High Torque Servo needed?
 

Hey all,
I just changed the rod ends on my HPI Sprint 2 to fix the steering slop and have increased stability. However because the cups have a tighter fit on the ball studs now the wheels are harder to turn. I tried two different standard sized servos and both don't seem to have enough torque to bring the wheels back to neutral position. And this seems to only happen when i turn left as well. Should i get a high torque servo? Which one is good? I don't really want to spend more than $35. Thanks!

you have some binding or tightness in your steering linkage. You might want to re-check it. The steering should be easy to turn when the vehicle is static.

I'm going to take apart the steering apparatus and lube the cups with cork grease. Thanks for the reply

You shouldn't need any lube! It attracts grime and wears out the ball and cup faster. If the turnbuckle is threaded too far into the ball cup it will deform the cup and it will bind on the ball, I would check that.

Too late =X, already put grease in the cups. It helped a little bit, but it turns out that some of the rod ends had such a tight fit on the ball studs that they needed quite a bit of force to move around. So to fix this i exchanged it with other rod ends (bought 2 sets of 12). It helped a little, the servo still can't center the wheels after coming from left or right directions but it's definitely a lot better than before.
Now i'm confused about one thing, do servos use less power when coming back to neutral? Because it doesn't seem to have a problem turning the wheel; it had enough power to push the car, while on the table, away from my finger when i tried to prevent it from moving. After i release the the steering wheel on the transmitter, i have to manually push the wheels about 2 degrees back to neutral.

My best guess without seeing it in person is that the last 2 degrees would be accounted for in "slop" in all of the moving parts, you can't get rid of all of it. Hope that helps. In all my cars any play in the steering is noticed when coming back to center.

Well before i changed the rod ends the wheels came back to neutral without a problem. Also these are RPM made and much more rigid so i don't think it's steering slop.

Have you tried running the car with the new links yet? It might not even be a noticeable problem. IMO you shouldn't NEED a high torque servo.

Yea i ran the car with the new links. The car seems to have trouble tracking straight now =\.