My spoiler gave me control light at 70mph. Manual switch is not working either. Spoiler is in down position.

I am convinced it’s not the rams – they are dry and all was well the day before.

Will give cleaning micro switches a go.

Can anyone give me some pointers how, and where the micro switches are located? Easy to get to?

Many Thanks.

 

Located on passenger side ram. They are very fragile and made out of very thin metal.
Take the little cover off and they just pull out.

 

Do I need to take them apart or just spray some contact cleaner on them? Thanks.

 

On my '04 there is a switch holder screwed to the right side ram. You can take this off and the switches will remain on the holder in the correct position where you can check out the lever action and meter them if necessary.

 

Ok job was easy. Took the cover off. Unscrewed 4 little screws and the whole assembly pulled out with micro switches in place. One had large clearance whilst the other didn't. I readjusted the gap and thought that's it. Wrong. Still no joy. Any tips on how you meter them? Ps. If you have the asembly out and you depress the switches by hand would spoiler operate? I say this because I might be able to borrow some from friend and just swap them over as a test.

 

I'm not exactly sure what all they do, but I know the switches tell the system that the wing is either up or down. It will give you warning messages and lights. I think it also tells the screw ram in the pump to go clockwise or counter to raise or lower the wing. I don't believe it activates it though.

 

Micro switches are just limit switches that trigger the error message if the spoiler doesn't extend or retract "all the way". They don't activate the pump.

I suspect your pump may have gone bad since you say nothing happens when you push the manual switch. You can check this easily by removing the plastic cover to expose the pump and applying 12V to the electrical connection terminals on the pump (reverse polarity to change direction). IF this moves the spoiler up and down, then you have a wiring issue somewhere.

 

Thanks.

I read somewhere that micro switches need to be gapped correctly?

When I pulled my micro switches out, one micro switch's metal tab had a much greater gap to switch then the other is this correct?

 

Red line represents position of the metal tab as I found it. it was bent upwards. I pressed it down so it mirrors the other one which looked correct. Unless that was a mistake?

 

You're fine. You can see neither metal tab is pushing on the actual switch (little white dot under each metal tab in the picture you posted). When installed on the ram, these tabs are pushed against the ram post except in fully up or fully down position (you'll see relief cuts on the ram post in those two positions). I've read some people had a "gapping" issue when the micro switch wasn't seated all the way down onto the plastic holder. This creates are larger gap to the ram post so these metal tabs can't push the switch in.

Like I said before, your symptoms point to a bad pump or wiring. The spoiler still would move up & down if only micro switches had failed.

 

Tanks mate you were right. It's the pump. Once I've connected power to it, it just made a short noise and nothing else. Did anyone manage to recondition them?

 

Some good news folks. For those of you who will have the dreaded oil pump spoiler failure; the oil pump consists of two parts - hydraulic part and the motor part. In my case the motor part failed. Complete unit is 1500$. However my local car electrician repaired the motor. He said it wasn't easy but managed to seperate the motor from the pump and then rewired the internals. Cost? 100$. So if the motor part fails competent car electrician should be able to fix it.

 

I doubt that your switches failed. You can spray them from the outside in case cables to micro switches coroded. But the actual micro switches are well inside the MS base and are well protected.

 

If the micro switches only control limit and not activate the pump, then I'm struggling with my current proplem. I recently repaired a ram leak and fully bled the system and everything worked fine on the bench with a 12v power source. Once I installed everything (the rams were extended) I started the car and dropped the spoiler via the dash button. Problem now is it won't extend (speed or button) and there is no error light warning on the dash.

 

Perhaps you should start with the spoiler in down position? Just an idea?