600E metal blade grips

Written by Ashley Davis Thursday, 07 December 2006 00:00

Metal Grips

The following is a review of the T-Rex 600 upgrade metal blade grips. These are a direct replacement for the plastic blade grips provided with the kit. There is no information provided with this upgrade as to what performance enhancement can be expected having fitted this item to your machine.

Metal blade grips are an item on which the community tends to be split with regard to whether they are a good thing or not. The reason for this difference of opinion is down to what effect metal blade grips have not only on the performance of the machine in flight but also on the wear and tear of other components. With plastic grips there is some natural flex in the material which acts as a kind of dampening, this take some load off of the dampeners in the head block. Metal blade grips generally do not have any give in them at all. This has the effect of sharpening up and providing a more crisp collective response but the downside is that the dampeners now have two deal with all of the head stresses.

First some pictures of the upgrade grips:

Build Review

As with all of the upgrades that I have looked at for the T-Rex 600 the build quality is exceptionally good. The bearings that are pre-fitted within the grips are the same as those used in the standard stock plastic grips. The upgrade grips only come with one radial bearing they do not come with the thrust bearings or second radial bearing. Therefore you must remove the thrust bearings, spacer washer and radial bearing from the old grips to be reinstalled into the upgrade grips. Care must be taken to include the spacer washer otherwise the grips will not fit properly and there will be lateral movement of the grips along the feathering spindle.

Once this is done the upgrade grips can be bolted on to the feathering spindle and the installation is complete.

The upgrade grips come with a ball link that screws onto the blade grip lever. I removed these, applied some loctite and then replaced. There was no loctite on these as supplied. Whilst I was performing this upgrade I also took the liberty of replacing the dampeners with new ones as these blade grips will be much harsher on the dampeners than the stock plastic grips.

Pictures of the completed and fitted main grips:

Flight Review

I have had several flights using these new grips now, it took several flights to understand what changes these grips had made. My initial impression was that very little had changed as the feel of these grips in the air is not significantly different to the plastic grips. However, after a few more flights it started to become apparent what the differences are and how they were affecting the flight characteristics.

I was expecting a crisper cyclic response and in this regard the blade grips do deliver a slightly crisper response. This is most noticeable in manoeuvres like a tick tock where large airflow reversals and big collective movements are made. What I noticed was a much harsher airflow reversal and a more apparent wobble from the rotor head. This is caused by there being less dampening and more stress being placed on the dampeners as a result. The head used to wobble slightly with the stock plastic grips but it was now more pronounced.

The metal grips provide a slightly faster and more positive response to fast cyclic pitch changes but again this is a subtle difference rather than something you notice immediately.

Overall the changes are subtle rather than pronounced. It does take the more extreme manoeuvres to show the different characteristics that these grips exhibit.

Pros

Good build quality
Easy installation
Crisper collective / cyclic response
Inexpensive

Cons

Changes to flight characteristics are subtle not dramatic
Harshness to collective pitch changes in some moves
Hard wear and tear on dampeners and rest of machine due to loss of natural dampening
Better gains in collective/cyclic performance can be made through other types of upgrade (such as V blades)

Conclusion

I have ended up with a bit of a mixed opinion with regard to these grips. On the one hand I do like the slightly crisper cyclic response and the slightly more accurate/precise flying that these grips provide. On the other hand I do not like the harshness of these blade grips in terms of passing on the blade stresses to the dampeners and the rest of the machine. Certainly I am expecting to go through dampeners much more quickly than I did with the plastic grips. The actual difference in flight between the plastic and metal grips is quite subtle except when performing something like a tick tock, where it becomes much more apparent. I recently upgraded to a set of V blades and these had a more pronounced (and better) effect on the flight characteristics than the metal grips. Given a choice of upgrading to these or having a new set of higher quality blades I think I would pick the latter.

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