Good advice, I'm always hesitant to get electronics wet. My dad took a radio one time to his garage and use the carburetor cleaner mechanism to clean it up and it worked. I still shudder to think about that. It was my radio! It was his cigarette smoke.
Jim. Ben Okopnik wrote: > On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 02:42:23PM -0500, banders...@earthlink.net wrote: > >> On one ship's radar with ARPA unit the picture was jumpy and unsteady in >> many aspects when I arrived aboard. I opened both units and the pcb boards >> were filthy with cigarette tar, dust, and salt (the cooling fan draws air >> from the wheelhouse and blows it throughout the unit). I pulled every >> board (there were about 15-20 of them) in the indicator and the ARPA (but >> not in the high voltage Receiver/Transmitter unit which was in a more >> protected location), took them to the galley and washed them with a little >> soapy water and a paint brush (being careful to keep the water out of the >> trim pots). After blowing the boards dry in the engine room I let them dry >> for several hours in the sun (on marine units all the parts are soldered, >> no sockets for ICs, etc). Everyone freaked out but the Captain. He said >> he had great faith in me. When I put everything back the radar worked >> perfectly (and I started breathing again). >> > > I've fixed a huge number of problems in marine electronics by flushing > the boards thoroughly with TV tuner cleaner (and later, when I ran out > of that, with WD-40 - which seemed to work about as well, although you > had to be careful about keeping it out of pots and such.) > > Lots of various kinds of problems can be solved with water and good soap > (specifically, soaps that don't leave any residue; interestingly, a > number of coconut-based soaps fall into this category.) At one point, I > had about 30 CDs that skipped, or just refused to load at all - without > any obvious scratches or physical damage. I put them in a basin in the > sink, put a nice glob of dish soap into it (don't recall which one, > though, but something that didn't leave a residue), and added a bunch of > water; after 15 minutes or so, I carefully rinsed them off, one at a > time, and let them dry. Every single one, barring none, "came back to > life" and played just fine. Made me a believer; I was hoping to rescue > some small percentage of them. > > > Ben > _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list Liveaboard@liveaboardonline.com To adjust your membership settings over the web http://liveaboardonline.com/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to liveaboard-j...@liveaboardonline.com To unsubscribe send an email to liveaboard-le...@liveaboardonline.com The archives are at http://www.liveaboardonline.com/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/liveaboard@liveaboardnow.org The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
