Thread: Blend motors

I guess I am not surprised Coupled with the "what the market will pay" attitude by the 'recyclers', I suspect the 'collector's item' tag will become reality for P38s in the next few years....

I have been looking at "step" motors advertised by Jaycar and others as used in robotics but no luck so far... their price is excellent (<$50), they seem to have excellent torque (to overcome the resistance of the flaps in slightly distorted heater housings), and very solid drive mechanisms including metal gears, but their speed(rpm) is probably too high... as with most issues on P38s, I am ever optimistic some bright spark will lead us out of the wilderness on this one!

I did once read of someone looking to adapt cheap and robust electric motors used in model airplanes.
Electronics is a bit beyond my capabilities so I was hoping there was someone on the forum that understands this stuff and can guide the rest of us.surely it can't be that hard?

Hi

Well there are documented procedures for using brass gears from tamiya model cars and replacing the potentiometer so that's a good start

The brushes in the motor itself could probably be addressed as well.

When I swap mine out I will dissect the old one and see which part has failed to give the dreaded "blend motor short circuit" message

Steve

Well it was about 3.5 hours to swap the right hand blend motor and upon disassembling the faulty one it all all looked fine

My fault was a short circuit so it looks as if it is internal to the motor so pretty hard to repair

Steve

So here I am 5 months later and the cheque book symbols comes up again!

Plug in the nanocom and it says "right hand blend motor short circuit" the one I replaced

So I think a warranty claim is in order.

Steve

Damn Steve. At least you're more familiar with the removal, so the time to remove and replace should only reduce

When I had the dash out, i replaced all three. Less than a year later, the worst one to replace, i.e., the RH one failed.

I haven't got around to fixing it. I want to do another dash-out job to also fix the distribution flap servos.