Bad servo or bad receiver battery?

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ThatGuy

Gone - bye bye.
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The throttle servo on my nitro buggy works great. However the steering servo seems to go out at the worst possible times. I am not sure if my humpback NiMH receiver pack is going out or not. Maybe the voltage drains down too low to support both steering and throttle at the same time? Or maybe the servo is going out? My end point adjustments are good, so I don't think I burned out my servo motor that way.
Does anyone use a lipo or life receiver pack? The little bit of weight savings would be nice, but is it really worth switching over?
 
Do you have a spare servo or battery that you can try to replace the suspect component with?

A low voltage condition will usually cause "glitching" in both servos.

A LiFe RX pack will work great without a lot of extra gear installed. You need to keep an eye on the voltage of the pack and a charger that is capable of charging and balancing it.
 
I was looking at the lipo packs, but you need to buy a $10 capacitor hookup wire to even out the voltage ( not that $10 matters in this hobby ;)). Thankfully, I already have a charger that can handle the lipo. I don't know much about the life batteries, I'll have to do some more reading about those.

Actually, I do have another receiver pack I can take out of my other buggy. I didn't think of doing that because it was just easier to fire up the other buggy. :D
 
Switching to a freshly charged pack is the only way to be sure if it's a voltage problem or a fault in the servo. It could be the servo motor or circuitry overheating causing the problem and by the time you recharge the existing pack everything will have cooled off.
Let us know what you find out.

By the way, what's the mAH rating of your current pack?
 
Switching to a freshly charged pack is the only way to be sure if it's a voltage problem or a fault in the servo. It could be the servo motor or circuitry overheating causing the problem and by the time you recharge the existing pack everything will have cooled off.
Let us know what you find out.

By the way, what's the mAH rating of your current pack?

It's a 1600 mah NiMH 6.0 volt hump pack.

Sitting on my work bench the steering works great even while holding the throttle servo at WOT. Maybe it's a vibration issue when the engine is running? I won't be able to get a chance to drive it again until this weekend. I'm putting the pack on my charger now to see what the end result voltage and mAh comes out to be.
 
Actually to run a LiPo battery you will need a voltage regulator. A 2s LiPo pack will put out a nominal 7.4 volts (3.7 volts per cell). Most Original RXs and servos will burn out with that high a voltage and need it regulated to 6v.

A LiFe battery puts out about 3.3 volts per cell (6.6 volts nominal on a 2s pack). It doesn't really need a voltage regulator as it is within about 10% of the design voltage. A LiFe battery needs a charger designed specifically for that chemistry.
 
So I put the battery on my charger. It shut off after 13 minutes and delivered 307 mAh. Unfortunately, my charger does not tell me the final mAh that the battery is actually holding.
I have another charger that does tell the battery capacity, but I need to see if it has the right connection port to accept this battery pack.
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The other charger does not have a connection for my receiver pack.
 
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Does the charger you used on it have the ability to cycle the battery through a charge/discharge cycle? If so, run it through a couple of cycles.
 
Does the charger you used on it have the ability to cycle the battery through a charge/discharge cycle? If so, run it through a couple of cycles.

The newer charger I have does cycle. However, that is the one that doesn't have the connections that I need for this pack. My other charger has a connection for my pack ( and can charge Life batteries) but it does not cycle.

I may just go ahead and order a Life pack. Based on what I have read it seems to be less of a hassle than lipo.
 
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