RE: Want to upgrade Z starter
Sounds like a great plan for the shuttle. Not sure about the weight but they are made of "space age" strong plastics which seem pretty light. The shuttle does make a great trainer but you want to be sure that ALL of your linkages and bearings are smooth and notch free. I upgraded to the Shuttle plus blade grips that have a thrust bearing in the blade grip. This smoothed the collective and cyclic response night and day over the stock two bearing grips. My shuttle originally had bushing servos and I upgraded to ball bearing servos. I just kept working at it and what I ended up with was a very precise flying machine that was responsive and fun to fly. Helicopters are all about attention to detail.
I think the older Z shuttles had alot of bushings in the rotor system. The ZX replaced alot of the bushings with bearings so its a good upgrade to start with. I used both Hirobo and Boca bearings for my shuttles. Boca being the less expensive of the two.
Sounds like you have a good gyro and tail servo which is very important. I bought my ZX with an old mechanical gyro and replaced it with a JR410 shortly thereafter. The servo was an old JR 501 but I replaced that with an 810G sport tail servo and the difference was again night and day.
Hope you have good luck getting your Shuttle airborne.
Looking forward to seeing some pictures or video.
Take care,
T-bone