not getting power

[CharliesTheMan]

Well I thought everything was ok, but apparently I have some serious water damage on my electronics. You can read about what happened in my tough as nails forum. Anyway, I dried the electronics to the best of my ability Later, I put everything back together to see if they were working. They worked for a few minutes, but then one of the servos started to jerk a few times, and then it didn't respond to the transmitter and would show no sign of getting power. Before things got wet and after I dried them for a while, when I turned the power switch on the servos would "come to center" as I call it, but now there is no sign of any power when I turn on the switch. When I took things apart, the receiver case was holding quite a bit of water, and the servos all appeared dry inside. Would a bad receiver be the problem? Is there a way to test the receiver or servos with a voltage meter or something?

 

[rckid91]

bad reciever would cause no power across itself to the servos
dont know about testing em prolly could go from the battery side to the servo ports with a volt meter

 

[olds97_lss]

I think the servos are always getting power, it's the signal wire that would fluctuate. The posts on the receiver that go to the black/red of the servos should show constant voltage when the receiver is plugged in and turned on.

 

[CharliesTheMan]

So basically it would make since that they would not respond at all if the receiver is bad??

 

[HeartBreak]

It could also be that you have a bad crystal, or perhaps even water in the crystal socket, causing a loose connection.

 

[CharliesTheMan]

It could also be that you have a bad crystal, or perhaps even water in the crystal socket, causing a loose connection.

Well I did open the receiver case, dry everything out including all sockets and plugs, so I think something must be fried. When I took the 4 plugs out where the wires go into the receiver, they were wet. Also, even when the transmitter was turned off, the servos always made a noise when I turned the electrical switch on, now they do nothing. I don't think this would be the crystal since it used to do it even with no transmitter turned on.

 

[olds97_lss]

You sure your battery is good and charged? Also, you sure your switch is working? They are typically one of the things that stop working when wet.

If you have a spare receiver pack, you can plug it directly into the receiver to bypass the switch.

 

[Rolex]

I once ended up in a lake, and the BIGGEST problem was water in the receiver. I had no compressor with me so I just opened everything up, blew out most of it, and let it sit and dry in the sun. After getting it home a few hours later, I blew it all off with the compressor and shot it with Radio Shack tuner cleaner. Everything worked fine.
Since you turned on the receiver while it was wet, there's a VERY good chance that you've damaged the circuitry.

 

[CharliesTheMan]

I don't have a battery pack, I use rechargable AA batteries, and yes that was the first thing I did was double check to make sure that I had good batteries. I was wondering if it might be the switch as well, I'm going to try and go ahead and replace it anyway. I bought a new receiver so we'll see how that works out once it gets here this coming week. I opened all of the servo cases when I was drying everything out, way before I turned anything on, and couldn't find any moisture in any of them. Do servos normally have to be replaced after getting wet?

 

[Rolex]

Not always. Mine were fine. I got it out of the water before anything got inside them, and since you mentioned the switch, that and the plugs were the only thing I hadn't checked. When it didn't work, I pulled apart all the connections, dried them out, blew out the switch with the compressor, then ballooned everything.
In your case, I'm sure your receiver is toast.

 

[CharliesTheMan]

Update: Problem Solved!!

Well I got my new receiver in the mail today and hooked everything back up. Everything is working good from what I can tell. I'll have to take it out in the morning to run it, but I checked it over pretty good and everything seems ok. I keep seeing guys saying they are running there truck in the snow without protection, and they don't realize they are playing with fire. Now my moisture was UNINTENTIONAL and a freak accident, but still it just got a lil wet and it was fried, can't imagine what snow and mud would do to one. Thanks for all the help guys!!

 

[jack_mcgill]

yup man...as soon as you get water between 2 conection, chances are that you will short something out, thats when you fry stuff,you only need one minute component to fail to fail all the system....lessons from this-power dont go with water XD

this is just at informative title for everyone:

in electronic there is 3 values
-tension(Volts) this is the strength of the power
-current(Amps) this is the amount of power
-resistance (Ohms) this is how much the circuit resist to the power flowing through it

when you short something in a system, the shunt(short) bypasses partly or entirerly the system witch makes the resistance drop down under the nominal resitance of the system.
now there is a law that says when the resistance drops,the current increase and the voltage stays the same,
as the current increases it starts overloading the part of the system that is not bypassed, temperature builds up in the components and fries them up.

and thats how it all happens my friends. in real life there is a lot more values than this that contribute into how a system works but this is THE main basics. pretty usefull for building simple electronic circuits hope this helps someone sometime xD

 

[CharliesTheMan]

Well that certainly explains some stuff that I didn't know about. My electrical knowledge doesn't even come close to stuff like that. I appresiate all the help. We had a beautiful day today and I took the day off so the T-Maxx got a test drive. Everything is going great!!! I've been tuning and stuff and it's so good to get some nitro back in my bloodstream after a week!! Thanks again everyone for all your help!

 

[CharliesTheMan]

UPDATE: She's back running again better than ever. I have been studying tuning while she's been down for the week and wow what a difference it can make. I kept having trouble because everytime I would tune it to get it running like it should, it would be overheating. Well I learned that you can "trick" the engine into thinking it has a good tune when really it's all wrong. Now I know what to do and she's running great. I started hitting jumps today for the first time. In nitro addiction terms, I just moved up from RC Beer to RC Crack, and I hate to see what the next level will be when I go to the track next week! It's so much more fun when you know how to work on them and tune them because you can enjoy them more and work on them less.

 

[olds97_lss]

can't imagine what snow and mud would do to one.

In case your curious... servo after bashing in snow:

It's really hard getting the smoke back into the chips... they must have some special equipment at the factory that forces the smoke in there some how... lol!