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Well, Bob's pushbutton actuator is finished and back on it's way to GA. This one presented new challenges,as many do. Someone has been in it before, and had problems with water making its way into the unit. Their solution was to drill a series of drain holes rather than seal the unit!
The gearing had been taken apart and put back together incorrectly, not life-threatening, but incorrect. Many of the fingers had been distempered, and were not making contact with the contact segment. Look at picture #8--the grommet for one of the motor wires was missing--Well, I now replace those! There was insulation melted from the wires going to the finger-plates. I potted the exposed section of wire in rubber, that is visable on photo #16. The wire that was exposed on the top portion of the rubber sealing block could be a big problem, so I pot those in new rubber compound, as illustrated in phot #16. I cleaned his connector terminals, which were going green. the captions on the other photos describe everything else. I'll be posting videos of this unit on youtube, maybe tonight, and will give y'all the links when I do.

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John, just out of curiosity, how much do you charge for this service?

$25/hr + parts and materials, $40 for the eight fingers, The average job is between $300 and $400

here are the videos on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6nsZzGsiTs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y1fiQnHBsU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G9WC7AiFTM

MrPushbutton -

The videos are cool, but your text and captioned still photos tell the real story.

This has been the most informative stuff I've seen published on the system in decades!

Great pics. Beautiful job. What is "potting" the wires???? Why not just use new wire???

P-V8--"potting" is a term left over from my days in electronic manufacturing, it describes the process of molding a compound around an object. The reason I don't use new wire (yet) is that the pushbutton contact segment wires are cast into a rubber block (see pic. 16) as a seal to keep road dirt and water out.
A percentage (I'm guessing about a quarter) of the pushbutton units I'm seeing have this condition where there is a break in the insulation jacket right where the wire exits the rubber block, leaving about 1/16" of exposed wire. There will be 4-6 such exposed sections in the same harness, making me afraid that a loose piece of anything conductive could get up there and short out the leads, and cause trouble. I form a mold around the back side of the rubber block and encase those exposed sections of wire to avoid such problems. It's also good since it changes the bending point of the wire.

After a decade follows new input to dust off and revitalize this old but substantial thread.

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