Brief Description: Flap Motor Quit and got Cleaned
My electric flap motor has had anomolous behavior ever since I first started flying. It was intermittant. Sometimes when I turned on landing lights, then the flaps wouldn't work. Sometimes if I turned on strobes the flaps wouldn't work. So I thought I had an electrical problem or a logic problem in the Dynon Power Controller. This weekend they quit working completely.
I searched the Van's Aircraft Forum and there is a long known problem with the flap motor in that it is full of grease. Apparently the original motor manufacturer put too much grease on the screw gear drive and it gets into the motor. There is a paper on Van's website about it. I took my flap motor out, opened it and found it full of grease and gunk. I thoroughly cleaned it per the Van's write-up. Now it works perfectly, the way it should always have worked. Do to how much grease I removed I don't think this will be a recurring problem.
I didn't take a photo of the electric motor disassembled. But get Van's instructions if you do it. Here is the link. https://www.vansaircraft.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/flap_motor.pdf
Watch out for dropping the brushes out. Watch out for dropping the washers off the shaft. They have to go back on in the order they come off. Two black ones go on first, followed by to silver ones on the outside.
