Steve 96C4S

I am perplexed. I bought a Targa Sunshade switch and I have the DIY instructions from EJ's fantastic website: http://www.pcarracing.homestead.com/gdo.html
and I contacted EJ about his generous offer to help me install it, but alas he has been blessed with "baby" and has not the time. No problem there.

He suggested contacting an electronics store in my area to do the soldering and I called a few but they said - "uh, huh? You want us to do what? Uh, I just talked with my Mgr and we can't do that... yeah, sorry".

Finally, I decided to go upscale, spend the bucks and went to Tweeter in Rockville MD (high end car stereo and home equipment), showed them EJ's schematic and they said - "it shouldn't be much more than $40 to solder it and install it - looks easy". Great, I thought. They said to come back on Thursday when the installers were there. I just called today and tried to make an appt and got the Store Mgr (who wasn't there last week) and he said - "We can't do that. It's a liability issue. If something happened to your car, if the soldering caused something bad to happen, we don't sell that equipment and it's a lose/lose situation for us. We're a large corporation and it's a corporate thing." He said to try Myer Emco Stereo/Video store but added they'll probably tell me the same thing!

What do I do now? Anyone in the DC metro area that's interested in doing this GDO mod but hasn't done it yet, that owns soldering equipment and wants to do them both together?

I'll help you with yours if you help me with mine? I am not much of a DIY person, so if anyone knows of a shop that can just simply charge me a fair fee to do this mod, I'd do it that way instead.

Thanks,
Steve

Q

what about an auto electrician workshop ?

Tom W

You can go to Radio Shack or a hardware store and get a cheap soldering kit and DIY. Practice on a couple of pieces of wire and you'll do fine. Soldering is very easy.

Alternatively, you could fly out here and I'd be happy to show you how it's done. OK, that's not too practical. You could send the pieces and I'd do it.

Ray Calvo

Ideas:

1) Try an independent auto repair shop, one that does more than brakes and oil changes. Local PCA region should be able to help you (I assume you're not too CHEAP to join PCA? Lots of good local events.)

2) Make EJ an offer; you'll baby-sit his rugrat while he destroys your car with soldering flux, burn marks, stripped wire insulation, and blown fuses.

Steve 96C4S

Thanks Ray! Yes, I am a PCA member (ya gotta be - that 10% discount for thrifty guys like me is too good to pass up, plus 1/10th of my copy of Panorama magazine is interesting to me each month and I wouldn't want to give that up). I took your suggestion and called Roger at Autotherapy (Porsche independent shop) about it in Gaithersburg MD. He never heard of the mod but said he could do it. )

I'm going in the week of the 18th to have it done. Thanks for the speedy answer. For some reason, I never thought of calling a Porsche repair shop to do it - only auto/electronic stores, and they didn't really seem interested in doing it!

I don't want to go to Radio Shack and DIY as I'm primarily a lazy SOB and would probably mess it up or "get it wrong". I just don't want to take any chances on something I haven't done since soldering stuff on a Heathkit during Junior High School. Doh!

Steve

p_carfan

Steve-

If you can't find a local shop, audio / electronics send it to me, I'll do it N.C. , PM me if your interested .

Cheers

GratefulJED

150+ dead shows and you consider yourself lazy? OK. Perhaps you should get yourself back in that mindset, if you know what I mean! Me, I took someones advice and put a magnet strip on the back of my remote and in the dark spot above the rear view mirror and now the door opens at the end of the driveway. Also took out the lights above the license plate just in case...

Steve 96C4S

Thanks Silver Bullet, BUT (there's always a but), when I look at EJ's instructions it's like I'm reading another language. I don't get it. The part that says: (and his pics are great but it's like reading a map of a city in Russia for me)

"Take your Garage door opener (gdo) apart and determine which leads to solder by using a multi-meter to see voltage across two of the four leads for the button that you use. My two gdo's showed 5 vdc. You will see the leads circled in red."

Uh - I don't even know what a multi-meter is... Plus, I don't understand part 2:

"On the back side of the circuit board locate the two points you want to solder that you found with your meter. Here they are circled in red, and solder your two wire leads to them."

I just don't know how to do this. Never did something like this, have no
idea how!!!

To Steve in Fort Worth: Thanks for the generous offer of doing a N/C solder job for me! I might take you up on that if my local situation doesn't pan out.

To Grateful Jed: You post was appreciated, but I've read it a few times and I don't understand what you've done. You wrote: "Me, I took someones advice and put a magnet strip on the back of my remote and in the dark spot above the rear view mirror and now the door opens at the end of the driveway. Also took out the lights above the license plate just in case."

What exactly does this mean? You put a magnetic strip on the back of your GDO remote and then put something (but what?) in the dark spot above the rear view mirror and now the garage door somehow opens with it set up like that? Under what principal? I'm lost!

Dazed and confused,
Steve

GratefulJED

DAC-
The maget takes the place of say velcro - magnet strip on windshield in the dark spot and magnet strip on the GDO and then I can take it with me if I need. The lights are so that when I come home late and fast no one can get my plate numbers--

Steve 96C4S

Thanks Grateful Jed -

You must have a very light and tiny GDO! Mine is WAYYY to big to be put on the windshield. It's a Chamberlain unit that came with my house when I bought the place 12 years ago. It clips on the sun visor, but I want the James Bond install in the dash.

Steve

GratefulJED

Why did'nt you say so, Steve? Gosh, all this bandwidth! - Sears makes a remote that will work for that garage as an option, or, and I hate to say it, 12 years is a long time... but it is a Chamberlain

Jeff96-993

It's hard to believe that anyone would be concerned about liability from short in a 9V battery operated system. Lawyers run amuck I believe.

Ray Calvo

How do you think I got good? Heathkit stereo receiver then color TV in HS. This was a solid-tube set so I had plenty of practice. Graduated to building a "solid-state" one in the late '70's. Fun hobby; wish the company had never gone belly-up.

When I hard-wired my GDO, fortunately it used a 12V battery, so all I had to do was to run wires to the two battery terminal points on the circuit board and solder them in place. No separate transformer needed. For info, this was a little transmitter available at Sears that is less than half the size of a cigarette pack.

Adding in the wires for the switch was harder. Fortunately I had a desoldering tool from Radio Shack which made the terminal and circuit board installed switch easy.

Good luck!

STLPCA

I think the excuse was code for, "this is a 2 bit job that we've never done before, for some AR Porsche guy who'll probably complain that we scratched his console, so tell him something to make him go away."

Ray - so you were the guy who bought all those Heath kits For a trip down memory lane -
More Than You Ever Want To Know About Heath Kits.

sy308

I have a keyfob garage opener from Brookstone. It works great and is a lot less trouble that what you propose to do. BTW, I was Chief Engineer of an FM station and studied EE in college. Store is giving you crap, they just don't want to bother. Suggest you look at Brookstone, it opens two doors. Good luck.