It's a serial servo killer!

I'm not having much luck with my servo survival rate. The first MG995 died even before I'd got the truck out of the house and now it's killing them at the rate of one per battery pack. I guess the combination of huge grippy tyres and locked differentials is just too for them. After the death of three I swapped to Power HD HD-1501MG Metal Gear 17kg servos, but these faired no better. The first of these (fitted to the rear of the truck) burnt out its circuit board after a 30 minute continuous run, causing an internal fire which holed the plastic case with much accompanying smoke. And the smell - OMG! Being as I was on the beach at Anchor Head at the time the only water available came from a rock pool but at least it saved the rest of the crawler. As I extinguished the burning I could see glowing red hot metal through the unwanted hole in the casing!

Anyway, the seller replaced the item, claiming they are normally very reliable and that this one must have a manufacturing fault. On the following trip out the front one gave up the ghost as well, with the output shaft becoming very loose and the servo locking out at full travel in one direction when no power was applied. Turning on the power brings it back to neutral but then it gets very glitchy so obviously the potentiometer is now getting out of synch due to some degree of gear damage.

I guess at some point I'm going to have to buy some Savox metal-cased servos, although these are very expensive at about £55 each for the normal versions, and £85 for the titanium geared varieties.

There's nothing in the piggy-bank at the moment - so future posting may be delayed for a while!