Hey Everyone,
My family got a vergola built to cover our deck out the back, it came with a remote controlled 12v motor which after about half a year or so it began to stuff up and could no longer open the cover. Since I'm quite handy around the house I decided to have a go at repairing the motor to save on spending ridiculous amounts of money to get it replaced. I opened it up and it was full of rust water so I took everything out, cleaned it all up and screwed it all back together. It seemed to work again so I applied a skin of silicone around all the outside of the case to prevent any further water making its way in. It worked well for a month or so but ended up breaking again, I took it apart to see what had happened and the silicone did the job of keeping out the water so I knew it had to be a flaw in the design. I allowed the gears to function while the case was open so I could see what was going on, the arm was attached to a worm gear that allowed the small 12v motor to apply enough torque to open an entire vergola with a small gear box to slow the ratio down. In the back of my mind I kind of knew what must have been happening so I applied the idea in practice; I thought about the worm gear pulling the arm as far back as possible while I examined the structure of the plastic, something just wasn't right to me. I allowed it to pull back and the moment it touched the plastic that stopped it, it would jam which I had imagined was happening in my mind. Since I had a dremel handy I got myself a thickish metallic washer to act as a more solid buffer and cut a section out of it for the worm gear shaft to fit, I placed it up against the end with superglue to prevent the worm gear from pressing the arm too close to the plastic and allow a small air gap, I put everything back together and added a new skin of silicone to make it water proof which I'm still shaking my head about since it's designed to work outdoors and at that kind of price? these companies that skimp on waterproofing disgust me to be honest; nothing that's made these days have any quality and the only real way to obtain quality is to either make your own or fix what you already have, it's just disgraceful. To this very day it has worked without a hitch thanks to the simple modification I made and my family can now enjoy the sunlight on the deck without wasting a single buck.
Thanks for reading,
Ashton.
