I learned an important lesson yesterday while driving my truck around. While ripping and roaring up and down the road, I noticed that the steering was starting to get sluggish so I pulled up beside myself and checked it out. The wheels would not do a full turn. I blamed it on dead batteries. So I shut it down and when I got home, I checked the voltage on the batteries which were at 1.3v. This should have been enough to turn the wheels but I replaced them anyway. After installing the new cells I checked the steering again. The wheels didn't turn like the used to. I remembered that I tightened the pivot ball caps the other day thinking that they came loose. Luckily I remembered how much I turned them. I backed them off and the steering was back to normal.
The lesson learned was don't fiddle with things that you don't understand and muck it up, and keep a fresh set of batteries on hand at all times. Better yet, I'll be purchasing the rechargeable NiMh pack for the truck and will not have to worry about changing them again. I have toyed with the idea of making my own pack which shouldn't be too hard. I'll post back with photos if I do make one.
As an aside, this thing is very tough. I have flipped it over and over a few times and have been lucky so far that it didn't break anything. I'll need to be a little easier on it until I get used to driving it before attempting jumps and the like.
