Everest 10 Not Steering

[jdtree]

Howdy!

Long time lurker, first time posting... great forum!

The steering on my son's Everest 10 stopped working. The electronics are stock - although I have been using a 2S Lipo battery and steel diff locks as recommended in someone's RCCrawler thread (I also upgraded to steel driveshafts when one of the plastic ones broke, aluminum hex nuts when one of the plastic ones broke).

The receiver has 3 channels, with Steering servo in 1, the throttle (and power, I assume) in 2, and nothing in 3. I disconnected the servo, and moved the throttle to 1, and I could control forward and backward with the steering wheel on my controller. I figured "new servo," right?

Wrong.

I ordered a new servo (same part as the original - Hexfly HX-15S), plugged it in 1, throttle in 2...powered it on... no steering. So I though, maybe there's something up with the receiver, right?

Wrong.

I ordered a new receiver (same part as the original - Redcat Racing 28479 2.4 GHz receiver), plugged it in, bound it (binded it?), and still no steering.

When I went through the "bind" process, though, I could not bind it while the steering servo was plugged in. I put the jumper in the "Bind" slot, but the LED did not light up. Even when I unplugged this, the light didn't fast blink as expected. I had to try turning it off and on a couple times before the the LED blinked as necessary. Then, I could bind the controller, and it would work.

I called Redcat, and they said that this means that the servo is bad... wait a minute... you mean the brand-new servo I just bought? Yep, he said... but that's ok, Redcat will send you a new one. Goody.

Since we were coming up on the Labor Day weekend, I wanted to get out with my boy and do some crawling, so I figured, I could get a new servo so we could play this weekend, and whenever the warranty servo comes in, we could convert to 4 wheel steering .

That was stupid. The new servo came in, and I was really stoked, because now I knew how to work the receiver, bind everything properly... this was going to be great. But it wasn't. Steering still doesn't work. So either my existing servo died, OR I got 2 brand new broken servos, OR I got a broken receiver, OR something else is dead.

My brain immediately goes to the ESC... but before I drop $75 (or whatever deal I might be able to find), I want to reach out to the experts (that's you!!!).

Do I go ahead and get a new ESC? Could that be the problem?

I fully charged my Lipo just to make sure it wasn't a low battery issue (I don't know where the charge is on my stock battery, but I understand that it needs to be discharged before re-charging, but I'm willing to try it).

What else can I try? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!
Jason

If you're interested, here's a little bit about me...
I recently bought a Redcat Racing Everest 10 for my 5 year old. We had been playing with a buddy's Maxstone, and had so much fun, I figured I'd drop a little coin to bring some joy into the little tyke's life.

After several hundred hours of viewing YouTube videos, I can feel myself slipping into a new hobby! I want to get my boy's crawler fixed, and I was planning to get my own Everest, but after doing the math on all the "upgrades" (er... repairs), I think I might just jump up to an SCX10.

[MasteroFlego]

You should probably disassemble and inspect anything related to steering, I had a similar problem with my bomber that turned out to be a stripped servo horn. Since you've already replaced the servo and receiver, I think you should test them with a different ESC, to eliminate that as a problem.

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[Greatscott]

Welcome to the forums!!!

Looks like you have done a good deal of logical troubleshooting here.

Most likely you do not have a problem with your servos, but bad/low power coming from the ESC's BEC. The ESC is the only thing that you have not swapped out, and the problem remains. You can do a couple of things here, you can replace the ESC, or you can install an external BEC. A Castle Creations BEC is about $25, gets soldered in on the ESC side of your battery connector, and plugs into the bind/spare port on your RX. The only other thing you need to to is to remove the red wire going from the ESC to the RX; I normally just pull the connector our of the plug and put some heat shrink on it (its still powered from the ESC). The CC BECs are reprogrammed to 5VDC, but you can get a one of their programmers to change the voltage (recommend 6.5VDC), or, most LHSs will reprogram it for you if you buy it there.

[clm]

Is the steering dual rate knob turned all the way up?

[Chris81]

You said you could put the esc into the reciever and control the throttle with the steering wheel. Did you try plugging your steering servos into the throttle channel to see if they work?

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[jdtree]

Originally Posted by MasteroFlego

You should probably disassemble and inspect anything related to steering, I had a similar problem with my bomber that turned out to be a stripped servo horn. Since you've already replaced the servo and receiver, I think you should test them with a different ESC, to eliminate that as a problem.

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Thanks for the response - I had ordered a servo horn just in case... I have disassembled everything but the electronics. Unfortunately, I don't have a spare ESC (although that's where I think the problem may lie).

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[jdtree]

Originally Posted by Greatscott

Welcome to the forums!!!

Looks like you have done a good deal of logical troubleshooting here.

Most likely you do not have a problem with your servos, but bad/low power coming from the ESC's BEC. The ESC is the only thing that you have not swapped out, and the problem remains. You can do a couple of things here, you can replace the ESC, or you can install an external BEC. A Castle Creations BEC is about $25, gets soldered in on the ESC side of your battery connector, and plugs into the bind/spare port on your RX. The only other thing you need to to is to remove the red wire going from the ESC to the RX; I normally just pull the connector our of the plug and put some heat shrink on it (its still powered from the ESC). The CC BECs are reprogrammed to 5VDC, but you can get a one of their programmers to change the voltage (recommend 6.5VDC), or, most LHSs will reprogram it for you if you buy it there.

Wow, thanks for detailed and thoughtful response!!!

I had to dig around the internet to find an RC encyclopedia to make sense of the acronym soup in your post ... But your explanation helped me understand quite a bit how the electronics work - I really appreciate your "spelling" it out for me...

One of the things I like about the the stock electronics is that they are waterproof (at least enough to survive my little guy sending his crawler through *every* puddle in sight!

Is the CC BEC mod you recommend waterproof as suggested, or is there a coating / process to make it so?

It looks like the power / switch (red wire) have some coating on them, so I imagine I need to use a heat gun to disconnect?

I'll look to see if my LHS has the part, and bring in my rig to get some "eyes on" advice.

Once that's all done, I'm thinking my next mod will be a flux capacitor, so I can go back in time and stop myself from buying the servos and RX unit

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[jdtree]

Originally Posted by clm

Is the steering dual rate knob turned all the way up?

Hey thanks for the suggestion, unfortunately I did try adjusting the dual rate knob.

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[jdtree]

Originally Posted by Chris81

You said you could put the esc into the reciever and control the throttle with the steering wheel. Did you try plugging your steering servos into the throttle channel to see if they work?

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Chris - oops - yes I did try that unsuccessfully - I forgot to mention that in my post.

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[MasteroFlego]

Take it to your LHS and see if they'll let you test it with a different ESC, we can't eliminate any electronics as the problem until we are sure they are actually getting power. (which they won't if your ESC is fried.)

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[StomperCrawler]

Hey JD, sorry to hear about your troubles. I'm pretty sure it's an issue with your ESC, namely it's built-in weaksauce BEC; this is such a common issue that there's this thread:

Yes, you need an external BEC!

That being said, a lot of guys are raving about the WP1080 ESC'S that has a built-in 3amp BEC. It's waterproof and runs $42 instead of $75, plus it may prevent you from needing to spend $25 on a Castle BEC. You can pick one up here:

Hobbywing QUICRUN WP1080 Waterproof Rock Crawler Brushed ESC, (2-3S)

Lemme know if there's anything else I can do for you. ;)

[ferp420]

My e10 is running the wp1060 for almost a year now its ch3aper than the 1080 and has plenty of power to run the e10 and there are cheap BECs for around 5 if shipped from a us seller or $1 if you can wait 3 months i ordered 10 lol so now i have a box of brand new BECs lol

[moondaddy]

My uncle had the same problem with his e10 out of the box. Ended up being the hexfly rebranded flysky receiver was bad.

[StomperCrawler]

If it is the receiver, that's even cheaper; about $6:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/Radio-Contr...0603&_zpclkd=1

...and I also like the WP1060 and use $3 ebay BEC's. ;)

[jdtree]

I just realized that I hadn't updated this thread. For the sake of helping others who might run into the same problem:

I ended up replacing the receiver and the servo, and the problems went away.

I used stock replacement parts, and had to change them out a second time after my little guy took his E10 swimming.

Since then, I have upgraded to a waterproof Axial ESC (taken off my SCX10.2) and a more powerful waterproof servo (https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/...?ie=UTF8&psc=1).

I used the balloon trick to protect the receiver, which has been working so far.