Today at Atelier Kaz - ex-Honda R&D, F1, Indy/CART engineer

#4: Lost power, owner managed to recover the power but no sound.




This one was no doubt, one of the most time consuming repair task in recent years.

Spent not just extra days but in fact weeks for repairing it.

Before committing to it, the owner sent in some photos and already knew it was going to be a big task but since the owner managed to recover the power, wanted to give it a try.

Turned into my own challenge….

I would never recover the time being spent if keep doing this.

Severe damages to the tracks, pads, OP Amp and even the FFC and the connector.

Hats off to the owner for recovering the power.





However, there were many tracks still not repaired and there was no way spotting the hidden issue without removing the connectors.





The capacitor leakage damaged wide area of backside of the circuit board as well.

This meant that the leaked acid damaged many of the through-holes so must be carefully checked.





Not sure it was done by the owner but someone touched the middle circuit board....





FFC connector and FFC had to be replaced.

In order to minimise the EMI, decided to drill 2 holes to re-create the dissolved tracks using the shortest possible jumper wires.





OP Amp removed, pads repaired and installed different spec new OP AMP.





So many extra caps, connectors, OP AMP, etc replaced with new ones and many hard wires installed to re-create the missing tracks/pads or strengthen the dissolved ones.





On the bench, when VR module set at min level, both L-side ch (FL and RL) were still showing some signal level whereas at the R-side, nothing as it should.

Once volume increased even for a tiny amount, both L & R ch at the same level so decided not to spend any extra time for it.

Most likely VR module and/or FFC connector contamination or 1st stage signal processing related.

Informed the owner that I’m 99% happy with 1% deduction for this L-ch signal issue at Min volume level.





Another one with fluid over the display module.

All 3 fixing screws for the display corroded but nothing like the previous one.



Would be interesting to see how this head unit survives as it has similar spec at the middle circuit board as per #1 short circuit one.




So many changes and repairs were carried out.

Covered more than 100 miles of test driving session using my NSX.

It was good testing environment as we had quite hot days and then cold one as well.

I can't remember when was the last time I turned the central heating on in June.

My be the first time over the last 25 years.


Time to update the blog for so many gauge cluster services recently.



Kaz