Detech Labs EXCELERATOR "S" coil on Sov Elite?

[sierraimage]

Critter. Yes, I read the numbers from the early post, I tried to make the most of it.

I tried one of my other meters (one I think is a little better of a meter). I tried the pins on this Excelerator eq2 5" again. This time pin 1&2 got a 2.5 ohm reading @ 200ohm setting. Pins 3&4 got a 1.10 ohm reading at 2K ohm setting. Are these differences of .10 etc close enough compared to yours? or do they need to be dead on? You are getting 1.9 ohms on 1&2...that seems like a long way off from my 2.5 ohm reading. Thats a .60 difference, is that enough to damage anything or prove that the coil is not designed for the GT?

I didn't get any other readings off of any other pin combos...should I have been able to?

 

[Critterhunter]

OK, sorry...I can't find my S-5 off hand and think it is the trunk of a car I don't have access to today. But here's an overview...

Pins 1 and 2 are the output power leads to the TX winding.

Me on you from your readings from your prior meter with both your coils... Your 2.8 and 3.3 ohm readings are very close.

And you just now with your current meter....I tried the pins on this Excelerator eq2 5" again. This time pin 1&2 got a 2.5 ohm reading @ 200ohm setting.

And me from my prior thread link readings... and for me in that thread both my 10" Tornado and 12x10 read 1.9 ohms

4 is the RX coil output and ground is pin 3.

And me again from my prior thread readings...) I got 1.218K ohms for my 12x10 and 1.119K ohms for the 10" Tornado.

And you just now on pins 3 and 4... Pins 3&4 got a 1.10 ohm reading at 2K ohm setting.

You're lowest TX readings are only a .6 ohm difference from mine, which is ever so tiny. And, with your RX readings I am only .019 ohms higher with my lowest coil reading than yours, which is nothing either. So I'd say you are golden.

But, that ain't to say there might be a machine out there with very similar/closely related resistance requirements for it's TX and RX windings. I only know of the readings on my BBS coils, but by all rights I would figure they vary much larger than that from machine to machine due to their unique specifications as I read that they do (when I was researching making my own coils), so if it was me I'd say plug it in, but knowing my luck... What I'm saying is that to the best of my abilities I think you are a perfect 10 here, but with my luck I'm also saying no promises as nothing is ever a sure thing in my experience in life...So you know the typical disclaimer...Do at your own risk...

You have to look at it this way...Let's say you are arrested for having almost the exact same fingerprints found at a crime scene with just some very miniscule differences. Are those differences due to the rough surface of the item you touched, or could there be another guy out there who really commited the crime who has those slight imperfections? I'd have to say you did the crime, but there is still no way of me knowing if somebody else out there has similar fingerprints as you. What that means is the typical "save my *ss" type of disclaimer of "I'm not responsible here..." Because who knows, that might be the right coil but it's a bad one or something. You've got to remember my luck again here...'Nuff said. Plug it in. I know it's the right coil, but....

 

[sierraimage]

Well, I hooked it up tonight. It seemed to trigger off of coins, but seemed to have really shallow depth shooting surface coins and doing air tests. If it wasn't the right coil, is that a sign of it being the wrong coil? I only got about 4" off the air and surface test.

What are the signs that its not a coil designed to be used on the GT? Would it slowly kill my control box or would it not work at all.

Thanks

 

[Critterhunter]

If it's working then I say it's the right coil. There are other "tuning" aspects other than just the right resistance of a coil that need to be just about perfectly within specs in order for a coil to work at all. You might not get much depth at all if you around electrical stuff such as a house or power lines, and often Minelabs don't air test well either (sometimes they do and sometimes they don't). If you are say running sensitivity in Auto or say lower than 3PM or so with that coil I'd expect only that depth or maybe a little more.

Did you notice the other two guys who have a 5" Excelerator coil on this first page of this thread said they were getting about the same depth as you on air testing and/or freshly buried coins in the sand? For that reason I'd say you're results look to be normal, but I just looked again at your coil and it's sticker seems a bit "old" looking, so perhaps it's an old version of the coil maybe? Not even sure if there were mutiple versions of that coil over time. Maybe it's just the stickers that keep being changed on them for various markets or marketing reasons? The external coil case looks the same as the other coils posted in the coil sticky that all just have different stickers on them. I know the bigger Excelerator coils (12+ on up) that are of a spiderweb type design (not solid coils) were said to have come in early versions that many said did not perform very well but later a second generation of them (still made to this day) came along that were said to have much better performance, but even still I just don't see much message traffic on the web about them. The few field reports I can dig up from guys using them seem to like them though.

My S-5 will get somewhere in the 7 to 9" range when sensitivity is running high as possible and say higher than 2 or 3PM or so. The FBS guys report excellent depth with the FBS version of your coil, but most seem to say the S-5/X-5 is deeper I think. I know I read of one Sovereign user say his S-5 got more depth than his 5" Excelerator, but to be fair that's about the only comparison I've read of the two coils to each other on BBS machines. Not a lot of message traffic out there on the 5" Excelerator for BBS machines. More for the S-5 when I've searched.

But hey, who really cares about getting super deep with a small trash coil? Often guys (myself included) will lower the sensitivity pretty low when in heavy trash with a trash coil to help avoid seeing too much junk and perhaps help with isolating targets in certain ways. That's why I'm not a fan of the odd shaped trash coils that are longer than they are wide. That's an attempt to increase the depth while still giving good seperation. All I want is max separation when using a trash coil myself. Depth is secondary to me when in heavy trash using one.

If you are testing around just oustide your house depth, stability, good audio, locking VDI...All these things could stuffer due to EMI even if your in your back yard. You need to get out away from any electrical/EMI potential problems to see how high you can ride sensitivity and how stable the coil is, as well as to judge just how deep it might go for you. And remember, especially with Minelabs (FBS and BBS models) they always seem to get much better depth in the ground, and on targets that have been in the ground for years so they build up a hallo around them and such. Freshly planted coins or ones found in dry/loose sand probably aren't going to be a good indicator of the depth abilities of your coil compared to a target that's been in the ground for years or even in sand but packed sand that isn't been moved/fluffed around.

Give us a field report on that coil as you use it. Glad you didn't let the magic smoke out of your Sovereign.

 

[sierraimage]

will do, it's been about 110 degrees here this week and expected for the next couple, so I may not be able to get out for a little while. You know how it is in the desert. Summer is our MD winter without the frozen ground.

 

[robby4570]

I forgot to mention in my previous post that I had emailed Minelab when I got this coil and it took them so long to reply that I started this thread. I finally got a reply and my question was if the Explorer and the Sovereign used the same plug/connector for coils. This coil COULD have been for the Sov or the Explorer that the guy who I bought the Sov from still has. Mine lab said that the 2 machines use different connectors AND that (I'll quote the Email here) "The only aftermarket coil SUPPORTED (my caps) by Minelab is Coiltek

 

[Critterhunter]

Yes, the fact that the FBS machines and BBS ones have two different pin totals was already mentioned by Ron, but that still doesn't mean a coil could perhaps be meant for some other machine and not a Sovereign. Those 5" Excelerator coils are made for quite a number of different brands, so always better to be safe than sorry.

Usually the FBS coils have coiled cable for aiding in snaking them up inside the shaft as they do, but I'm not sure if all aftermarket coils for them are coiled on the cable like that either.

I just know that if I got a coil and wasn't sure which machine it was for, even if the pins match I'm reading the resistance to find out if it's within range of what my other coils read. All resistance in all coils for any machine has to be pretty close to each other. They adjust the number of turns of the coil windings, the length, and also the gauge of the wire until they get things as close as possible to what they need to be. You can never be perfect, but it has to be close.

There's also a few other readings that have to be within a window of what the machine needs to see too or the coil will be unstable/useless. It's a very exacting science when you construct them, and...even after all that is done when you build a coil you do something called "nulling it out" where a tiny loop of wire is used after the windings are all done in order to get the coil tuned as perfectly as possible. That's really the most important part. You can build a great coil with great windings but if you don't take the time to tune it will that little null loop it's be unstable and won't give very good performance at all.

 

[sierraimage]

Thanks for the update Robby. Good info from minelab. they still have not returned my email either. So I would say I will stick with the info from the engineers and maker of the equipment and not use my detech coil. Engineers are hired for a reason, not leaving it up to us with a $10 ohm meter screw up our machines. forums are good for somethings, but not to take tech specs or theories on faith when it comes to a $1000 machine. Thanks again for sharing their input. The product support from these MD companies down-right sucks for the money we spend on their stuff.

 

[Critterhunter]

I've heard people say before that they only use the factory coils because they are "tuned" for a machine. The fact is that any coil made for any machine, aftermarket or not, is "tuned" for that machine. The resistance has to be in specs, as does like 2 or 3 other meter readings from memory here. One involves the capacitance I believe, and the other I forget off hand as it's an obscure reading I've not really seen used in much of my dealings with tinkering in electronics. I had all those specs pinned down when I was intending to make my own coils but then decided by the time I bought all the materials, shielding material, and so on, I'd have to make about 3 coils at least to recover my money spent in supplies. That's about when the SEF coils came along and I liked what I saw so that killed that dream of building my own.

Point is if a coil isn't meant for a machine it's not going to work, period. You'd know it, because it wouldn't be some obscure little unstability or something. You'd know it's the wrong coil by either the magic smoke leaving your machine or the total and complete instability of it beyond use and imagination. The truth is that no machine can "tell" what kind of coil it's using (well, except for a few minor exceptions). On most machines, including the Sovereign, the coil, regardless of size or shaped, has been built to look identical to that machine as any factory coil. It's just as "tuned" for that machine as any other coil. So long as the coil was built and meant for that machine you can count on it being "tuned" for it, and that the machine has no idea that the coil is a factory 10" coil, or an aftermarket 5" coil for that matter. They all look and react the same with it.

Number of turns in the windings, gauge of wire, and so on...All these things have to be adjusted to get those specifications back exactly to what that machine expects to see. Resistance not high enough? More turns in the windings or a lessor gauge of wire used. Etc...

For all the above reasons, the same coil made for two different machines should read very different. But, as all things in life, there are no guarantess...