Electric couch moving very slow

[ATONOFUN]

We have a Winnebago Adventure 35P with a leather electric couch which turns into a king bed. The couch goes down but when I want to bring it back into the up position it struggles and needs a strong push to return. Has anyone experienced this and suggested solutions?
Thanking you all in advance.

[be happy]

I have a 07 Meridian with the electric sofa/bed. I have found that about every other year I have to get under it and clean all of the joints. Then I use a silicone spay on everything that moves. This seems to help, as the pet hair has a way to find itself on everything movable.

[Morich]

Sounds like a fun game to play and I "may " be able to point to some ideas.
I think this will be a 12Volt DC motor to do both up and down. A common way to do this is to reverse the polarity (swap battery and ground) for one or the other, up or down.
This may be done with a relay.
But that is based on a fair amount of guessing so I need you to do a check of some things before I get too far down the wrong rabbit hole!

There is a sofa and a breaker, but I'm not certain it is the correct two parts as their decription is sometimes not what we "normal" people might call it!
Click these snips to get a better view!
This is from a wiring ID chart that lists the "from" and "to" of wires.
Does this seem to describe the sofa you mention?

And do you know where this breaker panel is located?


If this seems the right sofa, can you remove the sofa breaker and check if it does, in fact, stop both up and down movement on the sofa?

My thought is that if I am looking at the right info, there may be two relays of the same kind. That would allow you to pull the relays and swap locations as a test. I'm only guessing at that right now but if we get the right place and right wiring, we can then look for the relays to swap. If the trouble moves with the relay, we can then say one relay is good and one bad. There is a good chance they are a common type relay found in auto parts stores!
That is a reasonable thing to guess at, it seems.

But first, I need to be sure I'm in the right ballpark!!

[Morich]

Clean and lube as Be Happy suggests is also a good idea and may certainly be easier if it works!

But if you are still slow and getting in far enough to see wiring and such, maybe a look at this while there?
Winn marks small wire ID on the ends.


If you get to the plugs, this drawing shows how the sofa is wired and you might want to check you are getting full voltage when going up as well as down to make sure both are getting the same?


Note the wire gauge (12) and colors (white or yellow) to help spot them?
If still bad, maybe find and swap the two relays? Are they mounted on the sofa?

[ATONOFUN]

No pet hair but I will spray with silicone spray. Thank you

[Morich]

My thoughts on the movement are a bit different. One , I would say lube is always a good thing, so certainly worth the try.
But if we think of how the sofa uses the same joints and mechanical parts, going up or going down, the lube seems to be the same.
That makes me lean away from thinking lube will fix the problem if it works okay in one direction but not in the other.
Certainly worth a try on the lube but when it changes when we change direction, I think of a connection which is still working but not as well as it should. A high resistance connection, like a relay with burned points can still continue to work but not let a voltage pass at full level.
So if you get into having to tip the sofa over to lube it, I recommend making sure before tipping it back upright! I don't know your space in the RV, but tipping some things in an RV can get to be a real headache and maybe not something we want to do twice!

[ATONOFUN]

Thank you Moriah, I appreciate your input. As a retired 43 year police officer in Canada ask me anything about investigations and putting bad guys in jail. I read your advice comments, several times.sorry but out if my league. Not sure what I was expecting when I reached out. I wish I had your knowledge and abilities. Respect. I called a mobile service to help me out.

[Morich]

Originally Posted by ATONOFUN

Thank you Moriah, I appreciate your input. As a retired 43 year police officer in Canada ask me anything about investigations and putting bad guys in jail. I read your advice comments, several times.sorry but out if my league. Not sure what I was expecting when I reached out. I wish I had your knowledge and abilities. Respect. I called a mobile service to help me out.

Okay. Not something that anybody should be critical of when we each reach the point where we feel we need to call the game!
I feel right in the electrical field because that is where I wound up! Not that it is any better or different than many other fields!

But is much like your job in some ways? We start out with a few bits of information and try to make the best of what we have. Sometimes we can keep adding those bits together and get something done.

But it is a very good plan to stop before we hurt ourself!
I started with very little info on how your sofa is built and that leaves the question of how to get to the parts as a real blank spot.
I just got a new couch with recliners, here at the house and just watching them move it was enough to make me say I'll never be tipping it over if it needs work!

Like police work, we can start out with the best theory in the world but we have to be ready to adapt as we get a better idea and more info!

[Zigzag03]

My electric couch/queen behaves similarly. Will extend on its own but needs help (by lifting the back) to stow. Have never investigated this, hasn't been on my priority problem list as yet, but now will be lubricating at least! I kinda figured that at its age it has stiff joints, a condition to which I can relate! Please report what you learn.

[Morich]

My reason for jumping to it being a contact in a relay going bad is the way the mechanical portion works.
It uses the same joints and mechanical connections to go up as down. That makes me feel a connection in that group would be as balky and slow to move in one direction as another.

But the motor which moves it in both directions, gets power from two different routes for up versus down!
Basic idea on this type gizmo, is that a DC motor runs in a different direction if we reverse the polarity of the DC power it gets. Normally it runs as well in one direction as the other.
If the motor has to work too hard to move the chair, I would expect it to draw much more current and blow or trip a fuse or breaker.

My thought, on this sofa is that there are two relays of the same type that are used to control the power to the motor. With them both the same relay, if we swap the relays, it tells us some good stuff about the relay condition.
If the problem is solved on one movement but the other movement is then bad, we can say it is a bad relay!
But if swapping the relays leaves the same problem, we then need to look at other things like a bad switch. I feel it is not the switch as the movement does happen, just not at normal speed. More testing needed!

One way to get slow DC motor speed is to give it lower voltage and that is what we get if a contact in the relay is corroded or burned from arcing! Feed a 12VDC motor 11.5 volts and it runs slower!

But that is all very much based on theory and I'm always alert to my theory
being wrong until tested!
There may be a rabbit on a treadmill and he's just tired of running uphill!

I hope we do get a good solid report of what they find as I've never looked under this type sofa!
What I fear is that they will get a report that goes something like, "We don't repair sofas! A new one is only $1400!"
We tend to throw a lot of good stuff in the trash becasue a $5 relay goes bad!!

[Morich]

Originally Posted by Zigzag03

My electric couch/queen behaves similarly. Will extend on its own but needs help (by lifting the back) to stow. Have never investigated this, hasn't been on my priority problem list as yet, but now will be lubricating at least! I kinda figured that at its age it has stiff joints, a condition to which I can relate! Please report what you learn.

Looking at your Rest easy sofa, it appears in the drwaings as a different setup, using the switch to reverse polarity, instead of relays? We don't get a lot of help on the sofa internal wiring but a little!
If it were my sofa and I got around to it, I might first check the voltages at a point where power comes in to the sofa to make sure it is a good 12VDC. Then follow it through the switch and on to the motor connection.
First I would checking coming in to the sofa, next getting to the motor on extend and retract should be near the same voltage.
If going into the switch and coming out are not the same, I would suspect the switch!
Click this snip for best view!




Wire ID chart here:
https://www.winnebago.com/Files/File...ical_guide.pdf

Just out here stumbling through the woods, sore knees and all!
Keep 'em moving as the alternate is not all that good!

[Zigzag03]

Thanks @Morich can relate to the aching knees. Wasn't my intention to hijack the thread, especially since my couch is apparently different from the OP. Appreciate the link regardless, hope we both get our couches moving better!

[Morich]

It would be nice to have all the details of how each couch is wired but that is not going to happen on lots of things, so it takes some guessing and then that guess needs to be looked at to see if it matches what we have!
In your case, it looks like the design is a bit more simple and the switch is very likely if we have trouble.
It shows we feed 12V to the switch on pin 3 and some way, that has to go into the switch and back out to the chair to extend or retract. But we don't get a good idea of what is in the switch, so we are left guessing and testing!

[Zigzag03]

Yes this design without relays puts all the load thru the switch, and I could see it taking its toll. Once you overcome the initial effort of getting the back to start moving up, it's plenty spritely. I'll pop the switch out and study it. Unfortunately my tstat for basement air has stopped shutting the unit off (so yesterday in rain and clouds my remote sensor was reading 69 degrees while stat was set to 77) so PRIORITIES HAVE CHANGED AGAIN!! Thanks from everyone here for your invaluable help on so many subjects!

[dickb46]

I always thought of this as the "gravity effect".
My couch goes out really smooth but it takes it's time (and energy) to come back in.
Likewise our 12' level floor slide goes out really easily but I need to fire up the engine to bring it back in and it still creaks and groans.
Just one of those things.
dick