Stampede Wiring Kit: Revision 2

In our first new product for 2015, we've added a few new upgrades to the Stampede wiring kit. There have been a number of tweaks including adding an LED mount for your master power switch and some key protections added for this ageing fleet of blasters.

Inline fuse holders, fuses and relays!

With more modern N-Strike Elite magazines, we've identifed a failure mode that is fatal to the Stampede motor when using high powered Lithium chemistry batteries. The differences in the moulds between N-Strike magazines and the newer N-Strike Elite magazines are sufficient to cause a misalignment in the bolt during the firing cycle. This causes a collision with the forward dart tooth and resultant stall. Given the high discharge capacity of Lithium packs, it's often the case the battery is able to continuously discharge enough current to oxidise the motor coils and set fire to the internals of the blaster (literally in one case).

To that end, enter car blade fuses. We've determined that a single 10A car fuse soldered into the battery tray will happily protect the blaster and its internals from the aforementioned failures. Yes, it might mean you have to tape a set of fuses to the inside of your blaster but we figure most people would rather have a dead fuse than a blaster. We did look into resettable options but the blade fuses are far more economical compared to PTCs and methods that would have introduced a significant current restriction. The other advantages of a blade fuse is that it can handle burst currents for the necessary length of time without tripping. This sort of behaviour is commonly seen in the automotive industry so it seems like a sane standard to adopt here.

New 12V relays!

A second change sees the replacement of the firing micro-switch with a 12V relay instead. This changes means that the blaster can now use its stock trigger switch to fire the blaster using low current wire through the relay. This solves the problem some users were experiencing with placing the switch and removes the need for the trial and error placement process that is required by the Version 1 system. There are also advantages in preventing timing bugs that may occur as the white trigger plate inappropriately triggers the next trigger cycle when using our current micro-switch set up. It is important to note, however, that our kit now requires either 3S LiPo or 3S LiFe to fire, anything higher than 12V will destroy the relay coil and render your blaster useless.

Unfortunately, it does mean that the kit will have to increase in price to accommodate the new features but we don't really have a way to avoid this and we've kept the increases to a minimum.

The new version will be available as of Monday 19th January 2014 for £18.50 (including UK VAT at 20% so £15.41 for non-EU customers). All orders placed on or after that date (UK time) will be filled with the Revision 2 kit and priced accordingly.