This RC thing is getting expensive AND frustrating. Servo (original one) went out..got it replaced. Got about an hour or so play time and the rc truck started acting weird.. would cut off and stop working. Next morning i attempted to use it After praying lol... it moved, esc started to smoke. Esc replaced this friday. Got some playtime on Saturday (2 hours to be exact). Now the steering wont work, i'm assuming the servo.. what am doing wrong? I'm up to $135.00 in repairs!!!! I got the RC car in Feb and its spent more time being fixed. I got to go back tomorrow.
Trucks Hoonigan RC truck
- Thread starter CruzDaddy
- Start date
RandyDSok
Well-Known Member
While toy grade RC stuff is relatively inexpensive, the replacement parts for toy grade stuff is almost unheard of... Hobby grade ( and higher up to the professional level ) which do have replacement parts available for the common parts that fail or are damaged in a wreck and RC stuff have NEVER been cheap even when I first started getting into the hobby in the mid-70's it was expensive for it's time.
I can't just guess at what is happening with your situation... but I can mention some common causes of things are like what you are describing and may be a possible explanation. While any of the following may apply, it isn't unusual for several of these to be present and also combining to cause a problem.
The electric motors and the ESC's that supply the power to them... were never intended to run full throttle except for a very short time. At full throttle you are actually exceeding the max amps that these are rated for. Typically you should at most go around the 75-80% mark but to find out where it is... you need to run an inline amp meter temporarily so you know where it really is at. In addition to this, the longer your run your motor/esc the hotter they get unless you have good air flow over them... as the heat increases so does the amp draw because the resistance is going up as well.
Similar to exceeding the motor and ESC's working amperage range is binding found within the drive train of the system as a whole. Increased binding in the drive train also increases amperage draw.
The servo's also can often travel a larger range than the travel the steering can accommodate resulting in the servo starting to bind and increase the amperage draw. Most decent quality transmitters will let you set your max travel distance to help avoid this problem. A servo that is binding increases the load on your ESC or BEC and also on the servo itself which can cause any of them to fail.
Just to cover things more... damage from wrecks etc. If you list out what it costs to buy the individual parts you can replace... you will find they exceed the cost of the whole kit. These parts are higher because stocking them on shelves and warehouses adds to the cost not to mention the labor costs of the people needed to stock them etc. I've seen many talk about buying a complete kit of whatever RC thing they have just so they have spares on hand and at a lower overall cost of storing those parts by themselves.
Hobby stuff, even outside of the RC hobby, is classed as non-essentials... and as sort of a luxury, have always had a price tag to reflect that. This is just a fact of life in general that must be dealt with if you are going to enjoy the hobby.
I can't just guess at what is happening with your situation... but I can mention some common causes of things are like what you are describing and may be a possible explanation. While any of the following may apply, it isn't unusual for several of these to be present and also combining to cause a problem.
The electric motors and the ESC's that supply the power to them... were never intended to run full throttle except for a very short time. At full throttle you are actually exceeding the max amps that these are rated for. Typically you should at most go around the 75-80% mark but to find out where it is... you need to run an inline amp meter temporarily so you know where it really is at. In addition to this, the longer your run your motor/esc the hotter they get unless you have good air flow over them... as the heat increases so does the amp draw because the resistance is going up as well.
Similar to exceeding the motor and ESC's working amperage range is binding found within the drive train of the system as a whole. Increased binding in the drive train also increases amperage draw.
The servo's also can often travel a larger range than the travel the steering can accommodate resulting in the servo starting to bind and increase the amperage draw. Most decent quality transmitters will let you set your max travel distance to help avoid this problem. A servo that is binding increases the load on your ESC or BEC and also on the servo itself which can cause any of them to fail.
Just to cover things more... damage from wrecks etc. If you list out what it costs to buy the individual parts you can replace... you will find they exceed the cost of the whole kit. These parts are higher because stocking them on shelves and warehouses adds to the cost not to mention the labor costs of the people needed to stock them etc. I've seen many talk about buying a complete kit of whatever RC thing they have just so they have spares on hand and at a lower overall cost of storing those parts by themselves.
Hobby stuff, even outside of the RC hobby, is classed as non-essentials... and as sort of a luxury, have always had a price tag to reflect that. This is just a fact of life in general that must be dealt with if you are going to enjoy the hobby.
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