smoking flap motor

JimWoo50 · #1 04-26-2006, 05:21 PM

I have communicated with Van's and they said excess grease was causing it(hopefully anyway) and referred me to a FAQ on their website addressing the problem. The fix evidently is to disassemble the motor and clean out the grease. Has anyone done this and does it work? Any hints? Thanks, Jim.

Kahuna · #2 04-26-2006, 06:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JimWoo50

I have communicated with Van's and they said excess grease was causing it(hopefully anyway) and referred me to a FAQ on their website addressing the problem. The fix evidently is to disassemble the motor and clean out the grease. Has anyone done this and does it work? Any hints? Thanks, Jim.

Yes.
Its easy.
Watch for flying parts during disassembly.

MSFT-1 · #3 04-26-2006, 07:39 PM

I had this problem on my RV-8 flap motor. I tried to disassemble and clean it without success. I did learn that the most important part of the process is having bread-bag ties to hold the brushes back during re-assembly (safety wire doesn't work nearly as well).

I also learned that you can get a rebuild kit from the manufacturer -- but it is imperative that you do not say anything about it being in an airplane. They will not sell you the $20 kit if they find out it is for a plane. Tell them it goes in your boat or something.

Good luck.

bruce
N297NW

SteinAir · #4 04-26-2006, 09:23 PM

Yep, and after you do it once you'll most likely do it again sometime down the road. My solution after several "cleanings", flaps stuck down, no flaps, etc.. was just to toss the old one and bit the bullet for a new one that didn't have the problems! Not all of them do it, it was only a series of "bad" ones that had the problem, and wouldn't you know I was one of the luck recipients.

Sorry for the sarcasm, but that wasn't my favorite subject!

Cheers,
Stein.

tonyjohnson · #5 04-26-2006, 09:50 PM

Does anyone know the dates of manufacture of the bad flap motors, or perhaps a range of serial numbers? I think I probably have one.

Bob Gordon · #6 04-27-2006, 04:31 AM

The RVator, second issue 2004 has an excellent writeup on history and "degrease" repair of the flap motor. It turns out the last batch of Motion Systems motors (year 2001 time frame) have excess grease in the gearbox. I copied the three pages and stuck them in my onboard reference manual, even though I don't have a suspect motor. Just in case.

N916K · #7 04-27-2006, 09:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bob Gordon

The RVator, second issue 2004 has an excellent writeup on history and "degrease" repair of the flap motor. It turns out the last batch of Motion Systems motors (year 2001 time frame) have excess grease in the gearbox. I copied the three pages and stuck them in my onboard reference manual, even though I don't have a suspect motor. Just in case.

My flap motor is one of the later styles and at 215 hours is stopped working. I took it apart and it was full of grease. The brushes had a nice coat of burned grease on them. I cleaned it up and put it back together, works great now. So, I don't think the excess grease problem is just that one batch of motors.

JimWoo50 · #8 05-14-2006, 04:52 PM

At first the flap motor was smoking like crazy so I took Van's advice and disassembled it to clean what they said would be excess grease. There was very little grease in there to clean so I reassembled it and much to my dismay the motor worked for 3 or 4 cycles and gave up the ghost. I'll try again to fix it and perhaps get a rebuild kit as mention by msft1 in his post.