Thanks for the tip, I checked the steering rack, don't see any cracks or anything wrong with it, still thinks it's the stock servo saver, but gonna order the aluminum steering anyway.. more pink isn't gonna hurt, right?
Also ordered the tamiya high torque servo saver, but in the mean time I swapped in a plastic tamiya servo saver I have lying around. Looks to be working smoothly, though won't know for sure if it's better till I test it on track..