Good Points,
Since my Little Extra weighs in at less than 2 lbs and does not fly very fast (I run a 8 X 3 Prop with my Enya .09 which provides remarkable thrust but not much speed) gears stripping has not been an issue for me on the control surfaces , it's the pots that go bad.
On my control surfaces the linkages are setup Helicopter Style with almost perfect 90 degrees arm at center, mechanical setup good for 100% ATV's, zero slop on the rod ends, etc.. When learned to set my raptor up, I was reading a book on Helicopters (Ray's Authoritative Helicopter Manual) and the author went to great lenghts on the importance of a "Perfect" mechanical servo setup / how it can make the difference between a sweet flying Heli and an un-flyable nightmare, and how to do it. I have since used the techniques for all my aircrafts and seen a noticeable difference in control feel and accuracy.
I highly recommend the book to anyone, even if you don't fly 'copters, the portion on how to setup servos is the best I have seen anywhere.
I have however had an issue with a sticking throttle barrel which I think caused the demise of the little Cox servo controlling it. This one's gears got out of mesh and the servo seized at Full Throttle
Since I have the aformentionned setup for "Speed" (Or lack thereof) it was no sweat to simply finsh-up the tank at full chat and land it dead-stick..
Of all the servo failures to have in flight, the throttle is definitely my 1st choice, I'm sorry you lost your Little Extra to a bad servo
EDIT
One more thing, has anyone tried those Futaba S3114 servos? The specs seem awesome and I have never had a Futaba servo go bad on me before