Lippert Schwintek Motor Upgrade

[Guest]

Will be replacing suspect schwintek motor soon where improvements can be seen on the new motor. These are increased sealing with shrink wrap around the motor and a plug at the top of the motor rather than being directly soldered to the motor board This results in better strain relief for the wiring and better moisture protection.

Jim

[howson]

Will be replacing suspect schwintek motor soon where improvements can be seen on the new motor. These are increased sealing with shrink wrap around the motor and a plug at the top of the motor rather than being directly soldered to the motor board This results in better strain relief for the wiring and better moisture protection.

Jim

Doesn't the plug on the motor (a good thing) then require a corresponding socket on the camper wiring? Did Lippert provide that, too?

Glad to see the improvement. The wires detaching from the motor is not uncommon. Pippi Peterson (YouTube personality) had a heck of time replacing the motors on her slide.

[Guest]

howson Howard,

What a pain in the you know what. LOL. The bad motor would no longer respond to any function like the override so I removed the motor release screw and pried up the motor up to disengage it from the outside. Interesting the motor came up partially with the bushing. This disconnected the bushing from the lower bearing block where my first thought was....this will be a chore to get back in with near zero space to work with.
I was able to push in on the side of the slide with the motor disconnected and was relieved to find free motion so I was gaining confidence the motor was the culprit. I was able to use the slide switch with ONLY the good motor connected to operate the other side. This alternating process finally resulted in the slide being retracted evenly a couple feet on the inside where I could gain access.
Once the motor was removed, I plugged in ONLY the harness for this motor and operated the retract switch. The motor attempted to rotate but was frozen in place. Great. Now the bushing and new motor installation.
After fighting the bushing for an hour or so while slightly moving the slide in and out, I finally convinced myself to grind a very small taper to help align to the bottom portion of the bearing block and it went right in.

Looking at the old motor I realized this was the motor I had issues with almost 4 years ago where the dealer told me they had replaced it under warranty. They in fact did not replace the motor but repaired a wire. This motor also shows a great deal of corrosion (none on other motor) where I'm not seeing any gaps that would allow moisture to get in there. I'll need to take a closer look at the seals. Once this was all done, I cleared codes on the controller and I have to say....I have never seen this slide operate so quickly. Although its running on my hot new Lithium system.

Howard rather than the wires being directly soldered to the motor board as seen in the pic of the old motor, these new motors have a small pig tail harness that plugs in at the top of the motor board where it has a set of dedicated pins. Lippert must have had so many issues with poor solder joints that they revised the motor board design.

Last statement: While I think this is a decent system, more thought should have clearly gone into better access and serviceability.

Jim