Servicing...

[steves1977uk]

Today Precision Rehab phoned my PA and asked her when it would be suitable to come and service my Dietz chair... Only problem is, the seat is unfinished, I've swapped the Omni2 to a standard R-net LED joystick, plus I'm upgrading the batteries to a LiFePO4 pack in future.

So the next time they ring, I'm telling Melissa that I service my chairs myself with her help. I feel I do a more indepth check on my chairs.

Steve

[Burgerman]

Ask rover. Theres nothing really to "service" on a powerchair.

All you can do is look it over for stuff that should never have come loose. Or cables that shoud never have been damaged if routed correctly in the first place. And look at tyres, check by spinning and rattling around looking for bearing free play.

Really thats it.

So paying someone to do the blindingly obvious isnt needed unless you cant do that.

Nobody has looked at any of my chairs for 20 years. Because its faster (isnstantanious!) to look at your own chairs as you go day to day. And faster to repair your own too. Provided that you have a dealer or manufacturer that can and will post you the parts. That normally takes 3 or 4 days. Can be longer if they need to order something out of stock. Thats never happened to me so far. But it can do. As long as you are organised and have a spare chair (or two spares) as you really really should then no problem. YOU are likely to do a better job configuring, programming and fault finding than the dealer/tech is. And you wont need to send it away in a van to a place where they can be completely bewildered without you watching!

E.g. TODAY (yesterday now its late!) my chair cut out 3 times as I accelerated very suddenly and stopped dead like you ran into a wall. Thats not good for the motors or gearboxes and I almost fell out! After the 3rd time I saw the pattern. The controller did not turn off (as happens if its a bad connection to the battery or battery loom normally). It left me a error message LOW BATTERY on screen. And wouldnt move unless restarted. This was not a low battery. There was 1 light out. It measured 25.7V. So what could this be? Well if the controller sees less than 16V for an instant (as I accelerate hard from zero with my 90% acceleration setting) it "trips" as it sees the battery voltage collapse as the battery current hits well over 130 Amps or greater. Because cheap batteries are crap. Too high resistance, and so as soon as its not FULLY charged any longer it cant cope under load any more and as you ccelerate battery voltage spikes below 16V limit. And bang. We stop dead! This is EXACTLY why I buy either Odyssey (wont fit the salsa) or lithium. Cheap backup battery chinesium batteries just dont cut it.

Ask your self. Would the tech have been able to figure that out? Or would he be ordering new looms, controllers, power modules, bus cables, etc? I know the answer to that. And when he was done £££££$$$$$ it would do it again all over again when the battery was no longer full. So its usually better to fault fing YOURSELF if you have half a brain and me or rover or a few others here like lenny/woody etc.

So now skint (air conditioner) I will either have to get another tempory set of lead batts , or fit lithium. Which will now need to wait a couple of months... £££

[steves1977uk]

Looking at most "techs" at anytime (from past to present) I'd say they would've swapped everything except the batteries, because their testing gadget says Batts OK!.

Unless you're like me, yourself BM, rover, Lenny... etc. who knows what they're looking for, 99% of powerchair technicians don't have any idea/or they are simply not interested and sees it as an easy job! Like Permobil techs who swap everything willy-nilly until they fix the issue.

Steve

[Burgerman]

I dont think the permobil guys have any option but to do that. Because they are not privy to all the gory details of what works with what, or why. They are not even allowed OEM programming tools as they do unexpected things on a prmobil. Everything seems to be both very dependent of what firmware versions, ICS versions etc was fitted. Not all work together. And its then very hard to actually fix anything or even program one. They look at the serial number on a chair. And have no option but to Order parts based on that number, + guesswork till it works again.

[foghornleghorn]

E.g. TODAY (yesterday now its late!) my chair cut out 3 times as I accelerated very suddenly and stopped dead like you ran into a wall. Thats not good for the motors or gearboxes and I almost fell out! After the 3rd time I saw the pattern. The controller did not turn off (as happens if its a bad connection to the battery or battery loom normally). It left me a error message LOW BATTERY on screen. And wouldnt move unless restarted. This was not a low battery. There was 1 light out. It measured 25.7V. So what could this be? Well if the controller sees less than 16V for an instant (as I accelerate hard from zero with my 90% acceleration setting) it "trips" as it sees the battery voltage collapse as the battery current hits well over 130 Amps or greater. Because cheap batteries are crap. Too high resistance, and so as soon as its not FULLY charged any longer it cant cope under load any more and as you ccelerate battery voltage spikes below 16V limit. And bang. We stop dead! This is EXACTLY why I buy either Odyssey (wont fit the salsa) or lithium. Cheap backup battery chinesium batteries just dont cut it.

Ask your self. Would the tech have been able to figure that out?

The tech shouldn't have to figure out that you have fiddled with the programming and made the chair broken.

[foghornleghorn]

Today Precision Rehab phoned my PA and asked her when it would be suitable to come and service my Dietz chair... Only problem is, the seat is unfinished, I've swapped the Omni2 to a standard R-net LED joystick, plus I'm upgrading the batteries to a LiFePO4 pack in future.

So the next time they ring, I'm telling Melissa that I service my chairs myself with her help. I feel I do a more indepth check on my chairs.

Steve

Surely you want them to be providing new tyres when you need them or are you happy buying them yourself?

[Burgerman]

The tech shouldn't have to figure out that you have fiddled with the programming and made the chair broken.

You realise that the acceleration parameter is a USER choice? And can be done with the dummy dealer program right? Just like all the other basic speed settings. The same ones that are in the OBP screen.

Its non of their business how I choose to configure my chair. No the real problem is cheap batteries (impedance) allows it to drop below 16V and instant shutdown. And yes I realise you were after "bite"...

[Burgerman]

Steve, theres no reason you cannot do all the work you want on that chair. And adapt it to suit you. AND allow them to supply parts or tyres as and when needed.

If they disagree, then tell wheelchair services its not working for you and explain why. A perfect reason that they should send you a cheque instead. Like they do me every 3 years since 2006? (might be 2008?)

Also for those that are interested.
Found 2 unused headway cells in my cupboard. These were marked september 2006. If you look closely its under the blue plastic on every cell.
These were the "worst" two when I built my first wheelchair pack. So they were charged, had 2Ah removed, and then thrown in a cupboard.

So today I charged them. Took 4.2 Ah each approx.I expected them to be completey dead.
On discharging them at 5.00 amps, to 2.5V each I got almost exactly 12Ah from each one. Within 10mAh. Which means that they do not appear to have lost any Ah at all. Which amazed me! But I am easily pleased.