RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Jib wrote: ↑Thu Jul 10, 2025 4:59 am So, couple of questions:

If you hold it right side up not attached to the tank, does it still work? Wondering if it’s gravity keeping it from working or something on the tank blocking it.

You say when it’s on the tank the barrel is droopy and sloppy, can you elaborate on this?

Did something happen to the tank recently or did you just turn it on one day and it was like this? You said something about changing a gear to a blue one?

Can you move the barrel up and down with your hand (like is it loose, does it jiggle) or is it held firm by the servo apparatus.

Full disclosure I don’t own a Tamiya, but I’m willing to give figuring this out a try. Maybe someone else who is more familiar with the Tamiya elevation system can chime in here.

Jib wrote: ↑Thu Jul 10, 2025 3:18 pm Yeah, I still lurk on Reddit (I saw your post there), but I got shadow banned most likely by an AI algorithm for some unknown reason reason, and I got tired of begging the Reddit overlords and receiving no response, so I just gave up on that.

Sounds to me like maybe:

You stressed out the motor by pressing down on something? It sounds as though it’s not strong enough to lift/control the barrel.

Or

Since it works held upright maybe it’s bumping into something that’s restricting its movement

Or

Maybe something isn’t tightened down in the elevation mechanism?

I would:

Make sure everything is tight

If it works held upright away from the hull, so it is working against gravity, I would slowly bring the turret back onto the hill and peel and see if the mechanism is bumping into anything. (Additional question: Does the elevation behave the same when attached to the hull with the turret rotated to a specific direction, or any direction?)

You could take a multimeter and make sure the mechanism is getting the appropriate voltage (I kind of doubt this is the problem).

Open up the gear box and make sure the gears aren’t stripped (sounds like you already did this?).

I’m guessing this is some proprietary Tamiya servo/motor powering this? Either way you could try to get a replacement and see if that fixes it. If it’s just a regular servo this would be easy to do. If not you could be in for a hard time. Tamiya doesn’t seem to do a great job of keeping replacement parts available like HL and others do. Check eBay if they’re out of stock on Tamiya’s website.

Jib wrote: ↑Fri Jul 11, 2025 12:03 am Yeah, I’ve heard the Tamiya KT is one of their more cursed models. Pretty sad that the elevation motor is too pitiful to hold up the gun barrel.

Good luck!

John Glover wrote: ↑Fri Jul 11, 2025 3:06 pm Replace the arm as it will slowly flog out, become sloppy then fail .Looks like from your video that you need to centre the arm for the correct amount of up and down travel . Motor is over driving when the arm has already hit its stop. May have damaged the plastic arm already. The position of the arm is easy to get wrong when installing a blue gear because of the D shaped shaft it attaches to. We do try to help all members but it does cost. You have to buy another tank.