3 port valve

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7 Oct 2014
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Location
Sussex
Country
United Kingdom
Hi,
The 3 port valve on my heating has failed for the second time in a year. It was making a very loud buzzing/grating sound and then it failed completely. I bought a new motor head for today and attempted to replace it, assuming it would be a simple job as it has been before. However, there is a problem. The spindle on the valve only turns through a tiny amount and also appears to turn only slightly the opposite way to how it seems it should. I'll attempt to explain this as best I can.

I will describe clockwise and anti-clockwise directions as if you are looking top down on the valve with the wire coming out the left. The motor head has a slot that, in the manual position, is fully anti-clockwise. Releasing the lever will cause it to spring back clockwise. The valve spindle is just before 12 o'clock when turned fully clockwise and will then turn a slight amount anti-clockwise. To fit the head, I pull the lever to the manual position, thus turning it fully anti-clockwise. It will then just fit onto the spindle when the spindle is turned fully clockwise. So... the problem is, when releasing the lever, the head tries to rotate back clockwise but the spindle is already as far clockwise as it can go. On the other hand, the spindle cannot be made to rotate anti-clockwise as the motor is already as far anti-clockwise as it can go. Basically, the rotation of the motor head does not match up with the rotation of the spindle.

This leads me to believe that the spindle is in fact jammed and just has a little bit of play left in it. Possible, the valve seized and burnt out the motor.

Does this sound correct or am I missing something obvious? As I said, I've replaced motor heads before and not had any problems, this is really confusing me.

Thanks in advance for your replies!

Thanks,
James
 
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