Flaps microswitch change

[OriensFlight]

I bought my micro-switch through an Authorized Diamond dealer in the US. The troubleshooting guide in the maintenance manual is pretty good. For me it turned out to be switch S5. $25.95 for the part (incl. shipping). The actual repair did not prove to be nearly as challenging as I had feared, S5 was apparently accessible without full removal of the actuator. $362.52 for the repair at a higher-end shop.

I think this is the link to maintenance manual (for my 2007 DA40, anyway):
http://support.diamond-air.at/da40-180_ ... 73ab0.html

ps: I chose not to replace all five switches, but that's probably not a bad idea.

[dwurfel]

Thank you so much. I will report back what I find. Thanks again.

[dwurfel]

Oriens, one questions with microswitch 5 what problem were you experiencing?.

[OriensFlight]

David, exactly the behavior that’s documented in the troubleshooting guide. T/O to LDG switch change resulted in landing flap being deployed, but intermittently the LDG light did not light up. Attempting to raise flaps from LDG to T/O (during a go-around) would fail intermittently. That’s a suboptimal condition. It was possible to raise flaps to full UP, however. The design and behind the scenes electromechanical magic is still somewhat unclear to me, but the wind resistance encountered during approach and T/O to LDG flap application made the relay not close completely. Almost makes me jealous of the Piper Archer’s bio-mechanical design. ;-)
I suspect your issue may fall into one of the other failure scenarios, which may require the replacement or adjustment of one or more microswitches. All things considered this is one of the cheaper repairs, assuming the actuator doesn’t need replacing.

[smoss]

Ironically, I just replaced microswitch 2 which is the second one in from the pilots side of the plane today.

We unbolted the rear passenger bench style seat and rotated it to the right side of the plane to obtain access to the switch base plate. I do have access panels but they don’t allow sufficient room to solder. Switch 1 is even harder to get to thru the access panel.

You have to solder the leads to the terminals of the switch. It appears that the roller part of the switch mechanism wears out and the switch will not close, leaving it in open in all situations.

The Diamond Mx man has excellent troubleshooting advice and diagrams.

The seat removal takes some practice. You must lift up and rotate. Follow mx manual to remove bolts, there are a total of 13.

So I see that Premier in their parts section now sells the microswitch lever actuator arms by themselves, for a low cost of $62.13 each!!!!!!
https://premieraircraftservice.com/prod ... uator-arm/
If it is really just the arms that wear, can't we just pull one of a new $2 switch and easily swap them, or even just bend them back as needed. It does appear you'd need to unscrew the microswitch off the holding board to swap the arm, but at least wouldn't have to solder anything.