Chuck v
06-21-2014, 07:15 PM
A little over a year ago the Kwikee electric steps on my TourMaster 40C developed skipping in their motion. I took the motor worm drive apart and found some pretty severe wear, but it looked like the lubricant was not sealed in very well by the cover plate. I bought a replacement motor and that one looked to be better sealed so I installed it and thought I would be OK for several more years.
This week my steps failed to extend when the door was opened. I live in this coach so the door gets used several times a day. Here in Oregon it rains frequently enough that I prefer to have the steps retract when the door is closed -- besides it gives a little more clearance when I park the Lexus beside the coach in my small space here, and my wife's MDX parks there when she is in town. (This space is a bit too short to allow either SUV to park in front of the coach... but one can fit sideways after the other is in place beside it.) I put it off troubleshooting the steps until the weekend to look for a root cause and to effect a cure. This is what I found.
The fuses were all OK, but I did note that the step light was coming on as it should with the door open even though the motor did not run. As I still had the old motor (kept for spare parts if needed...) I unplugged cable to the mounted motor and ran the cable down to the loose old one -- sure enough that motor ran whenever the door was cycled and reversed as it should. In case you are not familiar with the Kwikee controller, it shuts off the motor if the stall current is sensed at end of travel OR if a certain time has elapsed.
Once I knew that the "new last year" motor was not working correctly I did a little on-line reading and found that often these have issues with the brushes not making good contact with the armature segments and the generally accepted fix is to tap on the motor housing lightly. I did this and the steps began working again. I do not know how temporary a "fix" this may be...
My nature is to find a preventative maintenance approach to avoid this in the future -- anyone have direct experience or some encouraging ideas on how to address this??
Chuck
This week my steps failed to extend when the door was opened. I live in this coach so the door gets used several times a day. Here in Oregon it rains frequently enough that I prefer to have the steps retract when the door is closed -- besides it gives a little more clearance when I park the Lexus beside the coach in my small space here, and my wife's MDX parks there when she is in town. (This space is a bit too short to allow either SUV to park in front of the coach... but one can fit sideways after the other is in place beside it.) I put it off troubleshooting the steps until the weekend to look for a root cause and to effect a cure. This is what I found.
The fuses were all OK, but I did note that the step light was coming on as it should with the door open even though the motor did not run. As I still had the old motor (kept for spare parts if needed...) I unplugged cable to the mounted motor and ran the cable down to the loose old one -- sure enough that motor ran whenever the door was cycled and reversed as it should. In case you are not familiar with the Kwikee controller, it shuts off the motor if the stall current is sensed at end of travel OR if a certain time has elapsed.
Once I knew that the "new last year" motor was not working correctly I did a little on-line reading and found that often these have issues with the brushes not making good contact with the armature segments and the generally accepted fix is to tap on the motor housing lightly. I did this and the steps began working again. I do not know how temporary a "fix" this may be...
My nature is to find a preventative maintenance approach to avoid this in the future -- anyone have direct experience or some encouraging ideas on how to address this??
Chuck