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davidwort

siezing spoiler mechanisms

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My spoiler started squeeking a couple of years back, thought I'd try a bit of talc, then silicone grease and spray, seemed to help for a while but then it came back months later. Eventually the other week the spoiler started groaning quite badly at the nearly full up position, both going up and down, culminating in it actually jamming up, although coming down with the under-dash switch.

 

I had a spare unit so swapped them over, last night I took the old one apart to investigate. Although the drive cables are sort of separated from the spoiler supports and should be free from moisture that drains down past the support seals, in practice over the years the guide tubes have gone rusty inside and with no lubricant or way of getting lubricant in from outside one had finally almost siezed. Using the manual knob inside the tailgate panel to raise/lower the spoiler you could feel the restriction.

 

Good news is that taking it all apart you could free it off pretty much completely, bit of WD40 and manually pushing the cable right in and out of the tube.

I would suggest that it's good preventative maintenance to take off the rear panel and manually operate the spoiler from time to time to check for any restriction and probably to take it apart and clean it, couple of hours to do carefully, a bit of silicone grease on the drive cables (they're plastic coated) would probably keep it going for years to come.

All the parts come apart pretty easily, only the power cable runs and clips are a bit of a fiddle.

 

Just thought I'd let others know they would benefit from a little service once in every ten years or so :)

 

David.

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