receiver actuator problems

[afterlife]

Recently i had to change my actuator which had served me well for approx 10 years. The new actuator superjack heavy duty 24 inch model for some reason was a lot slower than the old strong model. Now the present problem,I use an echoster 3600ip and find that it cannot drive the actuator arm. I have tested the superjack motor and it works in forward and reverse. First question has any other echostar users had problems with the 3600ip after many years use. If i drive the arm forward (connected to the dish) useing my battery charger NO problems. But the receiver must be seeing some form of message because the dish will return to its limit piont on its own? Lets start with this brief details and maybe somebody has seen this problems before.
Many Thanks

[JOE.MADDISON]

sounds like you have mixed up your connections,make sure the motor and sensor wires are connected right if you put the sensor wires across the motor out from the echostar you will fry the reed switch in the arm, if you mix up the other way one wire from reed and one from motor no damage but arm wont move so first make sure all connections are in right place.some actuators have extra blank terminals in the connector block.makesure you haven't connected the sensor wires to one of these.

[afterlife]

when actuators where changed the power and sensors wires on the echostar were not moved and the wires at the actuator w eredobule checked to avoid frying the reed .Why does the arm when moved by the battery charger return on its own. Is there a compolant within the echostar that is now failing to deliver 36volt thus not delivering enough power to move the arm. blank section has no cables.

[cosworth4x4]

you say the original actuator failed ? has it or was it the echostar , i can confirm the hd actuators are a good bit slower than the standard ones.

if you sure it had failed could it have damage the echostar ?

[afterlife]

The original one failed on two points - firstly froze during winter and also water entered unit and nylon gear broke. But here in the south of france we get very strong storms and usually i unplug the receivers, but get a lot of power fluctuations.Thanks for confirming slow rate of movement on the hd actucators. Is there anything connected the the 36power side of the echostar that you know of?

[cosworth4x4]

it was a very long time ago i had a 3600 ip are you just using the 3600 to move the dish, i cant see the actuator being the problem .

[afterlife]

yes, just use it for sat movement.

[cosworth4x4]

get yourself a v box

[Mickha]

Have you checked the wires? If water entered the motor did the water get into the wiring? My Echostar 3600 is still going strong and driven a 24" superjack, Jaeger 1224 and currently a moteck H180.

[JOE.MADDISON]

if arm moves back to a set point then echo knows where the arm is and IS driving thearm back to where the echo wants it so you now need to reset the whole system clear out all your motor settings,start from scratch,set limits first and then all your sat positions,it might well be the right time for you to go the way of a v-box,just fitted mine this week, pretty easy and saves time,got mine off eb*y new cost £20 + works great withdis1.2 recr(in my case a spiderbox 9000hd)

[afterlife]

To Micka After the water entered the end unit, i cut about three inches off the cable and checked it to make sure it was dry at cut point.
Joe Probally i am going to save myself a lot of frustration trying to repair the echostar which is about 20years old and just go down the vbox route. But you know what us sat addicts are like -give us a problem and we will be dammed if we cannot solve it. tomorrow i am going to setup a spare manhatten that has 36V to the actuator . If it works then i know it is the echostar,if it fails its the line or another problem with the actuator.
Regards

[JOE.MADDISON]

iv had many echostar recrs since the 80's my first the 1000 with its manual tuning knob .then 4500, the5500 then 3600,two of i gave to scrap man a month ago.the 3600ip via did sometimes lock up and i did have to do total reset a few times to restore normal running,if you move the dish the echo knows and puts it back to where it was,when you removed the old arm was the dish pointing to any sat.did youfit the new arm so it was on that same sat,if you did not the echo may be confused as its auto level control will NOT be receiving any signal level which locks it up ,so if possible set dish by loosining arm and sliding thro mount manualy,and to get signal and tighten...(arm should also be extended by same amount as old arm),extend new arm first using your charger BUT DISCONNECT SENSOR wires to recr FIRST then set arm to position then recon sens wires,get your picture but remember the old and new pulse count prob wont be the same and you prob have to re enter sat pos again...joe

[afterlife]

One of the strange faults that the echo now has ,is that it will not perform a complete factory reset. I can ask it not to retain my settings and just clear everything off its memory. But it will not do it?

[TonyO]

The echostar units have a small drain point at the bottom, flush the thing every 3 months with wd 40, it will last a lot longer if you do this.

Two actuators have lasted me 22 years, about 5 years ago I had to caniblise the two to get one working again, it still going.

[cosworth4x4]

wow not a good idea to flush a echostar 3600ip with wd40 :D

maybe worth reading it from the start :king-041: