Ruined servo....

[JOSH1973]

So, the other day i had just finished building my rc4wd Gelande 2. The electronics I have are......ESC:Novak rooster,Motor:Axial 55t, Servo: Axial AS-3, Battery- racers edge 5500mah nimh. The only thing that is brand new is the esc. Anyways, I start doing some light crawling with it for the first time, and everything is running great. After about ten min. it starts to freak out, the servo is going back and forth on its own, along with the esc, and i have no controll with the radio. The car goes back and forth rapidly a couple times then stops. Once it does, the radio is not having any affect on it. Also i start to see smoke coming out by the battery. After I take it inside, unhook the battery and plug it back in, the esc works fine. The car with goe forward and backward just fine, and the drag brake seems to be working fine. However, the steering is dead. The servo wount move at all. I can smell ohms burn on it, so I assume its dead. Also the battery connector(both the male and female side) are burnt up on the inside. BUt it still functions(im going to replace them to be safe). So im wondering if anyone knows what the hell happened. I ordered a high torque savox servo to replace the bad one. BUt im wondering what caused the incident in the first place? Was the axial servo just not up to the task and burned up, cause the whole system to freak out for a min? I just dont wanna put the 80$ savox in the thing to have the same thing happen.

[6sharky9]

Sounds like you had a short of some sorts...cant deny a stronger servo would be better but I would think whatever servo you had on it expensive or not may have suffered the same fate for whatever the problem was...even the best servos are prone to frying with shorts.

Sorry..no suggestions on what caused the short.

[Charlie-III]

Originally Posted by 6sharky9

Sounds like you had a short of some sorts...cant deny a stronger servo would be better but I would think whatever servo you had on it expensive or not may have suffered the same fate for whatever the problem was...even the best servos are prone to frying with shorts.

Sorry..no suggestions on what caused the short.

+1.

Did you check the steering EPA's when you set up the radio? If you over drove the servo (steering binds but RX is calling for more steering out of the servo), it may have caused it to fail, this could lead to a high amp draw which will create the other issues you saw.
Also check to make sure the steering is free from binding with no servo attached. Move the steering from full lock one way to full lock the other way. Also check with the axle moved around (articulated) to make sure it stays free.

As to your new servo that is ordered, if it's ~200inoz+, you may want an external BEC to power it. Or, depending on the voltage of the pack, you may be able to power the servo direct off the ESC power input and skip the external BEC.
Read up on the specs for the servo.