The rudder servo in this boat has always been a little bit flukey. It was the only 'waterproof' servo available at the time which could deal with the torque we needed to move the rudder Kitty has.
The servo is NOT IP rated (Dewi's is!), and is pretty expensive. When new it is all metal gear except one plastic gear, which has broken twice, so IIRC the servo currently fitted in kitty was opened, and had the plastic gear replaced with a metal gear of the same size which was salvaged out of the other broken servo. Due to it's size and torque requirements, this servo draws a tonne of current, so much so that it often caused issues of rebooting the sail-winch when it was working hard (although I think this might have been fixed, but I don't know how).
There are now IP rated servo's on the market for a good price which provide the torque needed, and are much smaller physically. These should be much more reliable as well so I really advise looking into them.
The torque needed can also be significantly reduced by drilling out the mounting hole for the rudder slightly (and when I mean slightly, I mean VERY, VERY slightly, we're talking microns). It's a very stiff fit at the moment, but it cannot be drilled out so far that it wobbles (like, at all), as that would cause horrendous forces in places you really don't want them.
The rudder servo in this boat has always been a little bit flukey. It was the only 'waterproof' servo available at the time which could deal with the torque we needed to move the rudder Kitty has.
The servo is NOT IP rated (Dewi's is!), and is pretty expensive. When new it is all metal gear except one plastic gear, which has broken twice, so IIRC the servo currently fitted in kitty was opened, and had the plastic gear replaced with a metal gear of the same size which was salvaged out of the other broken servo. Due to it's size and torque requirements, this servo draws a tonne of current, so much so that it often caused issues of rebooting the sail-winch when it was working hard (although I think this might have been fixed, but I don't know how).
There are now IP rated servo's on the market for a good price which provide the torque needed, and are much smaller physically. These should be much more reliable as well so I really advise looking into them. The torque needed can also be significantly reduced by drilling out the mounting hole for the rudder slightly (and when I mean slightly, I mean VERY, VERY slightly, we're talking microns). It's a very stiff fit at the moment, but it cannot be drilled out so far that it wobbles (like, at all), as that would cause horrendous forces in places you really don't want them.