so the Mavic 3 took a pretty solid hit into a pine tree last weekend, wasnt going fast but the branch caught the gimbal at a bad angle. the drone itself is totally fine, flies perfectly, but the gimbal now has this slow continuous tilt drift going on ? like it tries to level but then slowly rolls maybe 4 or 5 degrees over about 10 seconds and just keeps going. its not a sudden jerk its more like its constantly fighting something and losing.

ive done the gimbal calibration thing in the app like four times. ribbon cable looks intact, nothing visibly bent that i can see. the gimbal itself pivots freely by hand. i read somewhere it could be the IMU inside the gimbal unit getting knocked and giving bad readings but i have no idea how you'd even fix that. DJI repair quote came back at like $280 which honestly might just be worth it at this point but wanted to see if anyone has fixed this themselves before i send it in.

the drift thing after an impact is almost always the gimbal IMU yeah. basically the little sensor inside got jolted and its now giving the stabilization loop bad reference data so it never really finds level properly, just hunts around it. ive seen people claim that doing a full IMU calibration on the aircraft itself sometimes helps because the systems share some data but honestly on a Mavic 3 gimbal thats had a hit i wouldnt expect software to fix it. $280 from DJI is actually not that bad for that camera/gimbal unit, third party repair places can sometimes do it cheaper if you look around but quality varies a lot.

mine did something similar after a wet grass landing that wasnt even a crash, just a bad tip over. turned out the ribbon cable had a micro tear that wasnt visible without really flexing it under light. before you send it in try very carefully bending the ribbon through its range and see if the behavior changes at all. probably wont help in your case since yours sounds more like sensor damage but worth 5 minutes. also check if the gimbal arm itself has any micro cracks near the pivot, i cracked one once and didnt notice for ages because it was hairline.