I lowered the ten footer today for annual (well 14 month?) maintenance. It hasn't had a hiccup since I got it up in the early summer 2010, despite being allowed to run unloaded a couple times for a few hours.
Anyway.. the blades were in bad need of a new coat of oil. That's the first thing I did.. Then I realized I was going to have to take the turbine off the tower to grease it, so I got linseed oil all over my shirt.
I was surprised to see the amount of damage to the leading edges. This is less than 2 years in the air. I'm using a Classic charge controller, but I don't think I have it dialed in to run all that much faster than it did when it was voltage-clamped. Anyway, a little of that leading edge tape that some folks are using wouldn't hurt me at all here. I just oiled it and ignored it though.
Being too lazy to remove the blades from the turbine, I just jerked it off the stub and layed it on the back of my truck. Good thing too. The Kellum grip had slipped out of the cable clamp and there was a little crack in the stator from where the wires had been pulling on it.
I re-clamped the Kellum grip. I think the cable twisted enough to rip it out of the clamp. Time will see if it holds up or not. I got a little more aggressive with the cable clamp screws than I did last year.
My nylon washer is about half as thick as it was 2 years ago. I fabricated this out of a white cutting board, since I didn't happen to have any bronze laying around. There were plenty of white dust shavings in there. I just greased it up good and reinstalled it. Might have to fabricate up another one before next fall. I put plenty-o-grease in there to try and extend it's life.
I also adjusted a couple of my guy wires because they were out of turnbuckle adjustment. Raised the whole thing back up and am back in business. Whole deal only took about 3 hours and I did a little guy wire tweaking to improve tension and plumb. These are good turbines, very trouble free for over a year, and hopefully into next year. Cheers!
