Community Forums

Smitty3509 · 03-25-2015, 07:35 AM

Bill, have you tested any of those motors that you pulled out? I hooked one up to 12v and it worked! I'm waiting on more motors and will test another one that I pull out to see what it does. I'll go back to Entegra if I see a pattern. Maybe it's not the motors????

Bill in FL · 03-25-2015, 09:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Smitty3509

Bill, have you tested any of those motors that you pulled out? I hooked one up to 12v and it worked! I'm waiting on more motors and will test another one that I pull out to see what it does. I'll go back to Entegra if I see a pattern. Maybe it's not the motors????

I took one apart and separated the motor from the circuit board. The motor worked fine in both directions by reversing the polarity. But when I put the board back into the circuit, the motor would work in only one direction. Of the ones I tested after removing it, only one worked in both directions, but was very slow in the installed failed direction. My conclusion (based on a sample of only one) is that the circuit board is failing for some reason. I sent 11 failed motors to Don Brebaker at his request. Have not heard if they were able to draw any conclusions from that sample. Of all my failures, only one has been a day shade. We do fulltime, so the night shades get used daily while the day shades stay mostly down here in Florida.

757driver · 03-25-2015, 11:46 AM

Does anyone with a 2015 have significant shade motor problems (9 or more) or is it only a 2013/2014 problem? Those with significant problems are they mostly night shades up front or are the day shades or back ones (day or night) failing? is anyone using the Day Master or Night Master switch?

I have changed out 13 so far and all have been night shades up front (salon area and front windows) except for 1.

Trying an experiment for the past 10 weeks and so far no more failures.

I have a dead motor for the night shade at the entry door installed (we don't use it anyway).

Here is my theory,

1. With the entry shade motor taken out of the mix there are only 5 night shades moving at once up front not 6, so less load.

2. Anytime we put the night shades down at the front we would also hit the up button on the door night shade because we were not done going in and out the door. With the door night shade disconnected and not reversing the door motor when it was part way down equates to less monkey motion and less load.

3. Also took my batteries off of the "multi" final charge setting (on the inverters) and put them on "float". My thinking there is that if the batteries are sitting for most of the night with very little or no 12v usage they will go into full charge (after 4 hours), the chargers will turn off and the batteries will stay that way until the batteries drop below 12.7v. When I get up in the morning one of the first things I do is raise the front night shades. This was up to 6 night shades moving at once with batteries that were potentially at 12.7v.

My thinking is that there is either too much load (6 night shades moving at once) or too low batteries for the 6 shades moving at once. My gut says the former.

If there is not extensive failures on the 2015's with the night shade motors separated better at the front of the coach and thus not as many moving at once, I think the solution for the 2013's and 2014's is a reprogrammed touch panel up front to mimic what the 2015's have for the front night shades.

brobox · 03-25-2015, 08:00 PM

Don, Good post. I have not used mine enough to have a shade motor problem yet. However, I have watched the other posts and talked to other owners with great interest. I also believe it is to many heavy shades at one time and have mentioned that to others. For some reason there must be a power surging problem or other United Shade users would be having motor problems and to my knowledge they are not.

I did have my shade re-programmed where I have the three sides individually instead of all at once. That may be helping, I'll know more after this summers trip.

Swenster · 03-26-2015, 03:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 757driver

Does anyone with a 2015 have significant shade motor problems (9 or more) or is it only a 2013/2014 problem? Those with significant problems are they mostly night shades up front or are the day shades or back ones (day or night) failing? is anyone using the Day Master or Night Master switch?

I have changed out 13 so far and all have been night shades up front (salon area and front windows) except for 1.

Trying an experiment for the past 10 weeks and so far no more failures.

I have a dead motor for the night shade at the entry door installed (we don't use it anyway).

Here is my theory,

1. With the entry shade motor taken out of the mix there are only 5 night shades moving at once up front not 6, so less load.

2. Anytime we put the night shades down at the front we would also hit the up button on the door night shade because we were not done going in and out the door. With the door night shade disconnected and not reversing the door motor when it was part way down equates to less monkey motion and less load.

3. Also took my batteries off of the "multi" final charge setting (on the inverters) and put them on "float". My thinking there is that if the batteries are sitting for most of the night with very little or no 12v usage they will go into full charge (after 4 hours), the chargers will turn off and the batteries will stay that way until the batteries drop below 12.7v. When I get up in the morning one of the first things I do is raise the front night shades. This was up to 6 night shades moving at once with batteries that were potentially at 12.7v.

My thinking is that there is either too much load (6 night shades moving at once) or too low batteries for the 6 shades moving at once. My gut says the former.

If there is not extensive failures on the 2015's with the night shade motors separated better at the front of the coach and thus not as many moving at once, I think the solution for the 2013's and 2014's is a reprogrammed touch panel up front to mimic what the 2015's have for the front night shades.

I was talking with Brobox about this the other day. I also had our shades reprogrammed when Chuck did last spring. All shade motor failures happened after that change. 9 failures so far and all night shades, all larger ones in the salon area. Once, after a night door shade failure, I lost the passenger front windshield before I fixed the door shade. So the most shades that move at once Are the 4 fronts. I can't make any sense out of this but in talking with an Entegra owner that was at the rally at LD this winter they had talked with the shade rep who stated that other coach manufacturers who use the same product don't have anything close to the failures as we are experiencing. It shouldn't be that difficult to evaluate current supply, draw, and recreate our failures to find the problem and a fix.

ravens2012 · 03-26-2015, 07:35 AM

Don, my coach is a early 2015 and I had one problem with dinette night shade and while at LD I had the driver side night shade that would not go up, tech fixed and that night the same one would not go down. We also full time so they do get used very frequently.

Swenster · 03-26-2015, 08:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ravens2012

Don, my coach is a early 2015 and I had one problem with dinette night shade and while at LD I had the driver side night shade that would not go up, tech fixed and that night the same one would not go down. We also full time so they do get used very frequently.

Get some small spring clamps, we did. Otherwise we would have been stuck. Sometimes they give you a little warning, like stopping then starting one more time but then, bingo, dead. If no fix is close I am going to ask for manual replacements.

757driver · 03-26-2015, 10:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Swenster

I was talking with Brobox about this the other day. I also had our shades reprogrammed when Chuck did last spring. All shade motor failures happened after that change. 9 failures so far and all night shades, all larger ones in the salon area. Once, after a night door shade failure, I lost the passenger front windshield before I fixed the door shade. So the most shades that move at once Are the 4 fronts. I can't make any sense out of this but in talking with an Entegra owner that was at the rally at LD this winter they had talked with the shade rep who stated that other coach manufacturers who use the same product don't have anything close to the failures as we are experiencing. It shouldn't be that difficult to evaluate current supply, draw, and recreate our failures to find the problem and a fix.

Swenster,

When you put your night shades up or down do you do them all at once or each switch separately? When you have had motors fail are they the green ones or the yellow ones? Interesting that all your failures happened after your re-programming of the switch panel.

CoreyinWP · 03-26-2015, 01:03 PM

For those who may not have seen one before.

DSL417 · 03-26-2015, 03:46 PM

Knock on wood...no motor outages on our 15 CS. We do have one that seems to find a way to get out of adjustment on its own. And, we have to watch the double night shade up front when lowering as it seems to catch on one side for some reason...I much preferred the single front night shade from earlier years, and it looked better as well.

brobox · 03-26-2015, 03:55 PM

That's it! Cornerstone's are getting better motors

I also prefer the pre 2014 single front shades. Did you have the motor problem on your one piece front shade Dave? I thought maybe they split the shade up because of weight, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

CoreyinWP · 03-26-2015, 04:17 PM

Front shade on 2013 is a MCD shade,,,,never heard of major problems with the motors on the single front.

garyhz · 03-26-2015, 06:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CoreyinWP

For those who may not have seen one before.

I found two of those in my information bag.. Now I know what they are

Sunsetranch · 03-26-2015, 09:40 PM

First thing we did to the DEQ with Firefly was to isolate our front shades from the salon, for easy of use, made no sense to have them tied together. Now we have only 3 on one switch at a time from the change, using for the last 4 months frequently no problems so maybe Swenster is on to something with the load factor.
Actually getting ready to have the rear shades realigned, also seems like being all together and the order they are in makes no sense to us either, that will lighten the load there too...if it is load we will be all good...fingers crossed!