Milling around, so to speak
A few weeks ago jmaynard and I bought a new treadmill. This one is quieter than the old one and the inclination is controlled not by changing the length of the rear supports but by a motor. The incline can be changed by keypress or be programmed along with speed. Sunday night I got on the treadmill and pushed the button to raise the incline. Nothing happened. Well, no change of incline happened. A hum happened.
Monday morning I called the support line and got talked through a fair amount of diagnostics and was told that a new motor would be sent. Evidently we're outside the in-home service radius of the manufacturer's service center(s) but the 10 year warranty is certainly in force. Today a package arrived and it was not a new motor. It was a new power supply/motor controller board. I called back (it's nice having the direct extension number so I can talk to the same person again without fiddling around) and found that after the call on Monday there was some discussion and the diagnosis was changed. The hot humming motor was not the problem, but a symptom.
Tonight I changed out the power supply/motor controller board and all seems to be well. The instructions for the swap are reasonably good, but some details are things that a really good technical writer would be annoyed were omitted. The instructions claim only a phillips screwdriver is needed and that's only almost right. Not a big deal, but it would have gone just a bit faster had I not had to make extra trips to get additional tools. Anyway, the new treadmill is working right again.