Thanks guys! We won't be painting it, we'll just clean up the white and leave it at that. Don't think paint would stick very well anyway. We quite like the white, under studio lights it should almost glow.

As for batteries, if we replace them it's a matter of replacing them now. If we order today from ebay then we SHOULD get them here before the 31st. Maybe.

Would 3 of these in series be sufficient? http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/6V-3300mAh-Su ... 5645b92771

Could we keep our current charger, the 18v drill one? And the discharge rate on those is just 30a, would that be enough? We're likely to be drawing quite a bit more than that.

It's a real bummer that our drill batteries may not work. Today we'll test drive it and time how long it lasts. If it starts fading after a minute, we may be in trouble. We hadn't predicted this of course, when we were testing it before it weighed 5kgs less, meaning the motors worked less hard, and so it could go for 4-5 minutes no problem.

Here's hoping, again!