What kind of car?

THE REST IS NOT A DIRECT REPLY, JUST AN OVERALL OBSERVATION.
The hotwire tuning is really useful with these servos, and I'm just not sure enough people are bothering to do any of it.

Setting center and endpoints independent of the radio makes the steering feel much more linear in both directions. The feel adjustment has a huge impact on "jitter" at center, and if you find the car twitchy on the straights or over jumps or whatever, dial it back a step. The torque and torque delay settings are just the safety settings to keep you from breaking gears. Judging on a car stand, the servos act differently than a "normal" digital servo, but on the track the difference has been very positive for me.

The parameters you can set aren't as numerous as my Sanwa PGS servos, but all of my programmable servos "jitter" on the car stand, on the track they're perfect for what I have them set at for my preferences. The jitter in free air unnerves a lot of people, but that means I have the possibility of snagging them up at a reduced cost if I'm looking for one.

Not saying it's the case for the last few complaints, sometimes you get a dud from any company, but for anyone thinking about getting one of these servos and slapping it in a vehicle without ever plugging it into a hotwire, IMO, you're really limiting yourself. The whole reason for programmable servos or speed controls is to tune to your own preferences. Non-programmable servos leave a lot on the table in an effort to have a "one tune fits all" solution that will have fewer returns for things like being too aggressive on centering, which we've used for decades as an indicator that a servo is on it's last legs, but isn't necessarily the case anymore.

https://www.teamtekin.com/servoguide.html

This guide is far easier to wrap your head around than Sanwa's instructions, and the graphical interface is much easier to deal with as well.

I wish there was a scaling option for the software though, that screen is tiny on today's 4k displays! Can't servo tune via phone, so this is the biggest drawback to the hotwire software on PC for me right now.

For the record, I've never been sponsored by anyone, I like to tinker, and I first got a T180 last year to replace a 160TBL in 2wd buggy just to see if I might find something just a little better. After just a couple tweaks, it isn't coming back out until failure. I have generally liked and used Tekin products for a long time, but I have electronics from a lot of brands, if it works, I don't go replacing stuff to try and be completely brand loyal or anything. I do try and be helpful with stuff I've spent time on, though.

I will also say the included thin servo arm with the "lower" torque models is pretty well useless on anything that doesn't have a chassis mounted servo saver though. Less than one lap on my buggy with no crashes (just one cased jump) and it looked like interpretive art.

Hi Harry
the vehicle is an xray T4,on the car stand the servo is hunting for centre,when I rev the car in the air the servo jitters alot and when I put the car on the carpet and accelerate the car darts to the right or left,only when accelerating,I have been in this hobby for 15 years and used all or nost of the servos and never had this problem,do you know what is the cause and remedy?
thanks in advance

Mine was definitely not good and I don’t want my car jittering in the air either and tried every setting on them to rectify and finally gave up on them

In that such of a case, I would first check the servo wire routing, try to keep it away from "noisy" things like the motor or esc (and sometimes fans).

On the T4, I would think you have your receiver behind the servo with the esc behind the motor, so that should be ok.

After that, I've seen dirty receivers give weird signals, so maybe uncase the receiver and clean well with alcohol and a nylon brush, dry well and retry.

While that's drying, check that all your receiver plug wiring is in good shape for all components with no frayed wires or damaged plugs. Check the entire run of wire for pinched spots, especially on the ESC lead, but also your fan and transponder leads. I had a transponder missing laps a few months back that was also causing weird mid-corner steering loss because the wires were getting squeezed together in my routing when the chassis flexed. This needs special attention with the tendency these days to hide wiring anywhere possible for that clean pro look.

Way back in the boosted days, I had a first gen RS Pro that gave weird brownout and loss of servo function on the long straights that was eventually tracked down to where the wire entered the case and connected to the board, the wire (all three) was heavily pinched and wasn't keeping up on the current demand on acceleration. In that instance, I fixed it by opening up the hole in the case the wiring went through and replacing the lead with a heavier guage servo lead, which resolved my issues. I think that very same esc just finally gave up reading sensors under load, so it was quite a long term fix. There aren't many amps available from the BEC, so you don't really want to give up any needlessly.

I don't know what ESC you're using, but the BEC's can also degrade with age, further lowering input. Also verify your capacitor(s) are in good shape and well connected.

If all of that checks out without even a suggestion in your mind that something "isn't that bad", Tekin support is pretty good, and unfortunately RMA's are sometimes necessary across all brands. Seems to be slightly more prevalent in this pandemic world, unfortunately.

I attended my first race in 20 years back in December (EP Touring) and I’m not gonna lie - the first day of this 4 day event, the T-180 I have in the car started twitching a bit on center, but would stop after moving the wheel a bit. It even twitched a few times when I would return from center while on track, which had me a bit concerned. But after the first three runs in day one (all practice), it just stopped doing it. Didn’t have a single problem after that all weekend.

Not sure if it just needed “break-in” or what, but if HotWire offers some kind of sensitivity tuning, I may give that a shot if I should encounter it. I have another pair of T-180’s for the IC Touring car I have yet to build.

your servo should never have to “break in”

hi guys
How do i go about getting a refund for the tekin servo
thanks

Have to see what your options are through Tekin service.

Contact Tekin and discuss your problem. They will most likely give you a service number and ask you to send it in. Not sure that they would refund $$, but may send you a new one if they determine yours is defective... Tekin has really good customer service.