hank wrote:Replace with new oil seals on hubs/wheel shafts
Burgerman wrote:Theres no oil in it. You pack it with grease as you assemble.
Burgerman wrote:Same as photograph? Stick a screwdriver under it and lever it out. Be warned seals dont often fail unless bearing also has failed. Taking it apart allows you to properly check it out, clean, re-grease, and reassemble.
Burgerman wrote:. Be warned seals dont often fail unless bearing also has failed. .
Burgerman wrote:Usually very easy. And cheap. But you gotta take it apart.
If its black its full of metal or corrosion or something.
The reality is that oil and grease products come in a rainbow of colors and shades, including white, gray, black, silver, blue, green, red, purple, and every variation of brown, from golden honey to dark, earth tones. Manufacturers typically color these products for their own purposes. Unfortunately, there’s no formal industry standard or convention regarding their choices, with the exception that most food-grade greases tend to be white.
Fedor wrote:This means that a black liquid grease can be easily replaced with a thick grease where it is needed? Replace and lubricate the bearing, replace the seal. And it's all? Very interesting.
The dealer told me that they do not repair the motors. Only replacement entirely. Moreover, the manufacturer forbids them to get inside. What insanity. Replacing the seal or bearing for $20? No. People should buy the entire motor for about $500. This is despite the fact that the government is constantly looking for where to save money on people with disabilities.
ex-Gooserider wrote:It isn't a total factor, but it MAY make financial sense for a dealer to replace rather than repair because of the time and expense of paying a tech to do the repair...
Remember that if we do the job ourselves as a DIY project, our 'labor' cost is ZERO (unless we could have been doing something that paid, in which case our cost is whatever we gave up doing in order to make the repair...)
However for the dealer to repair it, means he has to pay a tech pull the motor, then to tear the motor apart, diagnose the problem, get the parts in, rebuild the motor and so on... Then later (another service call?) put the motor back in... In the meantime you are stuck with a dead chair... OTOH swapping the motor saves all the repair time, and gets you back up in the shortest possible time... (more customer satisfaction....)
Because of this equation, it encourages the motor makers NOT to make parts available, because that lowers THEIR costs not to have to catalog all the parts and have to deal with orders, shipping etc....
This is part of the reason why it can cost as much for one bolt from a chair manufacturer as a box of bolts from a hardware supplier... It costs essentially the same amount to take the order, pull the parts, package, ship etc. for one bolt or 100, and the price charged has to cover all those expenses in addition to the actual part...
ex-Gooserider
Well. I know that the dealer has a certified service technicians. For example, they test batteries and do much more.
I do not think that replacing the seal is such a difficult and expensive task. It will not be much longer than replacing the motor.
Burgerman wrote:I doubt they do. It takes 20 hours to fully discharge a battery to measure its capacity even if you have the equipment to do that. So 40 hours for two. And then 16 hours to fully recharge them. So thats realistically 3 days. And then when they measure say 61Ah from a 70Ah battery, is that a pass? Or a fail? Even after doing all that the answer is, a personal opinion. And there is NO WAY to do that faster. They then need to test impedance once fully charged and compare to spec. And again, decide what is "acceptable"... I doubt that the time required to do all of this is worthwhile. It would cost as much in labour as the battery is worth. Even if they knew how.
Fedor wrote:Seals seldom are the thing that has failed. Seals generally fail only when a bearing behind the seal is faulty. So after the tech has wasted time traveling, swapping a seal, and then going home, the seal fails again. Then he has to disassemble the gearbox and change a bearing. Rinse and repeat. Then its noisy because the rest of the gearbox has wear. Its just not viable unless you do the job properly and strip the whole thing. And even then a new motor is cheaper than the labour, even if parts are available because they generally wear out as a unit. It may be viable for you to mess about with a seal alone and see if that fixes it permanently because your travel time and labour, and return and fix it again when it turns out to still be a problem, is free.
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