ok so this is probably a dumb question but here goes. dropped my mavic pretty hard onto gravel last week, nothing looked obviously broken, arms are fine, body looks ok. but ever since then the gimbal just slowly drifts to the right in the footage like its off level by maybe 5-8 degrees and kind of slowly panning even when the drone is stationary. the auto horizon correction usually handles small stuff but this seems to be beyond what it can compensate for.

i ran the gimbal calibration from the app three times and it improves slightly but never fully fixes it. im wondering if i physically bent one of the gimbal arms or maybe knocked a ribbon cable loose. i dont really want to send it in for repair because the quote i got was basically half the cost of a new one which seems insane for what might be a bent piece of metal. has anyone cracked one of these open and straightened a gimbal arm before, is it even doable without making it worse

yeah ive done this actually, its fiddly but not impossible. the gimbal arm on those is aluminum and it can get a tiny bend in it thats enough to throw the whole thing off but not visible at a glance. what you want to do is get some good lighting and look at the roll axis arm really carefully while the drone is powered off and the gimbal is hanging free. compare the left and right side geometry, you can usually see if ones slightly off angle.

if you do find a bend, very gentle pressure with your fingers, like genuinely gentle, can sometimes get it close enough that calibration handles the rest. i wouldnt use any tools on it directly. the ribbon cable thing is also worth checking, if its slightly unseated on the yaw motor side youll get weird drift like you described. just pop the bottom shell carefully and reseat it before doing anything else honestly, might save you the trouble.

half the cost of a new one for a gimbal repair sounds about right unfortunately, DJI service pricing is pretty brutal for anything physical. i had a similar drift issue after a crash and mine turned out to be the IMU inside the gimbal itself got knocked loose, which is not really a DIY fix. fingers crossed yours is just the arm though, that would be the best case scenario here