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GPZ 10" Xcoils In USA


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3 hours ago, Jin said:

Thanks jasong, Some more helpful information to think about. Ill be more than likely doing my patch lead next week. 

Hey Rick, if you want someone to do patch your lead for you, I can highly recommend Pat from SteelPhase. He did mine and I can not fault the service. Cost me $100 including return post of the GPZ14, and he also put a new plug on the GPZ14 so it can still be used.

He apparently has done a few now.

Cheers, Rick

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5 minutes ago, araratgold said:

Hey Rick, if you want someone to do patch your lead for you, I can highly recommend Pat from SteelPhase. He did mine and I can not fault the service. Cost me $100 including return post of the GPZ14, and he also put a new plug on the GPZ14 so it can still be used.

He apparently has done a few now.

Cheers, Rick

Thanks Rick, Ill send Pat a message and see what he says.

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49 minutes ago, jasong said:

After changing coils quite a lot, one thing I do want to say now in hopes that it can be addressed soon for future coils though is that X Coils absolutely needs to improve their coil cables. 2 of the cables are so wide that you have to "thread" them into the middle shaft, or sometimes cram them in if they get hung and won't rotate anymore. And in fact require me to take the machine apart into 3 pieces just to switch coils, which gets to be incredibly tedious. The 3rd coil cable however goes right in and takes way less time to change.

A Tip...….One of my coils also was a wee tight in the outer shaft, I found by just simply pulling it through using a guide wire and taping to the cable just below the conx, rather then trying to push it through, worked a treat. By pushing it through you are expanding the coils which compounds the problem, pulling it through does the opposite.

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Definitely the way to go Norvic, pulling instead of pushing if one has a wire or something on them to use. Reverse finger trap action right there, for those who had those toys as a kid. But even using a wire it's still a needless hassle, it should be quick and easy to do something like change a coil IMO. 

My 17" coil for whatever reason has a cable that fits right in. The 10 and 12 don't though, not just a little tight...the 10" I had to remove and stretch out a number of times just to get it through the middle shaft. Then the second time I put it on it had gone back to tight again and had to repeat, then screw it in.

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Yeah, I imagine that the fellow that makes the coils on reading these issues will modify, certainly they are not ideal as are. Even a piece of string cord instead of wire, even the bungee cord that comes with the Z. I look forward to your review of them in action.

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1 hour ago, jasong said:

After changing coils quite a lot, one thing I do want to say now in hopes that it can be addressed soon for future coils though is that X Coils absolutely needs to improve their coil cables. 2 of the cables are so wide that you have to "thread" them into the middle shaft, or sometimes cram them in if they get hung and won't rotate anymore. And in fact require me to take the machine apart into 3 pieces just to switch coils, which gets to be incredibly tedious. The 3rd coil cable however goes right in and takes way less time to change.

Jason - first off, I'm glad you added to this thread.  It will be helpful to people who might later be interesting in getting coils to the US.

But I am really glad you found that RX cable that came loose.  That must have been a mess to fix.  The wire being small was difficult.  I practiced on a bit of coil I had to make sure I had a method to not damage too much of the fine wire, while removing the sheath.  You will cut some fine wire as it is nearly impossible not to.  For the fine wires, I ended up grooving the sheath with a Stanley razor knife, a little at a time.  Then I could lightly pull on it to disengage it the rest of the way.  This just worked for me.  I found that my sheath cutters were not reliable.

As for the fat coil cables, yes … very frustrating.  But I eventually found I could twist the middle shaft to get it going.  Every once in awhile I would need to break it into three pcs.  But usually just the two.  Norvic may have a good idea about pulling it up (which stretches it and minimizes the diameter).  Pushing it through is a definite no-go.  The whole changeover takes a little more time than it should.  Expect more time wasted if you did not buy the lower arm to put on the coil.

 

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28 minutes ago, Norvic said:

A Tip...….One of my coils also was a wee tight in the outer shaft, I found by just simply pulling it through using a guide wire and taping to the cable just below the conx, rather then trying to push it through, worked a treat. By pushing it through you are expanding the coils which compounds the problem, pulling it through does the opposite.

Good tip, Norvic.  When I ran into this, I looked all over for wire in my truck's tool box.  Now If I were clever like you I probably would have just used my shoe laces!! :cool:

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2 minutes ago, Andyy said:

You will cut some fine wire as it is nearly impossible not to.  For the fine wires, I ended up grooving the sheath with a Stanley razor knife, a little at a time.  Then I could lightly pull on it to disengage it the rest of the way.  This just worked for me.  I found that my sheath cutters were not reliable

Yep, first time I used the wire cutters, a pair of electricians pliers with precut holes for various wire sizes. The wire size must be non standard in the US, kinda like metric vs SAE.

Unfortunately it'll be a month before I can get out to the goldfields. There was a long (14 days) delay halfway through shipping the coils to the US, so I missed my window at work to leave as a result and now I can't leave since it's 1000 miles drive to any patch I know about.

I am going to go do some rebury tests though to get some actually numbers against the Z14 and I'll put them on vid along with some stuff like balancing to ferrite, EMI comparisons, some weights, bump sensitivity, etc etc. That's about all I can do now until I finish building this last house and then I can take off to do some real detecting with these coils in some places people will recognize and have been gridded for decades by veterans, probably seen 20+ GPZ's. If they produce those patches, I'll be pretty dang impressed.

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2 minutes ago, Andyy said:

Good tip, Norvic.  When I ran into this, I looked all over for wire in my truck's tool box.  Now If I were clever like you I probably would have just used my shoe laces!! :cool:

Argh, I'm slapping my forehead. I wish I would have thought of that.

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Was only the 12" I had the same problem with, the 10" & 15" were no drama, so obviously is a inconsistent problem. Question..... How do you curl straight wire to make the loop wire? 

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