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My soldering skills pay off...

C

coonmanx

AK Subscriber
Subscriber
I have actually learned quite a bit since I have been here. Now I am not too afraid to pick up a soldering iron and go to work with it.

The funny thing is that I bought a cheap Chinese soldering iron a few years back for about $10. And frankly the damn thing works great. I have already used it on a couple of different amps. Never let me down...

So today I finally decided to take the cover off of my garage door opener that has being only working intermittently. All signs pointed to it being an issue with the logic board and possibly a bad solder joint at that. It would start moving and then just shut down. The light would turn off and then nothing. If you smacked it the light would come on and it would work again. Also sometimes the light was sort of blinking while it was going up or down and it was not supposed to do that.

So at first I thought it might just be a bad wire connection underneath a wire nut. Retwisted that and it seemed to be working but then it started acting up again. So its time to take a look at the logic board. I had the cover off and was running it up and down when the problem surfaced again. Touched the connector to the logic board and the light came back on. OK, I now know the general area of the problem... Used the good old "tap it with a chopstick" method that I learned here on the back of the board. And sure enough when I got to the last solder joint I saw a change. Managed to get the board out, reflowed the solder on all solder joints for the connector and added a bit of fresh solder. Now it is working again and doing great. If I would have called someone to come out and look at it they may have charged me $125 and recommended a new logic board. But the problem is that they don't make parts for this 30 year old opener anymore. So there is no guarantee that they would have actually fixed it and not just recommended installing a new unit for $600...

Cheap fix with the skills I learned here and my $10 Chinese soldering iron. That thing has paid for itself over and over again.
 
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Coonmanx you mention cheap Chinese soldering iron, I bought a $35 Chinese soldering station about 12 years ago. It still works great, has helping hands, gets up to temp in about 20 secs, and has auto shutoff. Oh has a solder spool holder on it also which is super convenient. Great job on the fix. I really miss that small garage company we used to have American Overhead (guy retired). Came out on a Sunday, replaced my spring (which broke, couldn't lift door), aligned rollers/tracks, and lubed for $210.
 
One thing I have to mention. When I told my son that I had pressed on the connector and then the light came on indicating that was the area of the fault, he said to do a continuity check. Only problem with that, if you have an intermittent fault, is that you might get continuity for a bad solder joint but that does not make it OK. So I used what I had learned here about tapping with a chopstick and that worked perfectly.

After watching a bunch of YouTube videos on the subject and even going by the dealer to ask them about the situation I pretty much knew that there was an issue with the logic board and that it had to be a bad solder joint because of the symptoms. So that was good. Didn't take too long to hone in on the problem area either. I really could not see any crack or anything like that so I just decided to reflow the solder on all the joints for that connector. And it worked.
 
geezin' said:
DIY doesn't always work but it rarely hurts to try. Never know ya might learn sumthin'.
Click to expand...
You know... If you do your research then you just might learn something. I watched a bunch of YouTube videos to get a basic idea of how the garage door openers work and the common problems that you can experience. But the symptoms that I had didn't really match any of those videos except one where the guy had a similar issue and he found a bad solder joint on the board. Also the fact that smacking the thing would sometimes get it to work pointed to a bad solder joint. And the fact that when it got hot outside the thing would get even more flaky.

So at least I had a good idea of what was going on before I tore into it. And that helped out a lot. Not to mention getting the manual for it online and that showed how to get the case off and the location of the logic board. So once I got the case open and saw that everything matched the diagrams in the manual, that really made things a lot easier. The board was a bit of a PITA to get out but I figured that out.

I guess the reason that I posted this was because...

1) I now do have some good experience soldering and a lot of that experience came from working on a few integrated amplifiers. So far I have used my soldering skills on three different units and they all worked when I got done with them. The first was a Technics SU-V707 that I bought "for parts and repair" off of Ebay. It had a bad speaker selector switch and also was in pretty beat up shape when I got it. I really did not know if I could get it going again. But I persevered, found the missing knobs, fixed the broken speaker selector switch by mating the front half of a different switch to the one that I had and then also fixing some burnt out lamps for the Computer Drive and New Class A. The second unit that I dug into was an MCS 3842 (Technics) and that one needed to have the thermal fuse in the transformer bypassed. I knew that was the problem from reading a thread here about someone else having the exact same issue. And with the help of our resident Technics expert here I was able to do that repair and I am still using that amp. And the third was yet another Technics SU-V707 that I got from England and it needed to be switched over to 120 volts and also the lamps were once again in need of replacement. That amp is currently being used for TV/audio in the basement.

2) This may not have been an audio device that I was working on but my experience that I gained from previously working on those integrated amplifiers carried over quite well to this project. Also having read lots of troubleshooting threads steered me towards the chopstick method, which could not have worked any better... Electronics are electronics no matter what they are in... Clearly I was able to do the repair on the garage door opener because of the soldering skills that I acquired through working on audio components. That is what gave me the confidence to do this...
 
Very satisfying to repair something and keep it out of the landfill. @coonmanx, search to see if you have any Repair Cafe's running in your area. We have those monthly in my area and they are very popular. You sound like you would be an ideal candidate for a 'Fixer' role.
 
coonmanx said:
You know... If you do your research then you just might learn something. I watched a bunch of YouTube videos to get a basic idea of how the garage door openers work and the common problems that you can experience. But the symptoms that I had didn't really match any of those videos except one where the guy had a similar issue and he found a bad solder joint on the board. Also the fact that smacking the thing would sometimes get it to work pointed to a bad solder joint. And the fact that when it got hot outside the thing would get even more flaky.

So at least I had a good idea of what was going on before I tore into it. And that helped out a lot. Not to mention getting the manual for it online and that showed how to get the case off and the location of the logic board. So once I got the case open and saw that everything matched the diagrams in the manual, that really made things a lot easier. The board was a bit of a PITA to get out but I figured that out.

I guess the reason that I posted this was because...

1) I now do have some good experience soldering and a lot of that experience came from working on a few integrated amplifiers. So far I have used my soldering skills on three different units and they all worked when I got done with them. The first was a Technics SU-V707 that I bought "for parts and repair" off of Ebay. It had a bad speaker selector switch and also was in pretty beat up shape when I got it. I really did not know if I could get it going again. But I persevered, found the missing knobs, fixed the broken speaker selector switch by mating the front half of a different switch to the one that I had and then also fixing some burnt out lamps for the Computer Drive and New Class A. The second unit that I dug into was an MCS 3842 (Technics) and that one needed to have the thermal fuse in the transformer bypassed. I knew that was the problem from reading a thread here about someone else having the exact same issue. And with the help of our resident Technics expert here I was able to do that repair and I am still using that amp. And the third was yet another Technics SU-V707 that I got from England and it needed to be switched over to 120 volts and also the lamps were once again in need of replacement. That amp is currently being used for TV/audio in the basement.

2) This may not have been an audio device that I was working on but my experience that I gained from previously working on those integrated amplifiers carried over quite well to this project. Also having read lots of troubleshooting threads steered me towards the chopstick method, which could not have worked any better... Electronics are electronics no matter what they are in... Clearly I was able to do the repair on the garage door opener because of the soldering skills that I acquired through working on audio components. That is what gave me the confidence to do this...
Click to expand...
Seems you took offense to my post. Why is that?
 
coonmanx said:
I have actually learned quite a bit since I have been here. Now I am not too afraid to pick up a soldering iron and go to work with it.

The funny thing is that I bought a cheap Chinese soldering iron a few years back for about $10. And frankly the damn thing works great. I have already used it on a couple of different amps. Never let me down...

So today I finally decided to take the cover off of my garage door opener that has being only working intermittently. All signs pointed to it being an issue with the logic board and possibly a bad solder joint at that. It would start moving and then just shut down. The light would turn off and then nothing. If you smacked it the light would come on and it would work again. Also sometimes the light was sort of blinking while it was going up or down and it was not supposed to do that.

So at first I thought it might just be a bad wire connection underneath a wire nut. Retwisted that and it seemed to be working but then it started acting up again. So its time to take a look at the logic board. I had the cover off and was running it up and down when the problem surfaced again. Touched the connector to the logic board and the light came back on. OK, I now know the general area of the problem... Used the good old "tap it with a chopstick" method that I learned here on the back of the board. And sure enough when I got to the last solder joint I saw a change. Managed to get the board out, reflowed the solder on all solder joints for the connector and added a bit of fresh solder. Now it is working again and doing great. If I would have called someone to come out and look at it they may have charged me $125 and recommended a new logic board. But the problem is that they don't make parts for this 30 year old opener anymore. So there is no guarantee that they would have actually fixed it and not just recommended installing a new unit for $600...

Cheap fix with the skills I learned here and my $10 Chinese soldering iron. That thing has paid for itself over and over again.
Click to expand...


 
Well, looks like I might have jumped the gun thinking that it is working fine now. It is warmer outside today (81 degrees) and it started to glitch again. Seems to work better on colder days... I guess that could indicate a bad component as well as a bad solder joint. I didn't see anything obvious on the board.

And frankly I might just have to get in touch with Lowes and see how much it would be for them to put in a brand new Craftsman unit. It might be worth it in the end...
 
coonmanx said:
Well, looks like I might have jumped the gun thinking that it is working fine now. It is warmer outside today (81 degrees) and it started to glitch again. Seems to work better on colder days... I guess that could indicate a bad component as well as a bad solder joint. I didn't see anything obvious on the board.

And frankly I might just have to get in touch with Lowes and see how much it would be for them to put in a brand new Craftsman unit. It might be worth it in the end...
Click to expand...
Before you do that reflow all the solder points on the board. The one you fixed was a stress crack from the connector. Solder them all up, and everything else on the board. I wouldn't be surprised at all if it works.
 
The only reason for using lead-free is to prove to yourself that you can. Once you do, you can pat yourself on the back and then forget about it.
Life's too short to deliberately make it more difficult than it needs to be.
 
spicer said:
Before you do that reflow all the solder points on the board. The one you fixed was a stress crack from the connector. Solder them all up, and everything else on the board. I wouldn't be surprised at all if it works.
Click to expand...
+1 on this. Many "electronic" problems are really mechanical in nature, and parts subject to vibration very commonly experience cracked solder and bad connections after a while. 30 years is a lot of cycles so it wouldn't remotely surprise me if there are more. Honestly you have little to lose at this point, worst case it still doesn't work.


other thing, and i don't know if it matters or applies, but newer openers use different control protocols. If you have a built-in door opener in your vehicle, depending on it's age, it may no longer control things. I went through this with mine. 2 doors on the garage, one failed and got replaced. Now the factory door opener that I put in my truck won't open the door on the side where the boat is parked. That was the entire reason for installing that panel. The openers in my other 2 cars won't run it either, but those are 90s vintage, updated from the original 80s vintage stuff that isn't compatible with anything.
 
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