swalker
Very helpful member
- Joined
- Dec 11, 2014
- Messages
- 1,585
- Reason
- DX MND
- Diagnosis
- 07/2014
- Country
- US
- State
- CO
- City
- Vail
I admit to having gotten a bit lax on my wheelchair maintenance. My capacity to do things is limited and I have chosen to use that capacity doing other, more interesting things.
Unfortunately, I have had two recent wheelchair failures that are completely due to lack of maintenance. So, I am writing this post as a reminder to not get lax on wheelchair maintenance like I did.
The first failure was that two bolts and a metal plate fell off my Permobil F5 wheelchair. I used to periodically check each bolt to ensure they had not loosened up. I do use Loctite on bolts where the service manual indicates, but most bolts on my wheelchair are not supposed to have Loctite applied.
We found the missing plate and one of the bolts in the wheelchair van and were very fortunate to do so. We were able to buy a replacement for the bolt that must have been lost on a trail somewhere. We put things back together and then checked the wheelchair over for loose bolts. We found several others that were loose and two that were just about to fall out!
In another incident that happened just a few days later, my Permobil F5 wheelchair suddenly displayed a PM Bad Cable (7F00) error. The wheelchair kept operating OK, but something was clearly wrong. Shortly after that it also displayed the JSM Bad Cable (7F00) error. These errors would display for 1 second out of every 5 and alternated between the PM and JSM varieties.
The service manual indicates that these errors could be caused by a bad Power Module, bad Joystick Module, bad connection, and/or bad cables. It also turns out there are two bus bars (or junction boxes the cables plug into) that could also potentially be bad.
We started diagnosing at the joystick and worked our way all the way back to the Power Module. There are 4 cables and 2 bus bars, so there were many things to check. We found the problem at the next to last place we looked, which is where an RNet cable plugs into a bus bar adjacent to the power module (under the shroud on the back of the wheelchair). The cable coming from the Power module had vibrated loose and was partially unplugged from the bus bar.
This was an easy fix, but took an hour or so to diagnose. The fix was easy, we simply needed to reseat the cable where it connects to the bus bar.
While the wheelchair continued working with this fault, the cable was very close to coming completely out, in which case the wheelchair would have become inoperable. I would have been stranded!
The wheelchair has worked fine since these two incidents, but has reminded me that I should no longer be lax about the periodic maintenance of my wheelchairs that I used to do.
Steve
Unfortunately, I have had two recent wheelchair failures that are completely due to lack of maintenance. So, I am writing this post as a reminder to not get lax on wheelchair maintenance like I did.
The first failure was that two bolts and a metal plate fell off my Permobil F5 wheelchair. I used to periodically check each bolt to ensure they had not loosened up. I do use Loctite on bolts where the service manual indicates, but most bolts on my wheelchair are not supposed to have Loctite applied.
We found the missing plate and one of the bolts in the wheelchair van and were very fortunate to do so. We were able to buy a replacement for the bolt that must have been lost on a trail somewhere. We put things back together and then checked the wheelchair over for loose bolts. We found several others that were loose and two that were just about to fall out!
In another incident that happened just a few days later, my Permobil F5 wheelchair suddenly displayed a PM Bad Cable (7F00) error. The wheelchair kept operating OK, but something was clearly wrong. Shortly after that it also displayed the JSM Bad Cable (7F00) error. These errors would display for 1 second out of every 5 and alternated between the PM and JSM varieties.
The service manual indicates that these errors could be caused by a bad Power Module, bad Joystick Module, bad connection, and/or bad cables. It also turns out there are two bus bars (or junction boxes the cables plug into) that could also potentially be bad.
We started diagnosing at the joystick and worked our way all the way back to the Power Module. There are 4 cables and 2 bus bars, so there were many things to check. We found the problem at the next to last place we looked, which is where an RNet cable plugs into a bus bar adjacent to the power module (under the shroud on the back of the wheelchair). The cable coming from the Power module had vibrated loose and was partially unplugged from the bus bar.
This was an easy fix, but took an hour or so to diagnose. The fix was easy, we simply needed to reseat the cable where it connects to the bus bar.
While the wheelchair continued working with this fault, the cable was very close to coming completely out, in which case the wheelchair would have become inoperable. I would have been stranded!
The wheelchair has worked fine since these two incidents, but has reminded me that I should no longer be lax about the periodic maintenance of my wheelchairs that I used to do.
Steve
