I normally use PCB lacquer to seal areas like that. It's a fairly thin coating that can be soldered through. Conformal coating is usually quite a bit thicker.
Thanks Nick, I did have a bit of a look, apparently PCB lacquer is also kind of conformal coating usually a resin or urethane based depending on the brand, yes as mentioned you can solder through it but it will clean off with PCB cleaner too.. seems there are many types of conformal coatings apparently. As I'm from the pre smd days we just used the lacquer on older PCBs that we may have repaired to help prevent exposed copper tracks against corrosion, mostly in a non harsh environment. There are different types available for harsh or high moisture or marine environments. Obviously things have moved some what forward in the last 30+ years.
Yeah, we typically just use the conformal coating spray used in this video for larger surfaces and if it's a smaller area or an IC we have a little bottle with liquid conformal coating although it's fairly high viscosity and you can brush it on.
hardest bit of this kinda job is actually knowing what type of gauge motors you have when getting the pointers off so not to damage the motors and aligning them back to zeros after repair ,ive spent 1 hour and many attempts at zeroing needles on a old seat ibiza (no end stops) because after moving the needles just a little to correct a resting point error they kept readjusting themselfs to a new position that was far out after shut down/reboot . never got to the bottom of what was going on just eventualy got lucky then i think old bmw x5 2005 ish the pins came out of the motors with the pointers which screwed the motors , i think those had internal return springs that were now out of sync with the motor one problem is many car makes use many suppliers for their clusters so its a minefield
Darren, I am curious to know more about your comment. I am still fairly new to cluster repairs, we have only fixed maybe 4-5 so far and I have much to learn. When you say "The hardest bit is knowing what type of gauge motors you have when getting the pointers off so as not to damage the motors " what do you mean exactly? I usually take a picture of their exact location, use a tool to pull them out, and place them exactly as I had removed them. Haven't really had any issues so far. I did have a customer mention once that one of their needles of slightly off but they manually readjusted it they said and then everything was fine again. Have I just been getting extremely lucky or am I missing something?
@@NicksElectronicRepair yes lucky, I haven't had issues with landrover or ford clusters only ones with no end stops or end stops in the stepper motor thankfully that's a really rare job so I've never had a chance to figure out how to prevent those issues, but maybe someone here has had a more thorough experience
Well I am going to start trying to perform more repairs on a larger variety of clusters in the future, also going to try and get more testing equipment for them, and when I do I will post more videos. I will share everything I learn as I go.
@@NicksElectronicRepair if I know anything relavent I'll chime in one good one, battery drain on fiat ducato,s caused by battery and other warning lights staying dimly on is a closely guarded secret I would love to figure out but I get little time to experiment it's all dry joints and coding corruption I get and leaking vias on visteon clusters
The conformal coating we get is made by MG chemicals. It's product code is 419D. I don't know if it is the best coating, but so far it seems to fit out needs. Just make sure when you apply it that you are applying it to a very well cleaned surface. Put thin layers but do multiple layers for best protection. It dries pretty quick, maybe 15 minutes or so.
We have done a few odd jobs on these like upgrading some of the lights with LEDs before but we are still fairly new with cluster repairs and are not yet fully equipped for full bench testing.
Was looking to possibly modify a 2020 frontier cluster to include two missing gauges found in 2012 Xterra cluster, looking at can outputs to see if oil press and Batt voltage are reported or if I would have to go with analog gauges. Bcm would prob need reflashed is that something you guys could do?
That I think is going to be a little bit outside our wheel house. Unless there is a well documented process for this I would say the answer is no due to the amount of work that will be required upfront to finding out how to make it work.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us.
Thanks for answer
Any time
Thanks for sharing.. Conformal coating, is that just board lacquer?
That's probably one to ask google, not sure what ou mean by board lacquer
I normally use PCB lacquer to seal areas like that. It's a fairly thin coating that can be soldered through. Conformal coating is usually quite a bit thicker.
For this one that would probably be okay, but there are certain circuit boards that would require conformal coating over lacker.
Thanks Nick, I did have a bit of a look, apparently PCB lacquer is also kind of conformal coating usually a resin or urethane based depending on the brand, yes as mentioned you can solder through it but it will clean off with PCB cleaner too.. seems there are many types of conformal coatings apparently. As I'm from the pre smd days we just used the lacquer on older PCBs that we may have repaired to help prevent exposed copper tracks against corrosion, mostly in a non harsh environment. There are different types available for harsh or high moisture or marine environments. Obviously things have moved some what forward in the last 30+ years.
Yeah, we typically just use the conformal coating spray used in this video for larger surfaces and if it's a smaller area or an IC we have a little bottle with liquid conformal coating although it's fairly high viscosity and you can brush it on.
Cracked solder joint
hardest bit of this kinda job is actually knowing what type of gauge motors you have when getting the pointers off so not to damage the motors
and aligning them back to zeros after repair ,ive spent 1 hour and many attempts at zeroing needles on a old seat ibiza (no end stops)
because after moving the needles just a little to correct a resting point error they kept readjusting themselfs to a new position that was far out after shut down/reboot . never got to the bottom of what was going on just eventualy got lucky
then i think old bmw x5 2005 ish the pins came out of the motors with the pointers which screwed the motors , i think those had internal return springs that were now out of sync with the motor one problem is many car makes use many suppliers for their clusters so its a minefield
Darren,
I am curious to know more about your comment. I am still fairly new to cluster repairs, we have only fixed maybe 4-5 so far and I have much to learn. When you say "The hardest bit is knowing what type of gauge motors you have when getting the pointers off so as not to damage the motors " what do you mean exactly? I usually take a picture of their exact location, use a tool to pull them out, and place them exactly as I had removed them. Haven't really had any issues so far. I did have a customer mention once that one of their needles of slightly off but they manually readjusted it they said and then everything was fine again. Have I just been getting extremely lucky or am I missing something?
@@NicksElectronicRepair yes lucky, I haven't had issues with landrover or ford clusters only ones with no end stops or end stops in the stepper motor thankfully that's a really rare job so I've never had a chance to figure out how to prevent those issues, but maybe someone here has had a more thorough experience
Well I am going to start trying to perform more repairs on a larger variety of clusters in the future, also going to try and get more testing equipment for them, and when I do I will post more videos.
I will share everything I learn as I go.
@@NicksElectronicRepair if I know anything relavent I'll chime in
one good one, battery drain on fiat ducato,s caused by battery and other warning lights staying dimly on is a closely guarded secret I would love to figure out but I get little time to experiment it's all dry joints and coding corruption I get and leaking vias on visteon clusters
Hello nick what is the name of the conformal coating you use? and where can I find it to buy?
The conformal coating we get is made by MG chemicals. It's product code is 419D. I don't know if it is the best coating, but so far it seems to fit out needs.
Just make sure when you apply it that you are applying it to a very well cleaned surface. Put thin layers but do multiple layers for best protection. It dries pretty quick, maybe 15 minutes or so.
Now you have an idea why JLR is always at the bottom of the JD Powers list.
Can you do custom cluster work?
We have done a few odd jobs on these like upgrading some of the lights with LEDs before but we are still fairly new with cluster repairs and are not yet fully equipped for full bench testing.
Was looking to possibly modify a 2020 frontier cluster to include two missing gauges found in 2012 Xterra cluster, looking at can outputs to see if oil press and Batt voltage are reported or if I would have to go with analog gauges. Bcm would prob need reflashed is that something you guys could do?
That I think is going to be a little bit outside our wheel house.
Unless there is a well documented process for this I would say the answer is no due to the amount of work that will be required upfront to finding out how to make it work.
Is the land rover cluster Lucas?.....the dark lord
I am not sure I understand the reference.
Looks like socket did not reach Temp in oven before flow, lead tin much better than bismuth
Hello James,
Are you saying you think there could have been a manufacturing defect with these?