Xieda 9958 Carbon Fiber Main Shaft
A project I have been putting off until tonight. Switched out the aluminum 9958 main shaft to a carbon fiber one to shave off some weight. Just sharing some dimensions in case someone else is thinking of making a carbon fiber main shaft for the Xieda 9958.
First I took a Bravo III carbon fiber main shaft and drilled a hole at the top (The bottom two holes works out well already). Then I measured 3mm from this hole and simply saw off and discarded the excess at the top. The hole location reflected the location of the top hole on the Blade mSR because I was gonna fit on the Blade mSR head onto my Xieda 9958. Here’s a close up of the Blade mSR main shaft in case anybody else there needs it.
Here is a photo of the Xieda 9958 with Blade mSR head and flybar. As a bonus, if you look closely, you can see that the swashplate hub has a pivot ball like the mSR. I stole the upper hub out of the Trex 100s. I like the idea of the pivot ball and the link balls on is about 16.5mm. Much longer than the Xieda’s stock hub’s ~12.5mm. So more throw.
The result of these modifications is that the Xieda 9958 flies really well. In fact, the sliding tendencies the stock 9958 has during bank turns appear to be all but gone. Unfortunately, I made too many modifications at once, so I don’t know which of my changes is responsible for the improved, tighter turns. I will do a follow up post once I figure out if it’s the carbon fiber shaft, the Blade mSR Head, or Trex 100s upper swash hub that is responsible for the improved flight.