What does water do to a servo?

[SMaxxin]

The servo in my wheely king has been making a noise for a while now so I decided to open it up and have a look. I think the bearing is bad, if you look closely you can see a few of the balls in the servo top. There is also a little rust and dirt in there. This is a Hitec 645 and it was protected with plasti dip and a rubber o ring on the main gear. Sorry for the blury pic, I'm no photographer.

This is what the bearing looked like once I removed it

 

[godale03]

Damn.... Condensation? Either that or water was still getting in around the horn still. That is a lot of corrosion.

 

[SMaxxin]

Water was still getting in, that stuff is unstoppable. I cleaned and lubed everything and stole a bearing from a burnt servo, gave it a few new coats of plasti dip and she is as smooth as can be again.

 

[NCNitro]

While you were in there a good coating of dielectric grease would really help out against water damage, just cover the pc board and everything else in there with it.

Thats what I am going to do once I get the servo for my tuber. I do not like the plastidip method at all.

 

[SMaxxin]

While you were in there a good coating of dielectric grease would really help out against water damage, just cover the pc board and everything else in there with it.

Thats what I am going to do once I get the servo for my tuber. I do not like the plastidip method at all.

I have tried several different ways to "waterproof" a servo and I have come to the conclusion that some servos handle water better than others. I use plasti dip as an added protection but it doesn't work with all servos. I did a JR 590 with dielectric grease and it lasted about a month, I did a JR 650 with plasti dip and it lasted about the same. Regardless of what you do water will get into the case. From my experience JR servos really do not like water, neither does airtronics, the old non waterproof Traxxas servos or pretty good (never had the new ones) and Hitec's seem to handle it the best.

If you really want it to last you should take it apart after it gets wet but I'm too lazy for that. This is the first time I have taken it apart after about 5-6 months of abuse. The Hitec 645 is tough!

 

[NCNitro]

I have always liked the 645s, and for about $30 they really can't be beat!

 

[olds97_lss]

I've burned up 3 or 4 hitec 645MG's with water over the years. Dipped, ballooned, it didn't matter. All of them let the smoke out.

I've had good luck with the 985MG's though. They come with o-rings on the case halves, screws and inside the case around the output shaft. I still put RTV around the power wire just to help avoid getting anything in there. So far, the 985MG is the longest lasting throttle servo I have ever owned. I installed it last year in my aftershock and probably burned about a gallon over the winter in the snow/slush. Servo is still just fine.

Almost every single rig has the throttle servo with the output shaft facing up. That means water is always an issue. Especially at the output shaft.

 

[Lessen]

I've not yet had any problems with ballooning my S9350 and S9451. I've run them in the winter and even with snow getting packed all around the steering servo (in a Maxx with an alum. servo guard) I've never had a problem with it. I've been running the same two servo's in my T-Maxx for almost 4 years. Maybe it's just my method of ballooning cuz everytime I take them off everything is bone dry inside. I've never taken a balloon off of my servos and found moisture.