I was joking about the blame-game. That never had anything to do with the loss. Clever how you turned it around on me like that though.

But dont mind if I ask what the specifications of the motors youre using are. And when self righting, does your robot support almost all of its mass on the arm, far from the axle? If its a big symmetrical box with a lot of mass opposite the lifting end, youd be dealing with a much larger load than Im dealing with.

Im not interested in how to fix your situation. Obviously, Im not good advice on that at all, and Id probably lose you $3000 more on motors before you got any of my ideas working. (Clutch?) Im just curious how mechanically similar your situation is to mine.

I think the gearing is the only issue you have any point with, and I agree. I would fix the gears in a heartbeat. Its really easy to incorporate into the design. 250:1 is going a mite overboard, but if VGer were ever competing again, I would run it five times slower than currently at least. It wastes too much power in the current setup.