Thought I would post this tid bit of information that might be of some help to others.

My C68 worked well most of the time. Sometimes it would put me on ignore and not respond to some of the buttons and the green LEDs might not light as bright as it should.

Ok, so I do this for a living and have no problem going into any of the boxes, but this should be fairly simple for most.

I removed the cover and inspected the solder on the main circuit card. It is well made and coated and the solder looked great. I removed the main board from the vertical board by un-plugging it carefully. I inspected the pins and saw where they could be cleaned up. Also inspected the solder on the smaller vertical board and decided the re-solder the connections on the LEDs. This is a quick re-flow with a small amount of additional solder added. (Be gentle when working on everything and observe some ESD practices).

I used emery cloth to lightly clean the sides of the pins where the contacts are made on the vertical board. Then I used a cleaner on the pins to finish up and blew off with clean air. I also squirted some cleaner into the connector of the main board and blew off with clean air.

I then re-assembled the climate control and installed back in the car. I didn’t know quite what to expect for I felt like I did not do much or really find anything solid.

The system works better than it has ever before. It always responds to me and has been a few days now and confidence is building in the repair. Going down the road is nicer now because the distraction is less due to the buttons work when I now press them.

 

Good deal, that sounded pretty straight forward. I saw a company in Vette Vues magazine that rebuilds these, but they stress it isn't a cosmetic rebuild, meaning scratches, graphics, etc.. I wonder if what you did, is all they are doing, unless something is burned out?

 

As with any electronic problem anything could be the problem. But some parts have are more prone to failure than others and if you repair enough of them, a trend of the same failed parts always develops.

There are always some proprietary chips in these boxes meaning that you don’t know what they are and can not cross them to a commercial part number because GM has their own part number on them and meaningless to anyone else except the chip maker (who is sworn to secrecy). Lots of parts and troubleshooting can be performed without a schematic. But when the problem gets to complicated, a schematic is needed but are not available to the public.

I could not fix my PKE receiver because of this and had to get a used one. The problem was sever and to much to guess at. I have never really dealt with a defective C68 so can’t say much about it, but I’m sure some can be tough to fix. I just don’t know what schematics or level the box fixers work to.

 

Good post!

Thanks, having same problem.