Next is to check the continuity of all the wires in the loom at both ends. The wires going to the motor
are more difficult to check unless you take apart the motor. If you have a total failure of the spoiler working
this could be tried but making a small hole as close to the motor as possible with a straight pin and
checking continuity using the pin will allow you to check most of the wire. All that would be left is the wire
inside the housing going to the brushes and it is rare for that to break because of very little stress. Other
than that, the brushes could have lost contact with the armature. To check that, place the meter across
the two leads of the motor. If there is any reading it should be OK. No reading at all could indicate a
malfunctioning brush or an open in the armature wiring across those two points of the armature



Now lets move to the cables. In the picture above it is shown that there are 4 screws. These screws
do not hold in the cable, but rather the tubes the cables run in. You will see that the tubes are flared and
the plates that are screwed down hold this flare and tube in place. It is not necessary to remove these
screws. Cleaning up of the area of any dried grease or gunk is advisable. This is a graphite based
grease and sometimes dries out and causes the cables to bind.



Moving ahead to this area you will see the cable coming out of the tube. If you grab a hold of the cable
you can pull it all the way out, at which time you can clean it up and regrease it. You will want to pay
attention to the location of the cable before you remove it. This position you see is the down position
of the spoiler with the cable extended out nearly to the end of the assembly. If you removed the spoiler
in the up position, re-assembly will want to be in the same position, because that is the position of the
motor and switches. If when you removed the motor, the spoiler dropped to the down position you will
have to re-assemble it in the up position. This will come in to play when you replace the motor back on
the gear assembly in the previous photo. It is not the motor that decides which way to turn, but the
switches that reverse the direction of the motor by reversing polarity. This is why you must reassemble
it in the same position because the motor will say it has to go down when you plug it back in because
of the position of the switches, but the spoiler will already be down if you re-assemble it that way. The
motor will then try and force it down more and will fail and possibly damage something
(probably the plastic gears)
In the spoiler half of the photo above you can see a brass plate with a U shaped part at the front.
This is the connection to the cable via the plastic white part with the pin you see in the foreground.
Below that the assembly rides on a slanted passageway to raise the spoiler. You will want to grease
this slot also on both ends of the spoiler and work the grease in by moving the spoiler up and down
and checking for areas that are binding

Now we are into re-assembly. There are two things to make sure of and they are the cable position
VS the spoiler position when re-assembling and also, reference the photo below, take care that all
wires are clear of the nut guard. If you get a wire in between the nut on the motor and the guard in the
spoiler, the motor will bind as the nut tries to turn with the wire pressed between it and the guard and
also maybe shorting out or breaking the insulation on the wires.



Now that we have completed the service on the spoiler, hopefully after re-assembly you will see the
two photos below.

Down



Up



This is just some of the complicated extra crap that I have to go through with these cars. Hopefully if there are more VR-4 people lurking on this forum, this thread will help. Oh, and thanks to Brian (Cobra4b) for helping out while I cursed at the car. It's happy now though, haha

- Jay