Hi Recently got a Salsa M2 Powerchair from wheelchair services. Had it roughly a month, and am again very frustrated with Sunrise because apart from being a very experienced powerchair user having had about 14 of all shapes and sizes spanning 40 years or so, the second editions of the Salsa chairs do not seem to be of the same quality as their original counterparts.
l had numerous problems with the steering and wiring issues causing cutouts on the Salsa R2 which l returned to the wheelchair clinic. Thus now have been issued as i said above, the Salsa M2,which while the concept of the mid wheel drive and turning on its own axis is something l like my real gripe as with the R2 is loss of power and speed. It first went well, but after a couple of weeks has slowed down even though on the same speed!
I am so frustrated, has anybody else had similar issues with Sunrise chairs or any other chairs for that matter? Or is just me?? As a footnote l had the original Salsa R for five long happy years which l loved and had very few issues with, that is apart from it "died" in the middle of a main road! Any feedback would be very welcome. Thanks
I had to edit that and add punctuation because I was mentally out of breath trying to read one long ramble!
So...
To break it down. You had a chair that for various reasons stopped due to inhibits, loom, etc. Yes they all do that. Unless you are very lucky, or you go over the chair yourself with a fine tooth comb and carefully configure things, properly rout the cables, and reprogram if possible so that an error doesn't stop you.
The slowing down is a battery issue. Dont get me started on lead batteries. The very best ones, are garbage. The lesser (cheaper) ones are much worse!
Lead can....
If you don't discharge it too deeply, or go too far daily,
If you don't ever leave it discharged and charge it right back up to 100% immediately with the correct charger (16 hours).
If you don't use small undersized or cheap batteries as you have in your new chair,
If you don't charge them with a nasty generic mobility charger that over-volts and under charges them,
If you made sure they were both balanced and / or full when installed,
If they were new stock, MK brand GEL or Sonnenschein A500 GEL batteries,
Then you would get between 300 to 450 cycles from them realistically (DAYS of USE) before they lose 20% of their range and power and need to be swapped.
But you probably do all of the above. So suffer bigger problems, much, much sooner. Also I dont get why changing from a raer drive chair with bigger batteries, to a mid drive one was supposed to achieve anything?