Think reflowing the solder joints on a 25 year old printed circuit board is worthwhile preventive maintenance?� Or, if it aint broke, don't fix it?� Just looking for an opinion.....

Rich
San Diego

--- On Thu, 4/15/10, mark drillock <mdrillock@COX.NET> wrote:

From: mark drillock <mdrillock@COX.NET>
Subject: Re: ECU fixed! was: spare ECU?
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Date: Thursday, April 15, 2010, 3:37 PM

Yes, for the resistor legs I used a solder sucker to clean out the old
solder and then added fresh. For the transistors I just added some.

I have another bad ECU of the same version, Bosch 022, and I just re-did
the same solder stuff on it but it made no difference. I wasn't
surprised as there was some evidence of overheating on one of the
circuit traces andit didn't cycle the fuel pump on power up so I knew it
likely had a deeper problem.

Mark

miguel pacheco wrote:
> Mark, did you vaccum out the old solder? I'm curious because I have a
> small stack of ECUs in the gai-rage.
> Miguel
>
> On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 2:11 PM, mark drillock<mdrillock@cox.net>� wrote:
>> So, my friend dropped by this morning with his bad ECU. I plugged it
>> into my 87, sure enough fuel pump cycled with key on, fast cranking but
>> would not start. He picked up a spare from me and left. I took the case
>> off the ECU for a look. I could see some heat damaged solder joints
>> where a big resistor was soldered into the main board. With my ohm meter
>> I determined that the resistor fed the big transistor that runs the fuel
>> injectors. I added new solder to the 2 resistor legs and took the ECU
>> out to the van for a test, with the case still off. The van fired right up!
>> ................
>>