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Rotostart Wand

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M

MaxxMasterS2

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I use a Rotostart wand to start my Savage. I purchased it RTR and have not made any modifications (besides adding a fuel filter and fail safe).

I am still in the process of breaking in the engine as I have only put a few tanks through it. The engine stopped and when I tried to start it up again, the shaft on the wand stopped turning. I can hold the shaft with my fingers, and press the button on the rotostart wand, and it makes a noise like it should when the shaft is spinning, but it doesn't spin. Has this happened to anyone? I really don't want to buy another rotostart wand and my drill doesn't seem to turn the engine over fast enough to use that. Any thoughts would be appreciated, thanks!
 
Sounds like you stripped a gear inside the wand. If it's new,contact HPI and they will probably replace it for free.

A drill should be plenty fast enough to start the engine but be careful,it has a much higher torque(unless it has adjustable clutch) and can damage the engine if you try to start it in a flooded condition. Have you checked to make sure your glow ignitor battery is fully charged and that your glow plug is good?
 
Yes, I fully charged the glow ignitor, and the truck was running. I had started it (and stalled it because I don't have it tuned right yet) a few times. The wand and truck are years old now, because I took an RC break, but they are in "new condition". I will maybe ask at my LHS to see what they think too. I was just curious if this had happened to anyone else or if there is a known problem/solution.

My drill does have an adjustable clutch, what resistance setting would you recommend? I only gave it a couple cranks because it seemed to turn it almost half the speed that the rotostart spun it.
 
There were quite a few lemons in the original roto starts,I've been lucky with mine. If you buy one,look for the roto-start2.

As for resistance, as low as possible and still consistently turn the engine over.
 
Racer 1966 said:
There were quite a few lemons in the original roto starts,I've been lucky with mine. If you buy one,look for the roto-start2.

As for resistance, as low as possible and still consistently turn the engine over.
Click to expand...

I opened the rotostart up, and sure enough, one of the gears is missing one tooth. There really was a mess in there.

I tried my 9V cordless drill, in reverse, with low resistance, and the engine turns over, but I swear it's not fast enough to start it. I have a 15V drill I can try as well, but these darn starting wands are going to be the death of me (I also have a TMaxx 2.5 with the EZ start that I ripped the blue wire off from day 1).

I am seriously debating outfitting both trucks with pull-starts.
 
I like the Rotostart because it's not heavy on the truck, and I assumed I could also start it with a cordless drill. I hate the EZ start because the motor is housed on the truck, but other than that, I do like the convenience of just strapping the thing to myself and hitting a button to start it.

Just to be clear on this, you're saying if your truck isn't already tuned correctly, and you install a pull-start on it, problems will arise?
 

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