Jeff928S4

Hi all...

I am in the process of doing a fuse panel cleaning on my 88' S4.

Pulled the panel....pulled all fuses/relays.





I managed to find some Deoxit at a local music shop and have sprayed all the connectors where the fuses/relays plug in (also going to do some slight sanding of the connectors with a small home-made file).

I also found some Stabilant 22a at a local electronics place ($80 for a lil' 15ml bottle!! Whoa!) and will be coating the relay/fuse prongs before re-installation.


Now, I have read that if the relay prongs are really bad, one should open them up and clean inside.....here is what my relays typical look like....



Here is the panel with replays removed.....not too many burn marks, etc.....




Close up...




Now.....in looking at those relays above, I notice one set of prongs is a copper color and the other appears to be more dark....is this normal? There is very little corrosion on the copper prongs, but the darker colored ones seem more "dirty".

Would you open up the relays to clean them or just use a Dremel or some hand-sanding to clean up the external connectors, coat them in Stabilant and plug them back in?

Manfred

The vast majority of the relays are standard 53s and are really cheap to replace. I just went through and did this whole process but instead of putting the old ones back in I got new ones for all the 53s and some of the cheaper other ones. The really expensive ones I just cleaned and stabilized and put back in.

Mrmerlin

if you have found any corrosion on the panel now would be a good time to inspect the blower box just above the CE panel if it has water tell tale drip marks,
then it needs to be resealed and all your work on the Ce panel wont be for naught

Jeff928S4

There didn't appear to be any corrosion on the panel itself due to water and I checked the blower box for leaks.

The reason I pulled the fuse panel was to basically give it a good cleaning.

While changing fuse #1 last year, I noticed there was a gooky-like substance covering the first 5 fuses/first relay. I'm not sure what it is, but it is very sticky and has a brownish color to it - almost like a glue. All the fuses in slots 1-5 work fine and the relays all work, but I wanted to clean up whatever that gook was.

You can slightly see the substance in the pic below (that one relay has the brownish gook on top of it)....sorry for the blurry pic.

Jeff928S4

Opps - here is a better pic of the "gook' once the fuses-relays were removed.

Melted carpet glue? What is this stuff?



You can see it was limited to that one far side of the panel and it didn't seem to get under the one relay that is used. The empty slot has some of the brown gook on it, but no relay goes there, so it didn't matter.

The gook came off with some rigorous scrubbing with "SuperDeGooper".

928DK

Looks like carpet glue

Mrmerlin

What 928DK said

Speedtoys

Ya..one thing ive noticed...is that Porsche in fulfilling some odd German quota to hire handicapped people, put near-blind people in charge of applying glues to carpets, seals, etc..within the chassis.

Its all there, close enough, mostly.

Jeff928S4

So this glue may have been there since the car was new?

That would be interesting - I know the first five fuses all had the glue on top of them - which could mean that they were the original fuses. Like I said, I discovered it a while ago when I checked fuse #1 for some problem I have (drivers door lock not locking both doors I think). The fuse was fine - and looked like an old-school fuse.

On that note - fuse #1 is for central locking, yes? In the 89', there are no in-line fuses behind the panel that I saw....or are there?

WallyP

"I also found some Stabilant 22a at a local electronics place ($80 for a lil' 15ml bottle!! Whoa!) and will be coating the relay/fuse prongs before re-installation."

Good stuff, and yeah, it's expensive - but not quite that expensive.

http://www.amazon.com/Stabilant-22-1...5052180&sr=8-1

The Amazon 15ml is for "Stabilant 22", which is the concentrate. It is diluted 4:1 with isopropanol, so you get four times as much Stabilant 22a.

http://www.stabilant.com/appnt20h.htm

Jeff928S4

Yes, I had initially planned on ordering the 22 - but the car is currently stored and it needs to come out of that space on Thursday, so time is a factor. I was kind of lucky to source some 22a locally.....and they only have two bottles left, so I'm going to grab one tomorrow. I'd rather not pull the fuse panel twice.

Hopefully the 15ml bottle will be enough.

Jeff928S4

One quick question before I start putting the panel back in....

On the very top of the panel, there are two bolts that are covered by a clear plastic sliding cover. The only thing I forgot to mark/remember is how the wires go back onto these bolts.

There are three wires that connect to the top of the panel - two go on one bolt, the other goes on the other bolt - does it make a difference?

If I recall correctly, the two wires attach to the left bolt (looking at the panel from the front) and the other wire goes on the left. Can anyone verify this?