its kind of like a hardcore "wheres waldo" to me
A/C Malf.
Thread Starter
Burning Brakes
Joined: Feb 2008
Posts: 949
Likes: 1
From: Tampa fl
St. Jude Donor '14
A/C Malf.
Sometimes my A/C control does some weird things. Sometimes the display is not displaying the numbers properly, and sometimes it doesnt display anything at all. If i left the car with the a/c running it will stay at the last setting and temp i had on last run. after a little bit it will allow me to regain control of the a/c functions as normal. Has anyone experienced this?
Le Mans Master
Joined: Dec 2004
Posts: 5,492
Likes: 807
From: West coast CA
Sometimes my A/C control does some weird things. Sometimes the display is not displaying the numbers properly, and sometimes it doesnt display anything at all. If i left the car with the a/c running it will stay at the last setting and temp i had on last run. after a little bit it will allow me to regain control of the a/c functions as normal. Has anyone experienced this?
You don't hear about it as often now, so I would guess GM's supplier fixed the underlying failure. The fix is replacement of the head unit itself, which is pretty easy to do. Once it starts malfunctioning, it will just keep getting worse.
Thread Starter
Burning Brakes
Joined: Feb 2008
Posts: 949
Likes: 1
From: Tampa fl
St. Jude Donor '14
Yes. A lot of us had this problem in the first few years of production. I spoke to a dealer tech at the time who said he'd replaced literally hundreds of climate control head units.
You don't hear about it as often now, so I would guess GM's supplier fixed the underlying failure. The fix is replacement of the head unit itself, which is pretty easy to do. Once it starts malfunctioning, it will just keep getting worse.
You don't hear about it as often now, so I would guess GM's supplier fixed the underlying failure. The fix is replacement of the head unit itself, which is pretty easy to do. Once it starts malfunctioning, it will just keep getting worse.
Le Mans Master
Joined: Dec 2004
Posts: 5,492
Likes: 807
From: West coast CA
There is probably a component inside the display unit that's dying. The progression is usually very slow - like weeks or months. It might even be fixable, but I've never heard of anyone bothering to crack open the unit and troubleshoot it.
I just checked on-line and these things have become expensive! $450 from Cultrag? Time to break out the oscilloscope and the soldering iron.
Race Director
Joined: Dec 2013
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I never heard of anyone noticing a connection, but anything's possible I suppose.
There is probably a component inside the display unit that's dying. The progression is usually very slow - like weeks or months. It might even be fixable, but I've never heard of anyone bothering to crack open the unit and troubleshoot it.
I just checked on-line and these things have become expensive! $450 from Cultrag? Time to break out the oscilloscope and the soldering iron.
There is probably a component inside the display unit that's dying. The progression is usually very slow - like weeks or months. It might even be fixable, but I've never heard of anyone bothering to crack open the unit and troubleshoot it.
I just checked on-line and these things have become expensive! $450 from Cultrag? Time to break out the oscilloscope and the soldering iron.
Cold solder joint, and should be easy to find, or just go back through and re-solder the board.
Also, make sure to clean the wire harness pins when you pull the unit. Hence problem could be in one of the wire connections to the harness plug pin that you caused a problem when the unit was pulled/dropped down to work on the radio.
Le Mans Master
Joined: Dec 2004
Posts: 5,492
Likes: 807
From: West coast CA
Cold solder joint, and should be easy to find, or just go back through and re-solder the board.
Also, make sure to clean the wire harness pins when you pull the unit. Hence problem could be in one of the wire connections to the harness plug pin that you caused a problem when the unit was pulled/dropped down to work on the radio.
Also, make sure to clean the wire harness pins when you pull the unit. Hence problem could be in one of the wire connections to the harness plug pin that you caused a problem when the unit was pulled/dropped down to work on the radio.
Race Director
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The older C-5 EBCM was know to have the cold solder joint problems from the start,
https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...r-fleabay.html
And here is a C-6 RCDLR board that you should be able to spot at least 4 colder solder joints that stand out like a sore thumb that was causing intermittent problems.
A great deal of the module are assemblies in Mexico, so take that for what is worth of the quality of the assembly and solder baths.
Trust me, once you pull the board and look at it, your going to throw up in your mouth a little on what passed as a good solder bath to begin with. For the small resistors, they don't pull much heat and you get a good solder contract from them to the board, but on some of the larger parts that did pull a lot of heat when in the bath, barely to no bond of the solder to the board point contacts instead (solder more crystallized/off color, then a smooth flow of the solder to both contact points instead).
Most of the time, you don't even need to scope the board, since the bad cold solder joints will be standing out like a sore thumb instead.
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(solder more crystallized/off color, then a smooth flow of the solder to both contact points instead).
One on the left is a good solder joint, while the one on the right is a bad cold solder joint instead.
another one,
And some more,
And the right hand side on this resistor,
Hence, once both the pins/board resistors side contacts and the board contacts are up to temp, it will allow a clean bond of the solder to both since the solder gets up to temp. When either of the contacts does not get up to temps to allow the solder to flow and bond correctly to both sides (pin/board relay drawing too much heat when the board is in the bath), the solder does not get to temps to flow and bond correctly, and the solder will end up skin crystallized instead (surface contact like taping a wire to a bolt, but not a bond contact to both parts).
So first testing of the board right out of the batch, it may work fine, but any vibration to the board, and this "taped like" only contact is sporadically lost instead.
Last edited by Dano523; Jun 13, 2015 at 08:09 PM.