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I recently purchased a well used 2018 Imagine 2150RB and have been slowly working through its problems. I thought I’d share what I found when I worked an electrical issue with one of the recliners. Hopefully the solution or process will help someone else. As a point of reference, I’m a retired electrical engineer that specialized in system integration and test so working on this recliner was right up my alley.
TLDR; Recliner showed no power indication on control ring and no functions worked. Troubleshooting found footrest actuator failure caused control board to burn itself out. Actuator was replaced and control board was repaired.
The long version;
The trailer contains two Thomas Payne Seismic recliners connected together by a storage console. Both recliners have power footrests, heat and massage as well as an LED light strip along the bottom. The controls for each recliner ring the recliner’s cup holder and are backlit with blue LED’s when power is connected to the chair. One of the two recliner controls had never been illuminated since I purchased it and the functions didn’t work. The footrest on the failed chair was slightly open which meant that it was likely in the process of opening or closing when the failure happened. On these chairs there is no way to manually retract the footrest without removing the actuator assembly.
I started troubleshooting by checking power to the chairs. Each chair has a separate power cord and external transformer. Each transformer has a green light to indicate it’s working but I went ahead and swapped the one from the failed chair into the good chair and confirmed it was working.
At this point I needed access to the chair’s electronics which are located on the underside behind the footrest. The recliners are located in the trailer slide out and in my case were not bolted down. I pulled the recliners forward as a unit and disconnected the power cables from both. I then tipped them backward so they laid on their back. This gave me access to both recliners so I could make comparison electrical measurements as well as compare wiring.
Each chair contains a control/junction box that is mounted to the underside of the chair with a couple screws. The control box has three round connectors on the plastic box but on this chair only two are used. One is power to the footrest actuator (round pin and flat blade) and the second is for the control cable from the cup holder control ring (8 pin DIN connector). There are two cables that exit the box, one is for power in from the external transformer (round pin and flat blade) and the second is a 10 pin Molex that goes to all other chair functions.
Since nothing was working on the chair, I made a logical assumption that the control box was bad. I disconnected all cabling from the control box, unscrewed it from the seat and moved it to the bench in order to open it up to inspect it.
IMPORTANT! Note that I did not swap control boxes as a troubleshooting step. If you suspect a control or power distribution circuit is bad it is possible it was caused by a downstream failure. By swapping the control box you have a high likelihood of damaging the good part since the downstream failure is still present.
Using a multi-meter, I made a resistance (ohm) measurement on both chairs into the footrest actuator power cable that connected directly to the control box. The actuator on the bad chair gave me a reading of approximately 7Ω. The good actuator gave me a reading of approximately 250kΩ. I removed the actuator from the bad chair and took the cover off the motor/gear drive and disengaged the screw drive assembly from the motor worm gear taking care not to damage the wiring. While monitoring the multi-meter I rotated the motor worm gear. I noted the reading would jump erratically but then return to a low ohm reading. Based on these results I decided the actuator was bad and ordered a new one (eMoMo Model 3MTR 3MR135-334E) through Amazon ($99 plus tax).
The control box (eMoMo P/N HX43T24HR2L-2, Thomas Payne P/N 690453) contains a single printed circuit board. Once removed from the plastic case I found clear evidence of component damage as can be seen in the attached photos of the bad board as well as the board from the good recliner. After some bench testing, I was able to determine that the resettable fuse that is between input power to the board from the transformer and the input to the on-board voltage regulator, the voltage regulator itself which is used to step the 29Vdc transformer voltage down to 12Vdc to power the footrest actuator motor and a rectifier diode used for over-voltage protection and current limiting going to the actuator motor had failed. The fuse had basically turned to charcoal, the voltage regulator had a hole burned through it and the diode was shorted.
A replacement board is available but I decided to repair the board myself by replacing the fuse (XF050), voltage regulator (LM2576T-ADJ) and diode (1N5822) ($20 plus tax on eBay for 10 fuses, 5 diodes and 2 voltage regulators). I reassembled the control box and reinstalled it in the bad chair and reconnected everything except for the footrest actuator power cable and verified all functions were working. I then connected the footrest motor power cable and tested its functionality successfully. Based on online prices I figure I saved anywhere from $45 (30+ days shipping) to $140 (2-3 days) repairing the board myself.
As I mentioned above, I hope this helps someone. I haven’t contributed much to these type of forums over the years and not sure if this type of thing is of interest to folks or not. If you’ve got any comments on what you thought of this post or suggestions of what I should have added or left out let me know.
TLDR; Recliner showed no power indication on control ring and no functions worked. Troubleshooting found footrest actuator failure caused control board to burn itself out. Actuator was replaced and control board was repaired.
The long version;
The trailer contains two Thomas Payne Seismic recliners connected together by a storage console. Both recliners have power footrests, heat and massage as well as an LED light strip along the bottom. The controls for each recliner ring the recliner’s cup holder and are backlit with blue LED’s when power is connected to the chair. One of the two recliner controls had never been illuminated since I purchased it and the functions didn’t work. The footrest on the failed chair was slightly open which meant that it was likely in the process of opening or closing when the failure happened. On these chairs there is no way to manually retract the footrest without removing the actuator assembly.
I started troubleshooting by checking power to the chairs. Each chair has a separate power cord and external transformer. Each transformer has a green light to indicate it’s working but I went ahead and swapped the one from the failed chair into the good chair and confirmed it was working.
At this point I needed access to the chair’s electronics which are located on the underside behind the footrest. The recliners are located in the trailer slide out and in my case were not bolted down. I pulled the recliners forward as a unit and disconnected the power cables from both. I then tipped them backward so they laid on their back. This gave me access to both recliners so I could make comparison electrical measurements as well as compare wiring.
Each chair contains a control/junction box that is mounted to the underside of the chair with a couple screws. The control box has three round connectors on the plastic box but on this chair only two are used. One is power to the footrest actuator (round pin and flat blade) and the second is for the control cable from the cup holder control ring (8 pin DIN connector). There are two cables that exit the box, one is for power in from the external transformer (round pin and flat blade) and the second is a 10 pin Molex that goes to all other chair functions.
Since nothing was working on the chair, I made a logical assumption that the control box was bad. I disconnected all cabling from the control box, unscrewed it from the seat and moved it to the bench in order to open it up to inspect it.
IMPORTANT! Note that I did not swap control boxes as a troubleshooting step. If you suspect a control or power distribution circuit is bad it is possible it was caused by a downstream failure. By swapping the control box you have a high likelihood of damaging the good part since the downstream failure is still present.
Using a multi-meter, I made a resistance (ohm) measurement on both chairs into the footrest actuator power cable that connected directly to the control box. The actuator on the bad chair gave me a reading of approximately 7Ω. The good actuator gave me a reading of approximately 250kΩ. I removed the actuator from the bad chair and took the cover off the motor/gear drive and disengaged the screw drive assembly from the motor worm gear taking care not to damage the wiring. While monitoring the multi-meter I rotated the motor worm gear. I noted the reading would jump erratically but then return to a low ohm reading. Based on these results I decided the actuator was bad and ordered a new one (eMoMo Model 3MTR 3MR135-334E) through Amazon ($99 plus tax).
The control box (eMoMo P/N HX43T24HR2L-2, Thomas Payne P/N 690453) contains a single printed circuit board. Once removed from the plastic case I found clear evidence of component damage as can be seen in the attached photos of the bad board as well as the board from the good recliner. After some bench testing, I was able to determine that the resettable fuse that is between input power to the board from the transformer and the input to the on-board voltage regulator, the voltage regulator itself which is used to step the 29Vdc transformer voltage down to 12Vdc to power the footrest actuator motor and a rectifier diode used for over-voltage protection and current limiting going to the actuator motor had failed. The fuse had basically turned to charcoal, the voltage regulator had a hole burned through it and the diode was shorted.
A replacement board is available but I decided to repair the board myself by replacing the fuse (XF050), voltage regulator (LM2576T-ADJ) and diode (1N5822) ($20 plus tax on eBay for 10 fuses, 5 diodes and 2 voltage regulators). I reassembled the control box and reinstalled it in the bad chair and reconnected everything except for the footrest actuator power cable and verified all functions were working. I then connected the footrest motor power cable and tested its functionality successfully. Based on online prices I figure I saved anywhere from $45 (30+ days shipping) to $140 (2-3 days) repairing the board myself.
As I mentioned above, I hope this helps someone. I haven’t contributed much to these type of forums over the years and not sure if this type of thing is of interest to folks or not. If you’ve got any comments on what you thought of this post or suggestions of what I should have added or left out let me know.
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