How To Learn To Repair Yacht Electronics

14 expert electronic repair tips and tricks for boat owners to save coin reviving broken electronic navigation, speed, depth and autopilot instruments. Past David Berry

Often the causes of electronic failures are not electrical at all. The environs on a small canvas or power boat requires mechanically robust, rugged structure and many instruments are simply not built with this in mind.

PBO's back to nuts gunkhole electronics repair guide

The prolonged broad-spectrum vibration produced by a marine diesel, the shock loading from slamming into green seas, wide thermal swings from engine or environmental temperature changes, or a simple salt water leak tin can all issue in failure.

Corrosion and movement – inevitable aboard a gunkhole – are major enemies of printed circuit boards and soldered joints.

Oftentimes when something goes wrong we call up the instrument has reached the stop of its natural life: sometimes information technology has, of class, merely equally the mistake may exist easily diagnosed and rectified and so long as we are bold plenty to take the back off and have a close look at what's going on inside.

How I fixed an Autohelm 4000 and a Garmin GPS 152

Superlative electronic repair tips

1. Fifty-fifty if the item'southward manufacturer has stopped supporting your production, it's worth calling them. Their engineers are often happy to give communication on common bug.

2. Use a magnifier. Electronics components are often tiny surface-mount components and the tracks on the circuit lath tin can be less than a millimetre wide. A lens helps find the problems.

3. Hold printed circuit boards up to the low-cal to look for damaged tracks.

4. Beware of connector pins that take become dislodged (perhaps every bit a result of your investigations). Check that pins volition mate with their sockets.

Reassembling an old Autohelm 4000: the pin indicated by the pen has pushed dorsum into its housing. Information technology's possible that it won't brand contact when the housing is mated with the circuit board.

5. Wiggle connectors. It'south amazing how many problems tin can be solved merely by wiggling (or better, unplugging and re-plugging) connectors; not just external connectors only internal ones as well. The all-time blazon of connectors are gilded flashed (plated) since these exercise non tarnish, but even these can requite problems.

Wiggle connectors by moving them gently with your fingers in the same centrality as y'all would connect and disconnect them. Don't wiggle them backwards and frontward, you may practise more than harm than good.

half dozen. Wiggle 'silicon chips' – they're nothing to be afraid of. It'southward unlikely that chips will exist mounted in sockets, but if you lot observe one that is, just tweak it gently with a toothpick or something like. Even a tiny motion will remake the contacts on the pins. And so press it firmly dorsum into its socket. Static electricity can damage sensitive electronic components, so avert completely removing silicon fries and touch a grounded object to discharge static earlier working on a excursion.

Every gunkhole has a number of gauges for water, fuel and waste tanks. Every and so frequently, one of them volition…

Whether it's making an instrument panel from a tablet stand, turning bed slats into a dinghy floor, creating a wine…

7. Take careful note of what screws become where. I know it sounds trivial, simply information technology can be important to ensure the correct screw goes back where it came from. Length can be equally of import as diameter: too long a screw tin cause distortions that may pb to problems.

8. Use a fine-tipped soldering iron. Fine-calibration electronics needs a fine-calibration iron. Purchase 1 with a temperature controller – they're not expensive.

9. Add together boosted support to the larger components past bedding them on silicone adhesive (buy the correct stuff from an electronics visitor – don't apply bathroom sealant). This is often how equipment is 'ruggedised'.

This fiddling computer lives inside the engine compartment – not the most benign environment for electronics – and ane of its ability supply capacitors had shorted. I replaced the capacitor and used silicone to back up all the components that otherwise would only be held by their wire legs. Information technology looks messy, but volition aid them withstand vibration and daze loads.

10. Never operate on a circuit with the power on. This is non a question of getting an electric shock – which won't happen at 12V – simply the soldering iron tip is grounded and if you inadvertently touch a component or track with the full voltage you can go an firsthand and potentially catastrophic curt excursion which could burn down out the tracks or circuit lath components.

11. Don't go prodding with a screwdriver. The odds are that you volition scratch or otherwise mechanically impairment something important. Employ a toothpick or one of those useful wooden stirrers from the coffee store.

12. Don't bend or flex a printed circuit board. Modern excursion boards can typically have four or vi layers and there'south always a chance of breaking a track or solder articulation on any of them if you flex the board.

13. At risk of sounding obvious, exercise check the excursion billow or fuse is intact and, if you accept a voltmeter, cheque that ability is reaching your instrument before y'all become taking it apart!

14. In uncomplicated terms: if it ain't bankrupt, don't set information technology.

Why not subscribe today?

This feature appeared in the Feb13 edition of Practical Boat Owner. For more than articles like this, including DIY, money-saving advice, swell boat projects, expert tips and means to better your boat's functioning, take out a mag subscription to Uk's best-selling boating mag.

Subscribe, or make a gift for someone else, and you lot'll always save at to the lowest degree 30% compared to newsstand prices.

Run across the latest PBO subscription deals on magazinesdirect.com