When we first bought our Beaver, The RV dealership service department said they would need to order a new motor for the motorhome's co-pilots seat's actuators, because (they said) it "was no longer strong enough to work the mechanism", as evidenced by the motor stalling and not being able to produce the required motion. I very much doubted their diagnosis, as in my experience motors don't become "weak" with age; they either work or don't. Also, my olfactory senses did not detect the characteristic odor of burnt magnet wire insulation, so I did not suspect a burnt motor armature. Instead I suspected binding forces in the actuator gear train, and I was right! I removed the actuator assembly which comprised articulated/hinged brackets, a motor with integrated right-angle gear reduction unit, a sealed wormgear transmission, and acme leadscrew drive. I then disassembled the assembly and tested the motor and determined it was functioning properly. I next tried moving the input shaft of the wormgear transmission, and discovered it was refractory to nearly all efforts to turn it, even though the output shaft was unloaded! I removed a threaded plug on the wormgear case, and discovered the inside of the transmission case was packed solid with a dried and caked waxy substance that became friable upon probing. (A classic cake-lock lubrication grease failure!) I flushed out the substance using copious amounts of brake cleaner solvent (a potent but nasty chloronated solvent so volatile it should only be used outdoors while standing up-wind of the fumes). I then used a grease gun to repack the transmission with lithium-stearate grease, and re-assembled the unit. I then re-installed everything back in the seat and tested all functions and verified that everything was now operating properly.
Another issue I had to resolve was that the footrest on the co-pilot's seat never extended evenly (one side would raise higher than the other). Investigating the cause revealed that a weld had broken loose and one of the sliding bars that travel in a track was missing. Because of its location, removing this broken part required removing and disassembling the chair (quite a chore). I fabricated the missing bar slide from 1/4" plate steel, matching the dimensions of the non-missing bar, and then welded it to the part. I then re-installed the part into the track assembly, re-assembled all the linkages, and re-installed the chair. It all works evenly and perfectly now. It took me about six hours total, including the time to fabricate and weld the part using one of my wire-feed MIG welders. (The attached picture shows the welded part with the new piece on the left.)
