Remove wires and nothing works – just about every machine we use in our daily lives depends on metal fibers protected by colorful non-conductive sheathing. Networking in new vehicles has reduced the amount of wiring somewhat, but not as much as we first thought. There are still hundreds of color-coded conductors on every vehicle, many of them carrying signals that require almost no current at all through tiny little wires and connectors no thicker than the shaft of a straight pin like those you remove from a new shirt. And those small connectors tend to be a problem. They can look as clean as a whistle and yet have just enough microscopic oxidation that information can’t flow. That’s why so many pins in critical systems (PCM, ABS, etc.) are platinum or gold plated nowadays, because gold doesn’t oxidize. Not all current flows through wires, though – sometimes shiny contacts are expected to do the job, like the contacts on sliding minivan doors that sometimes have to be replaced. Those funky little button batteries in our key fobs and other thingamabobs are subject to the same kind of failure. For a moment’s digression, my barber had a $100 pair of rechargeable clippers that wouldn’t last through a single haircut without killing its non-replaceable battery, so she sent them to the repair center for battery replacement. Nothing changed, and she was airing her frustration at the clippers while giving me a haircut (not good) when I remembered how we repaired Chrysler Lean Burn systems back in the late seventies. “Use a pencil eraser to clean the charging contacts,” I told her. It won’t cost anything and it might take care of your problem.” Well, lo and behold, the pencil eraser trick that worked on Chrysler Lean Burn computer pins did wonders for the clippers, which will now last for hours. My dad bought a 1993 Tempo from us that I had purchased brand new in September of ’93, and in eight years my wife put only 28,000 on that car. Fifty thousand miles later, the Tempo developed a bucking and jerking problem that showed up on my Nemisys graph as a Mass Airflow sensor anomaly, so we replaced the sensor with an aftermarket unit. The Tempo was okay for a few days, but then the bucking and jerking returned. At that point I opted for a repair that I should have performed before the MAF was replaced – I unlatched the terminals from the weatherproof MAF connector and even though the crimped terminal connections (where the copper meets the terminal) were shiny and looked brand new, I soldered every crimp to solidify the connections and neutralize any invisible oxidation. The Tempo runs like a new car now – truth to tell it probably didn’t need the MAF sensor. This kind of repair is quick, easy, and inexpensive and can earn you a lifelong customer if you do it cheap when other shops have failed. Most modern sensor connections are subject to this type of failure because of the tiny whisper of voltage and current carried by these crimps and connectors.
Posted on: Tue, 02 Jul 2013 08:28:42 +0000
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