I think the elevation motor must be bad. Any advice on confirming that and how to fix it?

Thanks,
Bill

You can connect a power source directly to the motor leads. I have a small plastic battery 'box' that holds 4 AAs with alligator clips that I use to test motors and circuits. It'll give you 5-6 VDC which is good to test most things we use in 1/16. I pieced this together from spares, but Radio Shack sells a variety of AA batt holders.

I'd check connections too. After that, wires. My HL StuG elevation quit after a day or two, it was a bad wire. If you don't have one, a multimeter is a needed tool for these tanks for a variety of applications, but in this case continuity checks are essential.

I pulled apart a 10 year old Tamiya flash unit last week that quit on me. I assumed it was the xenon tube or trigger coil since it was getting power from the MFU. I ordered replacement parts, but couldn't get it to work. Decided to test the trigger wire and sure enough, it had no continuity. It could have saved me $15 and a lot of time if I just tested from the start, but live and learn. Besides now I have parts to make 5 flash units, which @ $60 a piece, just being able to make the one I'll need for my next build pays off.

Thanks. I checked everything out and the motor/gear works. After cleaning up a corroded battery connection everything functions, but with two hitches: The left RC control lever runs the gun. Move it up and gun fires. Move it down and gun goes up, then down, and fires when it gets to bottom position. Move it left and right and nothing happens, but a sound effect can be heard. Any way to rewire is to the up motion/down motion are separately controlled. and it doesn't automatically fire at the bottom position?

Thanks again!

It's not supposed to fire when it gets to the bottom. Is it airsoft or IR? I'll bet that when the gun reaches the bottom of its travel it's touching something or pulling a wire or something similar and tripping the gunfire. If it's airsoft, does it fire a BB at the bottom or just give sound & recoil? If there's no BB coming out I'd look at the recoil trigger at the back of the airsoft unit, to see if it's triggering at the bottom of elevation travel. As for controlling up and down, if you look at the mechanism it seems to me that the only way to do that would be to obtain control of the polarity going to the motor (you'd have to be able to reverse the direction of the motor). That's a little beyond me right now, but it's something I'd like to learn about. I'd also like to make the speed at which the turret turns proportional. Maybe someday. :-)

It's IR. I'm wondering if anyone else's HL elevation works this way- no directional control.

Nothing happens on left to right because the StuG doesn't have turret rotation or gun traverse. It's HLs design, it's not proportional, just turning on a motor. The best way to over come it is to move to another system that allows a hobby grade radio and use servos for elevation and traverse. It'll require setting up a traverse pivot, which is a bit of an undertaking but doable.

Here's mine using a DBCR3 with a 6 channel Tx, using HLs elevation and servo traverse:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVa-qevzzdE

Thanks. I got the unintentional shot at the bottom position to stop.

What was making it shoot at the bottom?

Just as you said, it must have been touching something- I noticed it while testing with the tank partially disassembled. When I screwed everything back in place the issue disappeared.