The infamous pink Thunderbolt restore thread

[MysteryMachine]

here's where I'm at with this. Thie chopper motor housing is at my one brother in law's house. I'm having him work on getting the broken bolts out. The slip rings are also there for him to mess with.

Yesterday I hooked up the hi/low solenoids to test them out beings I've been have issues when trying the fire signal. Here is the results of that.

http://www.youtube.com/user/MysteryMach ... ature=mhee

As you can see they are pretty spazy. Don't know whats causing it.

Rick told me to test the flasher so i did that and it appears to be working fine unless I'm missing something

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

[Rick K]

You're right about the flasher--that appears to be working fine. It's possible that the contacts inside the flasher (the two that alternate) could be dirty.

Try giving each solenoid straight 220 vac (maybe hook them up to your blower or rotator circuit so you have a switch to test with). If they hold in as long as they have power, then they are fine and it's something in the RCM3 panel.

[MysteryMachine]

hmm I replied to this hours ago but it's not here anyway....


Ian seems to think it's that DPDT relay. He said it seems like it's sticking and arcing way too much. I'm gonna look into replacing that and see what happens.


I will give the solenoids each a test tomorrow if I get a chance.

Brother in law fixed up my slip rings and got the 4 broken horn brace bolts out. Ending up breaking off his tap in the cap bolt hole so I'm not gonna worry about that. It runs fine with 3 bolts holding it together.

If i could just get everything to work now I could get to the actual restore part of it

[MysteryMachine]

Well threw that DPDT relay back in and now nothing works. It's getting power but nothing trips. I can put the switches on test and nothing happens, I've manually pushed the black things back on the starters and nothing happens. The flasher don't even spin now. I don't know wtf happened.

Only thing I have changed was I added a breaker box and have it temporarily wired so i can flip the breakers in that box and not have to run inside into the basement. i don't see why that would change anything. It was running on a double 20amp breaker and now there is 2 separate 20 amp breakers.

I tried to go out on a limb today and wire it up like a 1000 with a AR timer to see if something in the RCM3 was the issues but that didn't work either. I unplugged the timer and went to disconnect the wires and got a little buzz. Something was back feeding from the RCM1A I guess. It's raining here so my shoes were wet, my clothes are damp and I'm standing in damp gravel in my garage. I'm thinking that little buzz from the 220 was me being lucky for the day and decided to give up

[MysteryMachine]

UPDATE:

Found out today that where I was getting 2 220 lines going to the RCM I wasn't getting 240. Had my brother in law come down tonight and go over my wiring. After changing wires and still not getting 240 I realized that my breaker box is set up to where the breakers are staggered. If you have one on each side across from each other you are still on the "same side" so no 240. I said "umm wait look at how this it setup here" and my bro in law goes "yup that's the problem I didn't take notice to that" moved the one breaker down and we were pushing 240 and I flipped the test switch really quick cause it was 8 or after and the chopper fired right up.

maybe now I can get the rest of the dang thing to work

[MysteryMachine]

Update video with questions http://youtu.be/LoCTClguR6g

[MysteryMachine]

got that dang relay to work! still no attack though http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0zuA2DbIqs

[TimeAttack]

Lol looks like everyone gave up on this thread. Anyways how did you find out the relay was the problem? Are you gonna stick another set of relays in there?

[MysteryMachine]

I believe the DPDT relay was an issue. I sanded it and bent the contacts a little so they would contact the way they should and now it works. I think the Attack issue might me the micro switch? The little switch on the cam wheel in the timer. The one doesn't click like the rest do when I push up on the little wheel. I switched it with what I think is the Fire cams switch then Fire and Attack wouldn't work. Once I switched them back Fire worked again. I'm still not sure why It made neither one work though



Sorry reread your post after posting this. I could push on the test tab and the relay would work but it wouldn't work electronically. After pulling it out of the RCM3 I noticed that you could see a little bit of light through were the contacts should have been together

[holler]

Those relays can be picked up new on eBay pretty cheap. The last ones I bought were from a guitar amp store.

If they stick once, they will stick again. Toss it and get a new one.