Fixed an aircon control module!

[BTB 500]

The electronic climate control panel on our old A4 has been playing up ... intermittent display, and buttons not working. A new one probably costs more than the car is worth!

Tried to find a replacement on eBay but unable to match the one in our car (even for the same year there are various different part nos.).

So ... I decided to carefully open the unit up and see if I could see anything obvious.

Where a ribbon cable connector meets the display panel I found 3 or 4 fractured solder joints on the back of the PCB ... here's one:

Re-soldered all the connections (to be on the safe side), put it back together again, and it worked! :bannana:

From start to finish the whole thing took less than 30 mins.

OK so the blower has now died but we are one step closer to being able de-mist the windows again

Seems the brushes go on the blower motor (as they do on M-Bs) ... hopefully a fairly straightforward fix.

 

[A210AMG]

Great news...

Remember on a MK2 Golf Gti the blower went and VAG wanted aroung £200 to fix (many years ago in student times that was a lot..)

Dad took it apart and it was a tiny o ring that had snapped (approx 20p)

Back together and worked a treat..

Always good when a job turns out a) easy b) Cheap

 

[BTB 500]

It's been many years since I did any real car DIY. The Audi is a good reliable runner, but the garage we have it serviced at won't touch electronics - even the auto electrician they use wasn't interested! So it was going to be main dealer (££££) or have a go myself.

I'm no electronics expert but 30+ years of r/c modelling means I'm quite happy with soldering.

The next dilemma is ... do I put the SL out in the rain so I can work on the Audi in the garage?!

 

[GrahamC230K]

Nice one.

 

[IanT]

Great... always very satisfying when you find something like this. I had the same on my Dell laptop just a couple of weeks ago. At least when you try the DIY route in this sort of situation you stand to lose pretty much nothing, as it would otherwise be a scrappy visit / main dealer job otherwise anyway.

Ian.

 

[BTB 500]

Yee haa ... a set of replacement blower motor brushes from eBay (£12.50), a bit more DIY, and we have a functioning heating/ventilation system again