Two Days Running

We got a slight break in the weather and I was finally able to spend some time outside. On Monday afternoon I got about an hour and a half of driving in, including working on and building a brick hill climb challenge. I think it'll be pretty cool once it's a little more figured out.

I tweaked the steering so it would go to the maximum without the long servo horn hitting the rail. I got okay steering out of it, but nothing great. I was still waiting on the delivery of my new, shorter servo horn. Didn't come Monday.

It came Tuesday. It was pretty much the same length as the original plastic servo horn that came with the truck, but was made of aluminum and a little thicker.

That silver aluminum object buried under all that hardware is the servo horn, or servo arm. It's one of the first adventures someone has with a ready-to-run truck. 

For the Axial SCX10 II Chevy Blazer I replaced the servo horn with one from Absima, 25 short alu servo horn [#2030038]. It was shorter than the previous horn, which was also from Absima, and it fit much better. While still hitting the frame rail, it does so after turning the wheels significantly more. In fact, it's at just about the same setting I had them at before all this occurred.

The problem with the setup is that the original plastic servo horn brushed up against the frame as well, which contributed to it going bad. If I thought I could get away with cutting or bending the frame rail so the horn wouldn't hit it, there's considerable amount of plastic mounting stuff going on in that spot. So that's not possible. Instead I had to dial in the steering just to the point before it would hit the frame rail.

Good turning radius, I think.

Granted, it's not the complete turning potential of the truck, but maybe 85%. It had an insane turning radius to begin with. If that frame rail was out of the way, or if there was a way to lower the servo a bit to give the arm a little clearance, that would help. But I can live with what I have now. The reason I rolled it back in the first place was because the tires would always rub on the body when I would turn all the way. It was almost comical the tight turn radius that could be driven.

On Tuesday I took it out for a couple of hours. It performed magnificently and made me believe again. I keep forgetting to take my camera out when we go, so there aren't pics. I have some video, but I need to work on that first.

I learned a lot with this first lesson in repair. If you don't have the part, it takes time to get it, and it might not be the right one, so you might have to get something else. Replacing a part isn't always as easy as replacing a wheel. Sometimes you have to take apart quite a few things to fix a thing. That's not a bad thing. It's just a thing. And it's important to pay attention to the tuning knobs and to make sure the settings are correct. I've gotten to checking the trim and throttle settings at the beginning of a session.

Great truck.