only thing I see listed on Whites website is a heavy duty arm cup that is said to be stronger than the original. Not sure how much more it weighs than the standard Whites cup. Before I commit to buying one to mod in some way I'm going to look into other ideas that might work. I could bend a blank piece of aluminum into the proper dimensions, find an aluminum coffee pot or something else round to hack up, or go with perhaps a plastic or PVC drain pipe cut up to what I want. The main concern is weight. It needs to be lighter than the stock one otherwise what's the point.

Heavy Duty Arm Cup
Matte (Flat Black). Thicker material than standard. Recommended for heavy sand, brush, or water use. Non adjustment hole position. Comes with arm cup strap.
P/N 802-5257
 
Psssttt.....Hey, Kered....Take a look below. Looks like I beat you to being the first Sovereign on the planet running on a lipo. One of these will go into the stock holder and drop probably about 7 or more ounces off the stock rechargable pack which weighs over 10 ounces. It's going in the normal 8 AA holder and will still be able to be removed so it can hold 8 AAs like normal when and if I'll ever want to do that again.

The pack at the bottom is a 3 cell. The others are 2 cell packs and all four of those are the same brand/capacity at 500ma. I can turn three of those into 3 cell packs by taking one apart. I could then put two of those matched capacity packs in parallel and double the capacity to 1000ma, or all three in parallel and bring it up to 1500. Still, even a single 500ma pack or the 450ma one at the bottom will probably run just as long as the stock 1000ma pack as lipos tend to hold their voltage high to the very end of the discharge, avoiding the LVC (low voltage cutoff). Even if they won't I'm sure I'll still get 10 hours or more before low voltage alarm hits, more than enough time for most hunts. Only takes an hour to re-charge them in the normal healthy charge rate so I'll just throw a pack on before a hunt or carry the others as backups.

I probably would have bought something bigger in the 1000 to 2200ma range but a friend of mine had these sitting around and they are now too weak for the high amp draw of his small plane motors so he'll never use them for anything again. The super low amp draw of the Sovereign won't be a problem for these packs, though. Anyway, so long as I'm trying to save weight using a 450ma to 500ma pack will be to the extreme of weight savings, because even a 1000 to 2500ma or so lipo should way much less than the stock rechargable or even normal 8AAs in the regular holder. Details sooner or later with photos.
 
Critterhunter said:
Neil said:
by removing that arm cuff setup which is pretty heavy, installing a whites armcuff with strap and mounting the control box mount under and through the whites arm cuff with rivets. you will have to drill out the arm cuff holes to accomodate the minelab 1/4" nylon bolts as you mount it to the rod. that alone has gotta be about a 5 or more ounce savings. also I dont know what your using for a lower rod, but the tesoro lower rods are a little on the short side but they are as light as it gets, have a hole right through the middle of them for draining when you wade and the difference at the end where the coil meets can be made up with a thicker washer. if youve made your aluminum rod long enough the difference in the lower rod length doesnt even matter.
Click to expand...

Neil, have you seen this Whites arm cup used on a Sovereign? If so, how did they do it? The only way I can see doing this is by drilling through the side of the Minelab box clip and then mounting that just below the arm cup via some kind of bracket that will allow it to bolt through the Whites arm cup bolts just above it, as I can't think of any way to mount the box clip inside or between the arm cup. It isn't split in half like a Minelab arm cup and even if it was there wouldn't be enough gap in the pole mount area for the box clip to ride inside like it does on the stock Minelab cup. Just trying to figure out which way I want to go with this. Whites arm cups are only $10 and come with the arm strap and I figure it's probably half the weight or less than the stock 8.8oz arm cup, which is over half a pound when you think about it.

I still haven't ordered one. The only thing I see listed on Whites website is a heavy duty arm cup that is said to be stronger than the original. Not sure how much more it weighs than the standard Whites cup. Before I commit to buying one to mod in some way I'm going to look into other ideas that might work. I could bend a blank piece of aluminum into the proper dimensions, find an aluminum coffee pot or something else round to hack up, or go with perhaps a plastic or PVC drain pipe cut up to what I want. The main concern is weight. It needs to be lighter than the stock one otherwise what's the point.

Heavy Duty Arm Cup
Matte (Flat Black). Thicker material than standard. Recommended for heavy sand, brush, or water use. Non adjustment hole position. Comes with arm cup strap.
P/N 802-5257
Click to expand...

Thats the armcuff I use. I lined it up, then drilled out the side holes to fit two 1/4" nylon bolts to secure it to the rod.

I did make a mistake telling you to drill through the armcuff with the newer box setup, it wont be straight and it needs to be. If you use the older v clips you can do this(with the older style control housing). I use the clip right off one of the s rods that is for the elite or advantage. Minelab sells them, it mounts directly to the pole in front of the armcuff. I will try and take a pic tomorrow of mine and put it up for you.
 
Mine are still on backorder:rage::rant: also the xs pack is smaller than the gt so those one may not fit
 
Wow they are small, didn't realize they were that small as i just noticed the fag packet to compare(thought it was the box they came in)
 
Yea, that's a box of smokes to size comparison. Bottom one is 450MA 3 cell and is plenty thin enough to fit in the holder. Top four are 2 cell 500ma Longmax and even with the air spacers between the cells (used to keep them cool with the high amp draw of some plane motors) cutting one up to make the other 3 three cell packs they'll still be thin enough as well. If not I can easily take out the air spacers. Remember that if you get a back that has gaps between the cells and is a little too thick. Those spacers should slide right out without needing to crack the cells apart so long as you take pressure off the cells by cutting the heat shrinking.

Like I said, I could take two of the 500ma long max packs I build and put them in parallel to double the run time, or stick the third in there and tripple it. If you ever do something like this don't solder two packs together in parallel permanently. Instead, hook them together via a plug. You want to be able to charge each 3 cell pack seperately to make things less complicated on charging them or putting them to a sleep voltage. With new packs that are the same brand/capacity you shouldn't really have any issues but with older/used packs of the same brand and capacity the cells from each might be further out of wack with each other due to what kind of condition they are in.

This won't really matter to a balance charger/discharger but if they really drift away from each other it will either take a long time for the charger to get them all to the same voltage or the charger might after a while say "I can't do those cells- too out of balance with each other." Each pack's cells should probably be in a near equal state of health, so by separating two disimilar packs during charging or cycling it makes things less confusing for you and the charger. That's why I'll need to run a few tests on the one pack's 3 cells that I'm going to transplant one of each to the other three 2 cell packs. I want to play match maker her and find which pack each cell would fit better with. A little cycling on the charger and monitoring each cell and the time it takes to reach a certain voltage under the exact same draw down during cycling should be a good indicator. What I'm trying to avoid is a weaker cell being transplanted to a stronger 2 cell pack. During discharge that cell might go below 3 volts first while the other 2 are sitting high and healthy at 3.9v or something. Bad news.

Always throw your packs in the refrigerator even if you plan to use them in a few days. You only need to put them to a sleep voltage when not used for weeks. You really don't need to do either one of these things but it'll prolong their capacity down the road.

I managed to recover the 2250ma 3 cell that spent the night in a tree with my Stryker from the in air FPV crash. It was down to 5.6 volts but we gave it a real nice and slow 50ma charge rate for a few minutes to bump the cell voltage back above 3v per, then we charged it slow to full voltage at around .5 amps to help it get well. Normaly I charge this pack at 2.2 amps (1C), as I do all my lipos. Only other time I got real low and easy with the charge rate is when a pack is new. I'll cycle it down to 9V and charge it back to 12.6 volts about 5 times at about .5 amps. Most think this will give them longer life, or at least hold up to the 40 or 50 amps some motors draw from them once conditioned this way.

By the way, I noticed another quirk in the Turnigy Accucel 6. When you go to charge a 3 cell lipo it will I think say "12.1V" (or is it 11.1V?) will selecting the number of cells, and it will also be lower for other cell settings as well. Ignore that, as it will of course charge the lipo to what it should be- 12.6V, and you'll see that on the screen. I really like to press "+" to see the individual cell voltage for each cell while charging. Helps me keep an eye on if things look out of wack should the cells stray to far from each other.

Sorry you are still waiting for what you ordered. That's why I never order anything that's on back order from them. Anything in stock as shown when ordering will always get to me from over seas in less than 5 working days. Very fast.

Tonight's project- Installing the 450ma lipo for a trial run, plus I'll start breaking down the other packs to make 3 cells.


Neil- Please do, as I'm still having trouble following you here. Thanks.
 
I just got my whites rods a short while ago and mounted up my sov this way. its my favorite setup, have one whites rod that will be for my excal also.
the control box mount is from either a elite S rod or an advantage S rod, from in front of the handgrip. you can disassemble the one you have for the rear mount off your gt(it has another piece attached to it for mounting under the armcup). I think the dealers sell them from minelab for like $6 give or take a few dollars.
 
Neil, thanks for the info and good looking GT. Crazyman nice pictures. Also a sweet looking machine!

Made a mistake in my info in converting the 4 two cell 500ma Long Max packs into 3 cell packs. Obviously my ADD got the best of me because I can only make two three cell packs by breaking apart one of the packs. No biggie, but figured I'd point that out in case I confused somebody. First lipo I'm going to try is the 450ma pack that is already a 3 cell made by a different company.
 
Ran my GT off of the 450MA 3 cell for two days and it sounded the low battery alarm after somewhere in the 10 to 13 or so hour range. Checked the lipo with a volt meter and it was at 10.60V. Good news, as this confirms the GT will sound it's low battery alarm well before the lipo will hit 9V (Lipos should never be drained below 3V per cell or you might ruin them). Happy with that long of a run time. Only takes less than an hour to re-charge (since it wasn't drained fully to 9V, which would then take an hour to charge).

I installed a JST plug in the normal 8AA holder for the lipo to plug into. Fits fine and the holder closes as normal. When I want to go back to 8AAs I only need to remove the lipo and move the JST plug to the empty chamber where the normal charge circuit sits in the rechargable holder so it's out of the way of the AAs. Lipo weighs 1.6oz. Stock holder weighs like 1.6 (or so, can't remember). Either way, I'm dropping about 7 ounces off the weight of the stock rechargable pack, which weighs over 10 oz! Even using AA Energizer Lithiums (non-rechargable light weight AAs) still weighs almost 7 ounces, so I'm much lighter than those as well and I thought they were light! I handed the holder to a friend and said "feel the weight of this holder without a battery", but then told him there was indeed a battery in it. He couldn't believe it.

Today I took apart a few of the 2 cell 500ma Lipo packs I was given as well and made a 3 cell 500ma pack. I do NOT recommend doing this unless you are experienced soldering and know how to wire up packs in series, as well as the pinouts for a Molex balance plug. I've got gobs of soldering experience but even I was a bit nervous with working with these lipos to make a custom pack. One slight short and the Lipo could bloat or explode. I worked with one wire at a time while I kept the others isolated from each other. Soldering to those thin battery tabs on a lipo was no joy either. After I made the pack I packed the end where all the wires are with liquid electrical tape and then wrapped the pack in clear box tape to protect it. Weighs 1.6 ounces like the 450ma pack. You are much better off buying a 3 cell pack than making them with the odd packs you might have laying around. It reminded me about how I find no thrill in building custom lipo packs and I'll never do it again. Lipos from the right place are so cheap these days anyway there is no excuse in just buying the right cell count and size pack you want. If I was to buy a pack for the Sovereign I wouldn't go this small. Something in the 1000 to 2400ma range would out last the stock rechargable pack and be much lighter.
 
Forgot to mention that I could feel the difference in weight with the added savings from the lipo battery. That combined with the custom upper/lower shaft off the top of my head puts me at about 10 to 12 ounces in weight savings or so over a stock GT, and that's with the added weight of the 15x12. In fact, I picked up my friend's 6000 Pro XL for comparison and the GT now I think might feel lighter, or at the very least very close to it in weight. With more weight savings to still go yet (including a Whites arm cup, coil cover replaced with spray on bed liner, etc) I'm even more confident I'll easily be well over 20 ounces in total weight savings, or roughly close to a pound and a half. Sooner or later I'll be posting the build thread in the mods forum for the custom shaft and all the other mods. I've got all the numbers written down and plan to make a chart so people can see what mods save them certain amounts of weight.
 
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