Repair of United Shade windshield night shade.
This repair is for defective 12 volt windshield nightshades manufactured by United Shade as came in my Palazzo. It may be applicable to other brands. My first shade failed after 12 months and was covered by warranty. That replacement failed after 15 months. Both failures were intermittent failure to lower and raise, finally ending with no movement at all. Both shades had verified power to the unit from an ignition interlock mounted on the firewall, under the dashboard.
I determined that in both cases, the switch and ignition interlock operated correctly, and the failure was not the motor inside the shade tube, but the limit switches inside the shade tube that set the upper and lower limits of travel. I decided, I did not need the "limits" as everybody in my coach knows enough to release the switch button when the appropriate limits are reached. This repair simply eliminates the limit switches and powers the motor directly. This modification does not affect the ignition interlock that prevents the shade from being lowered while the ignition is on.
Removal of the shade starts with cutting the wires to the shade at the drivers side overhead mount. Eight screws can be removed from the bracket, starting at the ends and finishing in the middle. One person can do this by sitting on the dash.
The shade needs to be set on a table or work surface and the metal end plate removed after removing 4 screws. Next, the tube holding the motor and limit switches is slid out of the shade tube. This tube can be opened on the "wire" end by removing 4 more hex/torx screws. The limit switch assembly can now be slid out, leaving the motor in place. I removed most of the limit components from the plastic frame, un-soldered the power wires and the motor wires from the limit switch, and re-soldered the power wires directly to the motor wires using some heat shrink tubing over the joints. I then slid the modified limit switch assembly back into the motor tube and then the motor tube into the shade tube. The last pic is the pile of scrapped limit switch components that were deleted.
After reinstalling the shade assembly, splice the wires back together at the driver side end. If the operation is opposite of the direction on the switch, reverse the two wires. The repair was relatively easy if you can solder and have torx/hex drivers.
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