Grateful to the original poster of this thread, but after attempting it recenty with no luck, figured I would share my experience. Since the Zip Zap is no longer made, I purchased the Mini RC they currently sell that is packed as though it is in soda can. The boards were different than the tutorial, but we felt confident we could figure it out. We meaning myself and Hubby. We are constantly messing with our costumes electronics... his being ANH Vader and mine SE Boba. I should also add he is a licensed electrician by day... lol.
So the newer version did not translate and I went to eBay to seek out an original Zip Zap. When it arrived, we thought we'd play with it before demolishing it... this kid in us right!?! Yeah no joy. First thought was with its age the built-in rechargeable car battery was toast, and proceeded to deconstruct and assemble following the thread instructions... again no joy! Was it so old that even the solid state was toast?
Today Hubby comes home with an RC he picked up at Wal-Mart for $9.95... what the heck, let's throw MORE money at Boba. Long story short, the boards are slightly bigger, but it works!!! So here is how we did it.
Here is the car we purchased. Yeah it was out of the box before I realized this was something everyone could benefit from.
Here are the two components before removing them. The remote board is held in by a screw and two solder points. The remote was held by two screws and two solder points.
View attachment 107204
Here are the two boards with their respective power wires connected, and the servo leads. The board on the bottom left is the remote board which will go in your gauntlet, and the one still in the cradle goes in your helmet. Prior to disconnecting the car and attaching the servo, we turned everything on and made sure the car wheels were getting a signal from the control board. Then we used a JST connector (red rectangle) on the helmet board which will be connected to the servo. This will allow an easy swap out in the event the servo goes bad at a later date. I would say you can pick one up at your local Radio Shack but 'ehh, not anymore for some of us.
This shows the helmet board with the servo connected. (There are steps inside the servo that need to be done that are earlier in this tutorial thread). You can see we are powering this board using 4-AAA's. It is ultimately my goal to find a rechargable system, but this will work for now.
In order to decrease the thickness of the board for the helmet, we needed to remove the elevated on/off switch as shown here.
Take a pair of tin snip and cut the assembly so that you have tabs to pull with a pair of pliers. You will heat the attachment points on the board and pull the remaining posts out. At this point, you will need to bridge the three solder points together to permanently bridge the circuit.
Next we removed the fwd and back pushbuttons from the control board to connect the switches from my gauntlet. Some folks I've seen use the momentary buttons on the right gauntlet, but since I am right handed and the left side has a bit more room, I opted for a left gaunt mount instead. The switches did not want to bond to the solder, so we removed them... very carefully. You don't want to melt the board. The switches are surface-mounted, so you'll want to add solder to the board before attempting to attach the wires. We checked our solder points one switch first before doing the second. Here is the completed control board. After this photo was taken, I went back and hot glued all my wire connection points. This board is powered with 2-AAA's.
This completes the car board mods. You'll need to go back and add the mods for the servo which are given in the beginning thread, as well as the specifics on the servo itself. Then we will be doing a similar method to mount this rig in the helmet. I may show that as well. It's certainly not pretty, with a nice case for all the boards, but if you are on a budget and handy with soldering, you can do this project for less than $100.00