Take apart - put together syndrome

10-4 on that, Tawm.
Reply to
Robert Swinney
Loading thread data ...

Stasis; only it usually works the other way around. A good example is cars. Pull the dash to replace a heater core, you disturb the stasis of all the wiring, connectors, etc. Reassemble, and Presto-half a dozen other faults now appear. The bane of hapless mechanics everywhere. JR Dweller in the cellar

Buerste wrote:

Reply to
JR North

I just went thru a whole damned to hell and beyond day doing just that with my wife's car . Never did find anything wrong , but after unplug-plugging a buncha connectors it runs again . Damn thing has a PCM that controls

*everything* . Died on her this am on her way to work , and I'm sure glad it was close enough for her to walk home ! Still don't know why it died , but it runs now so ...
Reply to
Snag

formatting link
>

formatting link
has two seasons , which I am downloading as I type this . Others may have it too , TVtorrents is an invitation-only site .

Reply to
Snag

That was called the "Heal syndrome" by the profs. at PennState when I walked in to fix some big research instrument and turned it on put it through it's paces and everything worked fine. just the day before it wouldn't do for the folks in the lab. :-) It's just magic. ...lew...

Reply to
Lewis Hartswick

An easy to overlook problem is the ground connections. Weird shit happens with poor/intermittent/missing grounds. Art

Reply to
Artemus

The first thing I check is the grounds and battery hot leads , always , just because thar's quite often where the problem is . What made this one worse was that it was intermittent . Only thing I can figger is that one of those connector blocks had a bad connection . As in your post above ... thought I found it earlier when I was under the dash and checking ig switch connections . Then it started malfing again ... sure hope it's fixed now , the wife needs to get to work tomorrow .

Reply to
Snag

That's right, and neutrals, the N word for electricians. Your the only one so far to bring up the I word. I use to get all the I work orders.Nothing worse than the public relations and intermittent and ghosting problems.

One time it was a Judge's spa, I could tell and was told there where many failed attempts, took about 4 hours to find out what it was. It would screw up in front of you, take it apart and leave all the guts hanging out and it would work perfectly, put it together and it would come on and off in different modes at random time intervals. Had to do with spring tension on multifunctional solenoid switches. Horizontal worked fine, put the cover with the switches attached vertical no work.

Another was this very influential guy in vegas, had a new pool spa combo that he could call ahead of time so that it would switch from pool/spa to spa only presetting. So that by the time he arrived the spa would be preheated and ready to go. I guess no one would listen to his complaints about it thinking for itself until it got to far and he wanted half the company there at the same time and have them stay until it was fixed. I was invited. 9:00am the sales dude, the super, the plumber, the electrician, the people who put in this rat maze in the box, ahhh about 8 people. They all scratch their heads and then its my turn. This box of wires is pretty complex, I try to think as all these people are waiting and staring. Reminds me of my last job! Anyhow, nothing is jumping out so I fall back on the ole think simple stupid. There is no neutral ! stand up and say so and they made the electrician pull another home run with 4 wires instead of three. Never heard from that guy ever again.

SW

Reply to
Sunworshipper

That's why I used to use a Q-tip and GC 'Tunerlube' to coat contacts. It kept oxygn and other gasses away from the contact surface.

Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

No, it just didn't like the 'Pointy Headed Dunces'. ;-)

Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

In my experience, I've discovered that you can fix almost anything by taking it apart, carrying the parts around the block, and putting them back together again.

Tom

Reply to
Tom Dacon

Does your wife have a heavy or bulky keychain? Ignition switches have been known to be loose enough to turn off when the pendulum of other keys swings in the wrong direction.

Reply to
whit3rd

A bud has a BIG pin printer that does 6-part forms for his business. They are hard to find and expensive. It failed and he drove it to a repair center where it worked fine. Every few months when it poops-out he loads it in the car and drives around for a while.

Reply to
Buerste

Nope , and in this case that wouldn't cause the problem . The keyed part is a separate unit , only contact with the contactor part is a small protrusion that turns it . I'm leaning towards it was an oxidized contact or three . It starts this morning ...

Reply to
Snag

Gremlins you scare them off when you look for them. Karl

Reply to
kfvorwerk

I wasn't getting a spark on my old Murray mower (B&S) so I troubleshot the ignition. Nogo. I put it back together and it still wouldn't start. After loading it on the truck and taking it down to the repairman, he gave it a couple squirts of prime and it started on the first pull, just as it had for me all those years. Go figure.

I guess the mower just wanted a city tour.

-- Not merely an absence of noise, Real Silence begins when a reasonable being withdraws from the noise in order to find peace and order in his inner sanctuary. -- Peter Minard

Reply to
Larry Jaques

Oxidized connections at the connectors account for a very large percentage of computer repairs, too. R&R connector, computer starts working.

-- Not merely an absence of noise, Real Silence begins when a reasonable being withdraws from the noise in order to find peace and order in his inner sanctuary. -- Peter Minard

Reply to
Larry Jaques

Used to be REAL common with socketed DIP RAM and DIP socketed processors. Remember when virtual;ly every chip on a motherboard was plugged into a socket????

My experience is over half the time when someone calls me to look at equipment that is malfunctioning, it starts to work as soon as I get within about 50 yards.

Reply to
clare

That's a different effect -- the "Repairman proximity effect." It usually occurs just after you've incurred charges for his trip. I had a refrigerator that worked that way. d8-)

Reply to
Ed Huntress

What I most often heard was, "I don't know, I was told to drop this off here because it doesn't work".

Another good one was the trash haulers. Didn't matter which one really, they were all similar in the way they operated. They would call in for service around 4:00 pm (I worked on two-way radios). The symptom would be a dead radio and the truck was in the yard. So you get your stuff together and zip over there, hoping to get the job done before

5:00 pm, quitting time. Pull in the yard, drive around looking for truck number 508, can't find it. So you go over to dispatch and ask them where it is. They in turn say, "oh, truck 508 is almost back, let me call him on the radio and see how long he'll be." Dead radio indeed...
Reply to
Leon Fisk

PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.