Hey Everyone,

I recently bought a HK450 (Already own one, this is a gift) and a HK500CMT.

I started to take the heads apart on both heli's to inspect and locktite everything as I had to do on my older HK450 (no locktite, and some things were pretty lose), To my surprise everything has been put in place with a generous amount of thread locker.

Some of the screws and control balls were very hard to remove on the 500CMT, They were getting a bit difficult to remove. I am going to inspect them carefully after the first few flights, but I think it'll be just fine!

I noticed the thread locker they are using is clear, not sure if it dry's clear but does'nt look like the normal blue stuff I use (might be CA??).

Anyways, thought i'd throw this out there and see if anyone else had a similar experience. I myself, am pleased HK is trying to produce a better product.

Still no lube on anything though :/ - Not a bad idea to still go through everything with a fine tooth comb.

Have a friend with ~4 HK450's. On the latest one, his feathering shaft was slightly bent (although he says he has never crashed the heli.) It wasn't a big bend, but it made tracking very inconsistent, fix it one flight, then it would be out on the next flight.

When he went to remove the feathering shaft, he couldn't remove the bolts. He even borrowed my MIP/Thorp 1.5mm driver to use on one side. We still couldn't get that bolt out. This was really a major torque effort. So much so that the MIP/Thorp head just ended up reaming out the head of the bolt. This wasn't just the standard head stripping issues with these bolts.

So anyway he had to drill out the bolt to remove the feathering shaft. Of course it completely screwed up the feathering shaft (this guy tends to work parts back into shape! ).

All I can figure is that HK actually used some type of permanent locker, maybe CyA. I certainly don't have that type of problem with the blue locktite.

So yes I guess this is better than no-locktite, if the user isn't checking, but it does make maintenance much more difficult, if, for example, you wanted to check out the dampners or the grip bearings.

I have to admit, the feathering shaft on the 450 isn't the best of things. I replaced mine right away, along with a few other select components. I've yet to have a hard enough landing to break anything, but its just a matter of time .

I agree with the liberal use of thread locker, it makes it really hard to do in depth inspections.

I believe it is CA, I used some CA solvent i had here on one and it took it right off..Does not seem to have the same effect with my align or generic blue locktite.

I'm hoping the first couple of flights will loosen it up a bit more so I don't risk stripping anything.

Originally Posted by cswilsn

I have to admit, the feathering shaft on the 450 isn't the best of things. .

I am using 3mm & 4mm brass tubes to make up the feathering shafts. Just slide the longer 3mm tube inside the shorter 4mm tube and presto you have a 450 feathering shaft. I cut them to any lenght to suit any type of heads & blade grips.

I use 2-56 x 3"4 socket head cap screws made by Du-Bro with 2-56 tap. These screws are very long and you can tighten them better than the original short screws. I don't know why didn't they make them longer so loctite would not be neccessary.

So far I had none of them snapped or failed during flight. Only bent after a crash and can be straighten up. Only a few snapped off after extreme crashes which also bent the main shafts and main blades. If anyone interested I can post the info.