So, having completed an event with the Johnson 600 fitted instead of 550s, I have to say they're actually pretty good! My lifter died early in the day, meaning I had to resort to being just a rambot, so the drive got some thorough testing and I was very glad they were fitted; very noticeable increase in speed, I'd say around 50%, and I was able to push people around quite nicely, which is never normally something Richie can do. The motors were rather hot at the end of the two fights I lasted the full 3 minute for (you could almost burn your hand on them), but they're 9.6v motors overvolted to 12v so that wasn't too surprising. Both were still working fine at the end of the day though, and at £3.50 each, if one does burn out eventually, I'm not gonna be too upset :L

Fitting them to the drill gear boxes only required cutting a few mm off the end of the shaft, and then grinding a flat on it to fit the cog from the 550, all of which took about 5 mins with a dremel. After that it just screwed straight in to the drill gearbox as a 550 would. All in all took about 15 mins to fit each motor in the robot. Very worth while upgrade for the money and effort required.

In other news, the new Heavyweight speed controller I had fitted in Richie for testing worked flawlessly all day without getting even slightly warm, which means I can go ahead with building my heavyweight over Easter (This was hopefully the last event I do without a heavy).

As was mentioned earlier, Richie's lifter broke. This was courtesy of Battleaxe putting me on the floor flipper in just such a way that it hurled me into the steel wall of the arena. This bent the lifting forks, arm, and linkage, and the lifter drive circuitry also burnt out (Damn you Battleaxe! *shakes fist*). Managed to get things straight enough to be used, but with the lifter circuit gone and not enough time left to fix it, the lifter was out of action for the rest of the day. I'm planning a much neater solid state switching circuit that should be much more reliable.