With 437 hours accumulated in in just 18 months on the Val, I sometimes feel like I am doing accelerated life testing for the fleet ! Ah well, most of it has been trouble free, but this afternoon I stopped for fuel at a remote municipal field with cheap gas, and when I went to fire back up - the flaps decided they wanted to stay down. I could hear the relay clicking, so I knew the trouble wasn't there, cycled the breaker anyway, and toggled the switch a number of times. Dang - I sure didn't want to fly home at less than 100 knots....
Suspecting a dead spot on the motor, or a brush problem, I put the switch in the "up" position, unstrapped, and got out to wiggle the flaps. After a couple of wiggles and some pressure on the trailing edge, I heard the motor start, and got the flaps to go fully up. That was good enough for me! A now-flap anding at home base was just fine.
With some travel coming up next week, I decided to dive right into the flap motor this evening, and when I go the the passenger sidewall off to expose the mechanism, I realized that I could pull the brush end off the motor without removing the whole actuator. While tiny, it wasn't that hard to clean up the brushes using a small file, and my tiny forceps and some thin safety wire (to hold the brush springs back) made reassembly only a two-swear-word operation (on a scale of one to five). Operation restored!
But now comes the question....has anyone else been through this dance with brushes, and if so, how long can I expect to get out of the motor before further work is required? I figure I'll order a new actuator anyway, to have on hand...but I'm curious what other's experiences have been...
Paul
Suspecting a dead spot on the motor, or a brush problem, I put the switch in the "up" position, unstrapped, and got out to wiggle the flaps. After a couple of wiggles and some pressure on the trailing edge, I heard the motor start, and got the flaps to go fully up. That was good enough for me! A now-flap anding at home base was just fine.
With some travel coming up next week, I decided to dive right into the flap motor this evening, and when I go the the passenger sidewall off to expose the mechanism, I realized that I could pull the brush end off the motor without removing the whole actuator. While tiny, it wasn't that hard to clean up the brushes using a small file, and my tiny forceps and some thin safety wire (to hold the brush springs back) made reassembly only a two-swear-word operation (on a scale of one to five). Operation restored!
But now comes the question....has anyone else been through this dance with brushes, and if so, how long can I expect to get out of the motor before further work is required? I figure I'll order a new actuator anyway, to have on hand...but I'm curious what other's experiences have been...
Paul