Help with phantom reversing!!

[RichardG]

Hi,

New hear. Please excuse the lack of knowledge, I’m learning on the job!

I have a budget trail truck that I picked up (FTX Outback 3 - Paso), which has been working fine up until today, but now it’s violently throwing itself into reverse, when attempting to drive at slow speed. It’s a little 390 motor, running on 2S Lipo and the truck has a horrible ESC/receiver combo.

The servo had also started flickering left and right and the steering had become a little “crunchy”. I since learned that the stock servo has lost some teeth, so I switched it out for a new one of the same size that I had spare (until the stronger one arrives). I thought this might be the route of all the problems, but I’m still getting the violent reversing.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!! As I don’t know if it’s an ESC issue, or transmitter/receiver issue. The throttle control has always been stupidly sensitive.

P.S. I do have a better quality kit build in progress, but this is a fun little trail truck, so I would like to save it if possible, even if it’s just for my kids to bash around.

[Fallen]

Any other servos on the truck? Bad servos send weird feedback and make odd things happen.

It's possible that your previously bad servo cooked either your receiver or ESC. Since you have another truck, I'm assuming you have another RX and ESC. Swap out the possible bad, for the known good. One component at a time. That should tell you which of them has failed.

Other than "part-swap troubleshooting" you'd need some pretty advanced electronic understanding to nail it down. Hopefully part swapping narrows it down.

It seems your truck has a RX/ESC in one. I guess you'll end up swapping both out anyway.

[ferp420]

this might be kinda stupid but have you checked the throtle trim just a thought

[RichardG]

Originally Posted by Fallen

Any other servos on the truck? Bad servos send weird feedback and make odd things happen.

It's possible that your previously bad servo cooked either your receiver or ESC. Since you have another truck, I'm assuming you have another RX and ESC. Swap out the possible bad, for the known good. One component at a time. That should tell you which of them has failed.

Other than "part-swap troubleshooting" you'd need some pretty advanced electronic understanding to nail it down. Hopefully part swapping narrows it down.

It seems your truck has a RX/ESC in one. I guess you'll end up swapping both out anyway.

Sorry for the late response and thanks for the tips. As mentioned it’s an ESC/receiver combo, which makes diagnosis more difficult.

The servo was missing teeth, so I’m assuming that it was likely struggling for a while, before I realised the issue.

I’m learning lessons all the time here and I’m definitely done with cheap stock electronics.

[RichardG]

Originally Posted by ferp420

this might be kinda stupid but have you checked the throtle trim just a thought

Sorry for the late reply also.

I thought it may be the issue as well, as I had set it to run slowly on its own when doing a little maintenance recently.

Tried adjusting it, but it’s still doing the sudden reverse thing.

I’m throwing a Hobbywing 1060 in it, as I don’t really do any serious crawling with it, so hopefully that will be fit for purpose.