I’ve had a look at how the Iwaver’s wired up and If I’d designed it I’d be ashamed, then again I tend to belive in there not being such a thing as too much over kill 🙂 I don’t know how the mini-z compares but I’m planing to re do the whole thing. firstly to get rid of the poor contacts with the batteries I’ll build some battery packs using tagged 800mAh NiMH batteries and get rid of the contacts used in the Iwaver, Mini power connectors will connect the batteries to the rest of the car’s electronics (using heavier guage wire too) via a plug in connector, wanna turn the car off – unplug the battery pack, yep it means I’ll have to use a multi cell charger rather than a standard one, but I can live with that. (might even use it as an excuse to go to 5 cells) the connector that the battery pack will plug into will run two sets of the thick wire, one to the PCB and the other to what ever fets I use to control the motor then more thick wire directly to the motor.
so to look at a summary of changes
out goes the metal against metal contacts at the batteries and on the wires running to the switch – replaced by soldered joins
out goes the switch with who knows how low a Amp rating to be replaced with a connector rating unknown but should be much better than the switch.
out goes the thin wire that breaks all to often near the joins to be replaced with thicker lower resistance wire.
now all I need is a good set of fets and I’ll be able to take advantage of this upgrade.
.
