I'd rather have tacked this onto Bert's original thread for more info for anyone following this path, but the thread has been locked. Does anyone have a picture of the wires connected to the micro switches please? The more I look at the limiting ramps on mine, the more I'm convinced that one switch runs NO and the other runs NC. Unfortunately both of my screens came with those wires disconnected... What would be the icing on the cake would be a picture of the big blue wheel in the inside of the lift mechanism with a statement of what position it's in i.e. fully up, fully down, somewhere in the middle, etc..

Secondly, you can replace those blue double microsowitches with two individual ones bolted side-by-side. All I had to do was file down the raised moldings on both sides of the inner switch and the raised moldings on the inside of the outer switch. The holes lined up perfectly with the original rivets and a pair of 15mm x 2mm set screws held them on. Pictures to follow, once I've solved the limiting ramp setup problem.

[Update] They both definately run NC. I just can't get the limiting ramps (the blue wheel) lined up correctly. I've also just discovered that the 'other' screen has a seized motor - lots of blue smoke and a very warm hand where I was holding the wire feed...   No damage done though.

email sent , maybe of help

Appreciate the atttempt to help but regretably the pics didn't contain the info I needed.

There's another possibility; some motors still have the red plastic position indicator on the outside (one of mine does, the other doesn't). A pic of the indicator position with a pic of the screen position would also be a great help.

Don't know if this helps but this motor is in the WS down position.

Thanks Duck. That is a great help.

[Edit] That fixed it Now I've just got to find a good pair of drive cables because these are completely shot at one end of the travel and they can't keep sync - looks like the motor just kept going until it had worn the cable teeth almost smooth.


[Edit edit] Just got halfway lucky - found a brand new L/H drive cable on ebay for £30 as opposed to £140 (gulp!) from Motorworks. I shall wait until it arrives to be sure it is a L/H one and then got to Motorworks for a s/h matching cable at £40 each.

Sometimes the world smiles on you... just got a spanky-new r/h drive cable from Motobins for £30.

Also, what I suspected was a seized motor turned out to be the far more common problem of the sliding mechanism jammed solid, so I stripped the whole lot down, cleaned it and reassembled it. I was going to document here it but every.... single... photograph was out of focus. I'll try again when I replace the drive cables. Chris Harris has a Youtube video on freeing up seized screens but I wasn't too impressed with him relying on spraying various oils onto the mechanism and using the motor to free things off. One thing I found was that the 'slider' at the top end of the drive cable has a hard nylon 'shoe' on it. This pushes off easily enough with a couple of fingernails. Underneath are two rubber pads that wrap around the slider. I've stripped and cleaned two mechanisms in the last week and in both cases, the rubber pads on both sides had accumulated a smalll amount of crud on them which pushes the nylon shoe out of shape and jams the slider. No amount of spray oil is going to solve that problem.

Dai wrote:Sometimes the world smiles on you... just got a spanky-new r/h drive cable from Motobins for £30.

Also, what I suspected was a seized motor turned out to be the far more common problem of the sliding mechanism jammed solid, so I stripped the whole lot down, cleaned it and reassembled it. I was going to document here it but every.... single... photograph was out of focus. I'll try again when I replace the drive cables. Chris Harris has a Youtube video on freeing up seized screens but I wasn't too impressed with him relying on spraying various oils onto the mechanism and using the motor to free things off. One thing I found was that the 'slider' at the top end of the drive cable has a hard nylon 'shoe' on it. This pushes off easily enough with a couple of fingernails. Underneath are two rubber pads that wrap around the slider. I've stripped and cleaned two mechanisms in the last week and in both cases, the rubber pads on both sides had accumulated a smalll amount of crud on them which pushes the nylon shoe out of shape and jams the slider. No amount of spray oil is going to solve that problem.

BMW advises using silicone on those rods as it doesn't "trap" as much dust on the rods. Recommended service interval is 12K miles or 20K km.