Old Servos
 

I am in the process of resurrecting a plane last flown about 17 years ago. It originally had a Tower Hobbies Gold radio system. The transmitter and receiver are obviously unusable. I was going to replace the receiver, battery and servos with new Futaba equipment. I discovered, however, that the old Tower servos work with my Futaba receiver. Is there any problem with reusing the Tower servos with a new receiver. They are TS-51s.

Thanks,
Scott

RE: Old Servos
 

Scott, if those servos are that old, I would question if the savings of a few, inexpensive, reliable servos is worth, loosing it all on old, questionable servos. Tower sells new std servos, that are really Futaba S3003's for about ten bucks a piece. I've had problems with servos that were only a few years old, such as Futaba's 148's. From a safety point, also, better, newer equipment makes more sense. Hope this helps. Good luck on resurrecting the antique.

RE: Old Servos
 

Scott I had some TS-51's YEARS AGO... to say they were junk would be an under statement! The stock arms are a hard brittle plastic when new I can only imagine how bad they would be 17 years old. The cases were also a brittle plastic, the ears on one or two of them(it's been a long time) cracked. They sounded like the gears were grinding together rather than meshing together. I used one for throttle on a Q-500 plane for a bit and threw the others away;) I'd buy new servos, it just not worth risking a plane for what 4 new standard servos cost.

John

RE: Old Servos
 

I'm still using some 18 year old JR servos, and they work great. They aren't even high-end servos either, NEW-505's. But I've never had a TS-51, so I couldn't tell you about those in particular.

RE: Old Servos
 

its not fun losing planes because you were to cheap to spend a few bucks. I lost an avistar trainer on my first flight because I had older elastic bands. I put 10 on the wing and they seemed ok but 2 minutes into the flight they had all broken and the wing came off. My saving of buying a new 3 dollar box of bands cost me the front six inches of the fuselage. within 3 months though it was flying again after a rebuild but that was only after I got over how annoyed I was with myself for dumping it in the first place.

RE: Old Servos
 

Thanks for the replies, guys. It's not so much a cost issue as it is a convenience issue. The old servos are already mounted. I have some spare 3004s that I can take out of another plane that I am not flying right now. I will go ahead and do that, because I don't want to risk losing the plane.

-Scott

RE: Old Servos
 

And save the old ones, you can always use them for a throttle servo.