Servo Saver? Which Servo?
 

Two club nights racing and two servo gears later (first gear which is plastic), I'm not convinced that a servo saver is not necessary. The servo I have has the following specs..

DS8417 Digital Ultra Speed MG Servo Specs
Size Category: Standard Type: Digital Torque: 82 oz/in @ 4.8V, 98 oz/in @ 6V Speed: .10 sec/60° @ 4.8V, .08 sec/60° @ 6V Dimensions (WxLxH): 0.75 x 1.54 x 1.36 in Weight: 2.03 oz Bushing Or Bearing: Bearing Bearing: Dual Motor Type: Coreless Hi Torque

I used this in my ZX-5 with no issues - ever! then now in the Cat, i'm stripping the first gear totally effortlesly with a slight clip of the front wheels. Does anyone run a servo saver? If so which one, as space is limited. Also, advise what servo people would recommend.

Cheers.

i don;t run a servo saver in mine and have had no issue so far. I use KO2123 servo's with metal gears.
Do you run at an indoor club? From experience these tend to be a lot tighter than outdoor tracks resulting in more impacts/breakages!

If you were going for a servo saver then the little kimbrough ones would be the obvious choice, but i've never tried one so can't comment if it would fit, sorry.

I was racing indoors, but to be honest, the incidents that have caused it to strip could have happened on any track. Not on particularly high speed corners either. I'm surprised it hasn't survived. I'll take a look at the KO2123 specs. Does it have any plastic gears in the train do you know?

all metal gear servos have one plastic sacrificial gear as far as i know.

Look at the AE servos, 1015's. Bullet proof :)

G

That's correct - I had to replace that one plastic gear in 2 servos in my CAT SX. But conditions were terrible and took loads of stress.
Now I'm using Savox servo 1258 and ballstud on lower position now - I belive that helps too. No breakages so far.

I don't think 'all' metal geared servos have plastic first gears is strictly true, I'm sure my Savox 1256's used in my 1/8th are all metal. Now I have a spare 1256 which is half the speed of a 1258, but almost twice the torque, so if you are moving the ball stud to give an effectively shorter arm and therefore less mechanical advantage to the system on impacts, then you will also be reducing the effective speed of the steering as your sweep will need to be greater to achieve the same amount of steering travel/angle. I might try using the torque of the 1256 to utillise the full length of the horn to effectively increase it's speed and achieve aproximately the same performance as a 1258. With the torque hopefully achieving the same level of sytem robustness. Hope this makes sense..

+1 :thumbsup::thumbsup:

Sorry I didn't read properly James's post I quoted - I meant It's truth with KoPropo 2123 :D
I've got plenty fast steering even with shorter arm, so I belive you with higher torque servo wil lbe safe ;) Anyway I belive that 1258 Savox servo can survive also with longer arm I just play it safe as I don't see that big speed advantage of longer arm.

+1 for savox truly all metal

I actually use the shortest arm I can to slow down the speed ;)

G

Probably an important question to add then , is where are you positioning the ball stud with regards to its distance from the centre of rotation? This will help me decide I think in conjunction with the servos you are using. Cheers for the responses so far guys..

I´m using a Tamiya servo saver, but got to cut the purple servo post to find the correct lenght.
In my second race I broke a metal geared blue bird low profile and got to quickly fit my 1/8th scale spare. The saver touched the under tray and the ballstud end scratched the body. But once I cut the post it works fine. Just a bit of dremmeling time :thumbsup:

That's what i did when i ran my cat. Makes the steering feel a lot more consistent than using a long horn! With the long servo horn the steering felt really twitchy.