[cool_cars]

Well, I broke down and bought my first ZZ SE yesterday. I got the gray/silver Audi TT. I got it home and found it had all the steering problems. I got about 5 to the right and 1 to the left and the center chattering was absolutely obnoxious. I almost took it back because it was sooo bad, but I couldn't resist the need to tinker with it and I'm glad I did. I started to experiment with the mod to the wiring/feedback resistor in the car (steering fix on the other forum). Here are my findings. Please pardon as I do not have a camera for photos, but will do my best to explain.

In the "other forum" they talk about the bridge between the center pin/blue wire and the passenger side pin/green wire. To breifly sum up, you remove the blue wire and break the bridge between the pins and recenter the servo. Well, it looks like RS is now putting the blue and green wire on the center pin and no bridge between the two pins. Electrically, this is the same result. From my experience with servos, typically the pot is wired for three wires, a left, right and center. This is for proper feedback of the servo positioning. The pot has to be at an electrical center, meaning the resistance value between the left and center pin equal the resistance value between the right and center pin. When you are turning left or right, resistance will increase on one side and decrease on the other proportionally. With the kunkles and the steering bar removed, I adjusted the steering screw on the car which actually turns the pot and adjusts the resistance values between the pins. I found the electrical center of pot to start with. It does not have to be exact, just as close as you can get it. The appearance of the pot was the center pin being towards the top, instead of being over to the driver's side. Then I soldered the green wire to the passenger side pin and the blue to the center pin. Remember that the pot on mine does not have the solder bridge between those two pins. When I turned on the car and TX, the servo centered it self and I found that all the chatter was gone and I actually had smooth proportional steering in either direction. It might have been a little steppy but far better that what it was stock. Also, the actual travel of the servo is greater than what the steering bar allows. I did shave the tiniest bit on the bar to allow a little bit more travel to the left and right. That's when I also noticed that the bar actually stops the servo, which puts a small load on the servo motor, instead of the servo reaching a stop point on it's own at the exact point of the bar hitting the stopping point. More ideas on how to fix this down below. When I put everything back together, I had much sharper turns to the left and right and solid, smooth control over the steering. Steering overall was very equal. The steering is more sensitive but I like that and it's too be expected I think when the servo is working the way it's suppose to in such a small car. It feels like some of my other cars now, epoch/drr's only smaller.

There is a little bit of a centering issue, but this is actually due to the transmitter. The transmitter does not come back to an exact electrical center, so it does require a little bit of steering to straighten out. To me, it seems pretty minimal. It does feel like there is a little to much friction on the wheel and this is keeping it from returning to a solid center point. I think the springs are doing their job, but do to some sort of tight fit of the wheel itself, the springs can't get the wheel back to center. My next step is take the controller apart and see if I can solve this issue. I've seen people talk about the possibility of changing the resistor value on the transmitter to decrease the sensitivity, but actually, it would be fairly simple to put in a parrallel pot to use as a travel volume adjust instead (steering rate like on the xmod or other higher end RC's). This would allow you to further dial in the rate of the servo so you could actually get an end point that would equal the travel of the bar and this would take the load off of the motor and probably allow for a little bit better performance.

I really just wanted to further add info to the fix found on the "other forum" so everyone could have a deeper understanding of not only how to fix the issue, but what the fix was actually doing. I hope this helps everyone and I didn't confuse anyone. Feel free to ask questions.

Now I'm really liking the SE alot. I had no problems on my more technical track with it. Stock to me was terrible, for a 5 year old, it's fine, but for all us who demand the utmost perfomance from our cars, it's worth tinkering with. With the success I've had, now I'm thinking about buying another one and not worrying about whether or not the steering will be good out of the box because i can fix it the way I want.