I'm thinking of tackling some minor things on my car now - like the indecisive clock. How many of you have done this successfully, ie no broken parts or destroyed circuits? I've read a lot about the procedure so I know how it's done. I just want to know if I should bother, being a fairly novice with the soldering iron, and so far I 'm pretty proud that most of the brittle trim pieces are still intact.

 

I have resoldered just about everything on my 87 GXL, clock, cpu, ecu, and replaced the relays that die on the wiper switches. It's not that hard, just pay attention and practice first on an old circuit board out of a radio or something.

 

Yah, definitely practice first on a PCB. Once you get reasonably adept at it, then go for it. It shouldn't be that hard, but the first few times you do it, it will be easy to destroy the board by frying it, yanking resistors loose that are still soldered, or ripping traces off the board.

 

buy some solder flux, circuit cleaner and some fine wire solder. The first time I used the only thing I had available wich was some thick solder. I had a 95watt iron, so it just made a huge mess.

Ended up desoldering most of the mess and bought an adjustable wattage iron and some thin solder.

Two years later every wire connection i make gets solder. It really does ease the mind that nothing will come undone. ++ no butt-conectors anymore.

 

Thanks for the pointers!

I'm really more worried about cracking the plastic trim, theres no practice for that... I'll just be careful and go slow.

 

i've had about an 80% sucess rate with the clock

 

I typically have about 100% success, but as something that no one has covered here yet...

You must remove all the old solder first. This requires use of solder braid, or even better a solder sucker.

Just re-heating the joint, only works about 75% of the time, but the chance of the joint failing again is around 99%.

 

It took me two attempts to get my dead clock back on its feet. The first time, I only repaired the solder joints that were visibly broken. The clock would work for a day or so then wink out and reset over a large bump in the road. Then I re-soldered all the joints on the clock side of the circuit board and now it has been working for several weeks straight.

I'll bet you will break the tabs off the plastic trim around the idiot light cluster when you remove it. I was as careful as possible following the FSM instructions and they both came off. You can reattach it with double-sided velcro on the underside and no one but you will ever know.