Originally Posted by
POD
The originals are easy to repair and will way outlast a chicom copy. In 20+ years of Range Rover ownership, I used to find there were 2 failure modes in the actuators; the electric motor would burn out, or one of the gears would strip. If you can get hold of a bunch of failed actuators, get the good motors out of the ones with a stripped gear and the good gears out of the ones with stuffed motors and reassemble a supply of good actuators. The pinion gear on the motor is brass and the next gear in the train is plastic, the plastic teeth eventually strip. This is what causes the actuator to sound like it's working but to only partly operate the lock mechanism.
There is another potential failure point with them- the 'master' actuator on the drivers door has a microswitch that operates the system, it's supposed to just switch on momentarily as the lock is activated, this sends power to the other doors for about 1.5 seconds, just long enough for the actuator to unlock the door. The little plastic lugs that the microswitch is mounted on can break off, which can cause the switch to be activated continuously, which will burn out the motors in all the other doors (I remember finding this out after putting fresh motors in 3 door actuators and watching the smoke get released from all of them). Fortunately, all the other actuators, without the microswitch, have the little mounting lugs so you can just swap the switch over into another housing.
AT REST
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