for some reason, the hub in the middle of the head where the two blades actually come together, everything is coming loose and the main blades go flying in either direction. Also, is there anyway to keep the tail rotor from popping off if it touvhes something, other than the rubber stopper?

have you got too many washers so the head bolts are not tight enough?
test by seeing if the blade grips have play along the shaft.
maybe put loctite or get new blade grip shaft/bolts.

the tail pops off if rubber is not tight enough - get new [longer] bit of rubber
but if you keep bashing the tail then this bit of rubber is probably saving your
motors/tail.

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaa

yeah, i would agree, there are much better ways to keep the tail rotor on, but if you do that, and you are still getting alot of strikes, it is likely something else will then break.

About your spindle.... it sounds like something is not being put together properly. I've never had that happen, and I don't use lock tite. I do check them after about every 10 flights or so, but I've never had them loose. Double check your setup and make sure that everything is going together, and if you're still having troubles then use some medium loctite, or in other words the kind that is non permanant.

Maybe you're not using the right bolts, or maybe the threads are stripped. I don't really pay those bolts much attention and I don't especially tighten them very hard, I don't use loctite, and yet they are always very tight in the spindle when I want to remove the blade grips.

I'm not trying to insult you or anything, but I've seen it, so I thought I'd throw it out there. Make sure you're using two 1.5mm hex keys to tighten the blade grips on to the feathering shaft at the same time, you can't do them one at a time. Also, that piece of rubber on the tail shaft is a safety device for newbies. It's so that the tail will throw itself off rather than burn up the motor or crack the boom under a tail strike. When you get better, it won't be so much of an issue because you won't tap the tail anymore.

you're using only the one wrench that came with the kit; that was my first thought too. second would be loctite.

the tubing does kind of suck if you're bouncing the heli a lot, but it is there to protect the motor & gears. it's doing it's job as intended; to get it to stay on there you need to not bump in to things with it. tough love, i know...

-kev

Check out this post about half way down by Pearl 414.
[link=http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_5779463/mpage_2/tm.htm]tail blade saver[/link]

Seems like a simple way to keep it off the ground to me. Of course you could
also just buy a long carbon fiber rod, and cut them longer than factory.

And if you want something to put on it to keep the rubber tubbing on your tail shaft and you
also want to get it off later, try some Permatex #2 NON-Hardening form a gasket (IMPORTANT they also
make a Number 1 that IS hardening). It works great for holding stuff together that you
want to get apart later. It just makes a sticky surface to hold things in place.
I use it on my Cx2 to hold my alum. bearing housing to the outer main shaft.
I had a friend try it on his CPP to keep his tail boom in place. It worked good and
now that his boom is broken he just pulled it out.
And I am going to use it on my T-Rex to hold the tail boom supports ends to the
carbon shafts.
Alcohol will clean up the goo when you need to wipe it off something.
I told my friend to try some on his tail rotor shaft and also told him that it would
probably keep the blade on but break it........he left it alone