Dead Traxxas Waterproof Servos. What do do with them?
 

Hey all...

I have accumulated several dead Traxxas servos. I have like two 2075's and one 2056. They show no signs of anything physically wrong with them. No frayed wires, no cuts, nothing. But they are dead as a doornail, and I can't imagine why.

If yer lucky, you can score these servos on Ebay for like $20 or less. So really, they are throwaways. But I hate to just pitch these if in fact there is something I can maybe do to figure out what is wrong them. I took them apart and inspected them, and nothing seems obvious. They don't smell "burnt" either.

Just wondering if there was anything one could do to bring them back, or if they should just be pitched.

J

It's probably the H-bridge outputs that are bad. It could be an integrated motor driver IC, or discrete transistors/FETs. If they are discrete, you may be able to bring them back to life. Could be the motor too. But for their cost, I wouldn't bother. Personally, I would take the PCB out, wire the motor directly to some leads (assuming the motor is still good) and bring them out to an external small ESC. May make a neat little micro crawler because they are geared really low.

Brian.. is there any way to put a voltmeter to them to test?

yeah, put the meter on the motor leads and see if they output voltage. The voltage should be + when radio is one way, and - when radio is the other. If not, the H-bridge is probably bad. If there is voltage there, the motor is probably shot. Depending on what is bad on each, you might be able to make one good servo.

If nobody can fix them, keep them for their gears. The newer Traxxas servos have better gears than the old ones but they're still plastic and can strip out. I used to have a pile of 2055s that I separated out by what was wrong with them and swapped out bad parts for good ones until I had a working servo. I burned all 6 of them up and bought a Hitec and haven't looked back.

Lol, what ya expect, its Traxxas

Servo crawler sounds cool. If the board still works you can also use it to power and control LEDs from the Rx.

I had the same thing, sold them on ebay for people to have the waterproof cases, or gears. Sold 4 of them and got around 3 bucks a piece plus shipping.