Last weekend my perfect pass suddenly quit working. After some troubleshooting I found the servo motor wasn't rotating, either under its own power or by manually twisting it. It was stuck solidly in place, even when using a wrench to try and apply a bit more force.
I did some searching around the internet and didn't find much useful information or photos related to my specific issue, so I thought I'd share some from my repair job.
First things first, this perfect pass was installed in a 1997 Sanger V210 approximately 5 or so years ago, and in those 5 years we have put approximately 500 hours on the boat. Most of those hours are either wakeboarding or surfing, loaded down with 2000ish Lbs. plus people. The V210 rides low, but even with this much weight on board we don't take water over the bow or stern.
Still we have had trouble keeping the bilge and engine compartment totally dry. It was only recently we realized how much water gets in through the opening in the stern that serves as the blower outlet. Every time we stop and turn around water splashes through, or even if another boats wake hits us in the stern. If the bilge isn't run regularly water pools up rapidly in the bilge. We have made some changes recently to deal with this and it has kept things much more dry, but it seems to be too little too late for the servo motor. The wet environment led to water creeping in and corroding the internals, which is what locked it up.
Just to be clear I don't consider this to be a fault of the servo unit, we should have caught on to the excessive water in the bilge much sooner than we did.
Here is how I fixed the issue.
1. Removed the Servo motor and mounting bracket from the boat.
2. Drill out the rivets. 3/16 bit on this one.
3. Remove the screws that hold the motor together. Note the corrosion, clearly there has been some water in here.
4. Remove the front cover that is pictured above. I had to lightly tap it with a hammer from the back side. Here it is once removed.
5. Remove the back cover. I did this by putting the screws back in, as pictured above, and lightly tapping them to break the back loose. You can see the corrosion and nastiness on the inner part at this point.
Here is a view of the front side with the cover off.
5. Disassemble everything. Here is the exploded view
6. Clean everything up and check that your bearings are still good. I used an aerosol electric parts cleaner and a stiff nylon brush on the corroded motor parts. Sorry I didn't get a pic with everything cleaned up. I also used compressed air to dry everything off before reassembling.
7. Reassemble the motor, then remove the old sealant to make way for the new. Re-seal the joints. I used clear adhesive silicone
8. I also didn't get pics of the reassembled unit. I used rivets to put it back together, but in a pinch you could use #10 sized stainless screws with appropriate thread locking.
I connected the servo motor wires and ran a servo motion test to make sure everything was rotating. After verifying this I mounted everything back up and it ran successfully for an afternoon at the lake. I'll be keeping a close eye on the motor for a while but as of now everything is working!
With more and more people using these older low riding boats to surf I'm guessing there may be others that find themselves with a similar issue. Hopefully this helps.
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