550 actuators revisited

teach - have you ascertained whether your car ever had the "47173900 COMPLETE SPRING RETAINING CUP" part change done? if not, supposedly this will stop the spinning. my car has had the update and one still spins.

like you surmised, i assume there are a lot more of these spinning than people know about - it's not the kind of thing you'd notice unless you were watching for it.

the thing that annoys me is that this device purportedly turns a switch to tell the shock how to behave. it has four (or so) settings. if it's spinning, how is it turning that switch? it can't be - can it?

my dealer has been bugging FNA - no response whatsoever in 1-2 months now (not sure when the service manager started bugging them).

i too have wondered about the force. i absolutely cannot turn them by hand, so that might suggest a huge force. alternatively, when activated, maybe it "unlocks" to be "spinnable" easily.

question: does anybody know how to activate the actuators? does switching sport mode on and off change anything? that'd be useful to do some testing on this stuff. i am unaware of how to trigger a state change in a stationary vehicle.

doody.

 

Sorry to say that the shock mount and shock need to be changed.

I had a 550 that spun the rf actuator until it snapped.

After changing the shock and upper mount it hasn't turned yet.

 

the shock needs to be changed as well? can you elaborate? why? this is the first i've heard of that.

doody.

 

Hi there,

I checked mine other day and it has a severe spin...prob 4/5 times on the right hand side if sitting in car (UK Driver), Left side nothing. I unclipped and tried to correct but it didnt seem to want to unwind much either. I forced 2 turns and then left it alone as it felt like I was gonna break it if I tried to fully unwind.

I wonder if from new the cars had no twist in the cable at all?

zak

 

Ahhhhh...the actuator thread resurrected. I love reading this stuff. What is making these things spin?

 

You guys need to group together, get as much ON PAPER as possible. Take care to dealer and make them put IN WRITING the problem.

You will KNOW what to do from there

 

Jeff,

You will be fine witht he high-temp tape. I have been doing this for over 6 months now, and while the tape is wearing, it didn't affect anything adversely.

Also, the actuator functions at start-up (supposedly does a complete "twist" of the valve back and forth to ensure that it works), and then when you press sport mode, it rotates the valve 1/4" in travel.

I dont think it's not going to work because it's spinning - but I'm not sure. I've also never been able to really tell if sport mode does anything different.

--Dan

 

I'm not sure how much of a fix it is. I actually like the idea Doody came up with about using a mounting plate, but I'm still not sure how effective it is. What, if in the course of using that, something else breaks?

The only way to get a real answer is to find one that a service shop has discarded or isn't using any more. I've put mine on alert (FoSF) to keep an eye out for one that gets replaced so I can crack it open. You guys should talk to yours.

--Dan

 

By the way, with some time you'll become proficient enough to unspin each one in under 30s with a hot engine... I've just made it part of the routine.

--Dan

 

okay, i did some more sleuthing today, and took snaps.

and let me apologize in advance if some of my conclusions were obvious - they weren't obvious to me, but it's not like i never find myself in the cheap seats

below there are two pictures each of the understide of the actuator and the cup it connects to. the "top" and the "bottom", for ease of typing.

the actuator (the top) is not spinning. what's spinning is the bottom - the cup (for lack of a better word) which the actuator since on top of and around. i always assumed it was the actuator itself since the bottom part sure seems like it's damn-well bolted in place!

also i believe this to be the case because the location of the locking clip moves - and that's attached to the bottom piece - it intersects teh top piece inside. so this is kind of a "duh" thing to some degree.

furthermore, if you look at the top of the bottom cup, you can see lots of teeth sticking out all around the edge. and on the actuator you can see those teeth's counterpart. so once in place, that red actuator ain't going anywhere.

so i will retract my assertion that "if your actuator is spinning then you're probably not getting the shock to go to its different settings". i think that that is very unlikely and almost certainly untrue. apologies if i scared anyone on that (myself included).

also, i wanted to understand how the actuator actually interacts with the adjuster device. that's fairly clear in the pictures as well. the thing that spins, in the center of the bottom cup, has goodly long teeth. inside the top actuator, there are also teeth (though not as long). i think it's VERY unlikely that (if you get the pin in to lock the devices together) that the actuator isn't turning the adjuster in the center of the cup. it turns very freely in this one - so it doesn't take much force.

so the torque force is being caused by some portion of the shock tower turning - which leads me to believe that our hacked fixes are probably not goign to hold up over time. it also explains why the "fix" the factory put in place didn't involve the actuator - it replaced the cup assembly.

you can't see it in the pictures, but you can next time you've got your hands in there: note that the adjuster that spins is designed nicely such that it has good, hard stop points - the actuator is a rather "dumb" device. at start up the computer presumably spins the actuator all the way left then all the way right and records the angles of where the adjuster stopped and then divides by three to get the two stop points in between.

so at this point, i'm way out of my league on trying to understand what part is faulty. but i thought folks might find this information at least entertaining, if not educational.

QUESTION: next time someone is in there unspinning theirs, do us a favor and grab the little center thing that turns and see if it turns smooth and easily or if it requires real force and whether it clicks into N places (as opposed to moving continuously (rolex -vs- knock-off!)). mine moves smoothly and with minimal effort, which leads me to believe that whatever adjustment it's manifesting, is continuously adjustable (cool) and just the actuator only goes to N places (four?). curious to know if smooth = broken!

doody.