[Gregvw123]

First of all, thank you very much RogerD for the detailed instructions and the prompt reply to my email! My job would be much more difficult without this help.

I'm really on a budget, so replacing the actuators at $40+ a pop didn't seem like a good idea to me. I followed Roger's instructions and despite a good cleaning, they still didn't work.

I investigated the small rectangular thermistor found inside the tiny motor housing. Mine started off at 8 ohms when cold and went up to 20+ ohms when hot. When present in the curcuit along with the motor coils, the whole lot only has ~ 11 ohms of resistance cold. Thus, the motor has approximately 3 ohms of resistance. The 8 ohms the thermistor provides when cold is just too much. I think this has been speced incorrectly because the motor does not have the power to move the locks. I would suspect you can buy these items at an electronic store. If you are realy concerned about the termal protection they provide, that's probably the route you want to take. Just replace it with something with a smaller cold rating.

After thinking about Roger's warning about not bypassing the thermistor with a short, I decided to bypass the thermistor with a static resistor. Because the resistance is so low, I simply removed the thermistor and stuffed some solder in there. Solder really isn't a very good conductor, so it provides some natural resistance, so long as there is no copper core.

This makes the locks work exceptionally well. The motors do get hot, but they don't burn out. I would suspect that if you held the button down for a long period of time, bad things may happen, but the worst case is that you would have to replace the actuator which is what you were facing in the first place. Now, they work instantly and have lots of power.

G.