ECU Corroded Pins

[Marvo]

Thanks for the offer Grant but it's now repaired and everything seems to be working fine. The jetski has been on the water twice now and it runs like a dream. Excavating around the broken pin with a home made hollow drill and soldering on a wire worked fine. It will be tricky if the plugs need to be removed from the ECU in future because I potted the soldered wire where it goes through the redundant hole in the plug with a little resin but it should still be possible if a push comes to a shove.

With 20/20 hindsight and a little practice this type of repair is fairly easy even if it's a bit fiddly. If I had to do the same repair again it would probably only take a couple of hours once the ECU is on the workbench, it's just the first time that's a bit daunting.

 

[PEG]

Nice one,did you make the hollow drill yourself? I have a stock of various carbon/tool steel sizes for jobs such as this (Gunsmithing type affair) and relish the satisfaction when a repair like you described,however winding the journey,is carried out successfully. I guess this harks back to when i was an 8 year old would-be engineer,and me dads mate told me "Whatever can be made by man,can be unmade by man",and by "unmade",he meant fixed,modified or altered for the better :bow:

 

[ibby]

I would have used a solder iron with a long tip to melt some of the plastic stuff.

Got a longer pin same diameter and used heated solder to stick it on then cut it down.

 

[Marvo]

Yes, I made the hollow drill out of a female pin which fitted over the broken male pin I was repairing. I just filed 4 'teeth' into the bottom edge with a triangular jewelers file and used my very old cordless screwdriver with a small chuck fitted to it to rotate the homemade drill. It was running very slow, maybe 150 rpm but it removed the plastic around the broken male pin pretty quickly and it did a very neat job which needed almost no cleaning up afterward.

I looked at the possibility of soldering an extension piece onto the broken pin but the surface area was minute. The pin was maybe 0.5mm in diameter and it was one of many so the surrounding pins which are only about 5mm away make it very difficult to get access plus you've got to contend with the plastic surround that is proud of the area which guides the plug as it's inserted. I couldn't see a way to jig a pin extension in position whilst it's soldered plus it was nay on impossible to get even asmall soldering iron into the right position and even if you could you'd need a very steady hand to say the least.

Soldering a wire on was much easier, I pre-tinned both the wire and the newly excavated broken pin and I use a little soldering aid with animated arms with a crocodile clip on them to hold the wire steady. It worked because I managed to set it up so the wire was held a good distance away from the place where the soldering was happening so the work area was free from obstructions.