POSTED A LITTLE WALKTHROUGH OF MY OWN
HERE!
So due to the Pulse being a great conceptual design, but being a complete piece of junk once implemented, I found myself holding a nearly new Pulse with a completely broken feedneck, two broken tabs on the drive tray, busted-out screw hole on battery door (think I opened that door twice its entire life
), and various cracks/chips over the entire hopper. It was basically crumbling to bits after only a few weekends of play. Well I let it sit in the closet for a long time and recently decided to do something about it. I found
this thread regarding retrofitting a Pulse into a Halo shell, but it was old and all the pics were dead. Well I happen to have a scrap Halo-A laying around, but the shell was garbage. I bought a Hybrid shell off eBay for cheap and decided to Frankenstein this all together. It ended up being surprisingly easy to do in a down and dirty way. I did not drill a hole for the reverse button because it was late, but you'll see it can easily be done.
What you'll need:
Pulse: Basically just the main board, speed control board, motor, RF chip and wiring. It all comes out in one piece.
Halo: Everything except the main board and motor (full raceway, cone, gears, gear tray, pins, shell, backplate, etc)
Other: Hybrid shell recommended so you don't have to tear everything apart to clean.
Gut the Pulse. You can remove the male/female power connector if you want, but I chose to just snip off both connectors leaving me as much wire as possible. Then I just soldered the two wires together. I guess you can just twist them together and tape if you want, but soldering took me 2 minutes. Then gut the Halo. You'll need to remove the gear tray on the bottom of the raceway which is held in place by three phillips screws.
Install the Pulse's motor into the gear tray in place of the old Halo's motor. I tried using the Pulses gears/drive shaft, but then you run into cone problems. The Pulse's cone/impeller is notched and sits up too high to work properly in the Halo raceway. And trying to use the Halo's cone on the Pulse's driveshaft doesn't work either because there's no way to secure it properly. Try it if you don't believe me, but using all the Halos gears/draftshaft worked best for me. The pic below actually has the Pulses gears in place. Took the pic before I realized it wouldn't work (note the shape at the top of the driveshaft).
Carefully secure the gear tray back onto the raceway, ensuring that the driveshaft is going into place properly, the pin that holds the primary gear in place is seated properly throughout, the drive belt is still around the primary gear and motor, and the motor is sliding into place properly. It should all fit like butter. Use the same three screws you removed from the Halo to secure the gear tray back into place. Be careful not to over-tighten these screws as it will inhibit drivetrain movement. I suggest plugging in a 9V and turning it on now. While running, tighten up the screws and see if you hear any binding of movement. I ran into a bit of this while trying every combination of Halo gears/Pulse gears/Pulse belt/Halo belt/making a hole for the rip drive (recall I'm using a Halo A) that I ended up not needing. As I said, in the end I found using all Halo parts with the Pulse's motor worked best.
Reinstall the halo's bottom circular plastic plate and spring onto the driveshaft, then the Halo's cone over top of that. Just watch the tabs and how it hits the spring. You'll figure it out. Reinstall screw on the tip of the driveshaft to secure the cone into place.
We're going to install the Pulse's mainboard and Halo's backplate next. If you unplugged the harnesses from the board, the 4-pin goes on the left (if you're looking at the pins), the RF chip goes in the middle, and the 2 pin harness plugs in on the right side using the two pins closest to the RF connector (see "2" and line pointing in pic below). If I remember right, the exposed gold connector pieces on the harnesses face upward.
Now wedge the Pulse's main board and Halo's backplate into your new shell. I recommend using the right half of the shell for this (if viewing from rear backplate). As said in the thread linked up top, the top of the board should go into it's slot properly, but the bottom of the board should slide just rearward (towards the backplate more) of it's mounting slot. This puts the board at an angle overall. This gives you some extra clearance for the connectors.
From there, I just slapped everything into that half of the shell. Roughly run the wires up the side towards the nose of the hopper and allow the 9V power connector to go into the battery compartment. Install the raceway/feed tube into that half of the hopper. It will take some finagling but you're basically just cramming it all in there (for lack of a better word, shouldn't take any force). The speed control board, reverse button, and RF chip will sit in the cavity right next to the feed tube. You can drill a hole for the reverse button if you want or tape ups the wire if you want. With Hybrid shells I didn't really care. They're not pinched and once they're in place I shouldn't need to every screw around with them.
Once you have the raceway/feed tube properly seated flat against the feedneck/side of the hopper, slap on the other shell half and top Hybrid cover. You're done!