equality72521

Gotcha.

3.2SLANTNOSE

racerbvd, I can say from my own, hands on experience that I have found it to be very difficult to actually kill one of the DME control units. Some may disagree. Some of these have been Coupes, with a sunroof, Targa models, but most were Cabriolet models. I have seen them sitting in 3" of rain water, I removed the unit, opened it up, and let it dry under the low heat setting of a heat gun. I and the person that I was helping with this, were totally shocked(no pun intended) after I put the unit back together, and then installed it back into their car, (which had a wet/dry shop vac suck out all of the water that was in the floorboards) once the control unit was back in place and the wiring connections made, we went for a start attempt. It fired up on about the second revolution of the engine, and it ran great! This event happened in 1999,and the car is still running strong to this day! I have had similar type problems occur since then, with all having the same results. BUT, I do believe that what actually did save these control units from being toast, was the fact that I made sure that each one of my friends installed one of the quick-disconnect battery terminals. In my thoughts, what I feel that really saved these from becoming trot line weights, was the fact that I had impressed on all of them to religiously disconnect that quick-disconnect battery connection. Had the battery not had the disconnect feature, I am fairly certain that the damage would have had a more serious and possibly a catastrophic outcome. I have seen "cold" solder joints take their toll with the DME boxes. But a lot of time when one does have some "cold" or bad solder joints, it does not instantly turn the DME control unit into a heap of molten metal, with the half-life spent, nuclear fuel rods. A lot of the time, the boards can be re-soldered or re-flowed and this will fix the problem.
So, to answer your question, some say the units are wayyy toooo fragile. I am not in that group. I do hope that you can prevail with the highway man insurers, and that they pony up the cash that you truly deserve, from faithfully paying those insurance premiums. And that CRAP, about the part was an electrical item and was bound to fail at some point in time, is just that, CRAP!!! keep up a good fight on this, because you should prevail. It was not like you were holding a garden hose into the cabin to flood it. I do hope that you get what is fair, and then possibly consider changing insurance carriers, because you don't need to do anymore business with these ba$tards. Good luck!! Tony.

PNW911

Byron-- here is a terrific post from Dr. Steve Wong that highlights DME issues. My 3.2 began to stall in Jan, so I gave the unit and this thread to my audiophile buddy- there were 3 bad solder joints i missed with a reular magnifier- his 14x mag did the trick, plus he replaced a 21 year old capacitor-- car runs perfectly ever since. I urge anyone with similar issues to bypass mechanic, and take the DME to knowledgable audio tech accustomed to circuit boards-- otherwse a wrench will usually sell you a new one for big bucks. The only components to actually go bad are transistor, capacitor or the odd resistor- otherwise should last loooong time. I remounted my DME on a foam base to absorb some of the vibration.

PS-- thanx for your cool pix on the Pelican forum amigo...

http://forums.pelicanparts.com:80/sh...d.php?t=391126