Flat starter battery on the van

Pudsey Bear said:
That was my thinking, I hate just throwing things away that may help someone else, it'll never be a ECU again.
Click to expand...
Yup. I have a brand-new 40A B2B in the cupboard that I think has a simple fault that could be easily repaired IF you had the wiring diagram. But I don't and have no way to get one, so it will stay SNAFUed for the forseable future.
Got another 40A B2B (different make) that failed due to solar overload but is irreparable due to being 'potted'. People think having potted electronics is a great idea - but it costs extra money to do that AND it makes them uneconomic to repair.
 
I had two Sterling B2Bs repaired by Sterling. One was fine. They said it was a dry joint from original manufacture. That one still works as far as I know. They fixed it for free.
The other one had something more wrong with it (I don't know what) and Sterling replaced a pure with a hard link, because that was what new ones had. I was charged for this repair.
The fixed unit worked for a few weeks then it lost the magic smoke.
The circuitry was frazzled around where the fuse used to be.
I don't use Sterling products now,, but the point of this ramble is that sometimes a repair is throwing more money into a sunk cost.
 
I've repaired a few Inc chargers which are similar in a lot of ways circuitry wise.

In older units the thermal paste between the FETs and the heatsink dries up and goes crusty and the FETs overheat. Often there's a hairline crack in a solder joint in the terminal header block due to flexing under strain. If it's not FETs or a dry joint then it's often the PWM chip. Easy to identify and swap out providing the manufacturer hasn't kindly ground the type number off the top, typically only a couple of quid. Surface mount chips get fiddly to work on as I'm getting older, I received some SMT capacitors from digi key a while back that are so small if you drop one on the bench then it's lost because you can't really distinguish it from a speck of flipping dust ! Give me a valve amp with huge 2Watt resistors on turret strip any day.
 
Geek said:
I had two Sterling B2Bs repaired by Sterling. One was fine. They said it was a dry joint from original manufacture. That one still works as far as I know. They fixed it for free.
The other one had something more wrong with it (I don't know what) and Sterling replaced a pure with a hard link, because that was what new ones had. I was charged for this repair.
The fixed unit worked for a few weeks then it lost the magic smoke.
The circuitry was frazzled around where the fuse used to be.
I don't use Sterling products now,, but the point of this ramble is that sometimes a repair is throwing more money into a sunk cost.
Click to expand...
Mine is a Nordellectro unit, and it stopped charging the LB when driving, so I was quoted £650 to fix it, like that's going to happen so I bought a dual controller, and paid to have it fitted, and then they fucked that up, Merlin saw and fixed the issue fairly easily, well he said some words and moaned a lot then it worked, do you know what I'm saying :D :D He's not as daft as he looks (not possible), so it all seems to be working now. I just need to go to the van and check out a few things tomorrow, so I know it is all sorted for the trip to France next week, sometime.
 
Geek said:
I had two Sterling B2Bs repaired by Sterling. One was fine. They said it was a dry joint from original manufacture. That one still works as far as I know. They fixed it for free.
The other one had something more wrong with it (I don't know what) and Sterling replaced a pure with a hard link, because that was what new ones had. I was charged for this repair.
The fixed unit worked for a few weeks then it lost the magic smoke.
The circuitry was frazzled around where the fuse used to be.
Click to expand...

Geek said:
I don't use Sterling products now,, but the point of this ramble is that sometimes a repair is throwing more money into a sunk cost.
Click to expand...
on the faulty B2B with a likely simple fault, I asked a friend who owns a company making, amongst other things B2Bs, for a suggestion what to do with this B2B (not one of his, I hasten to add).
His suggestion was succinct and to the point ... chuck it in the bin :)
 
A VSR with normally closed contacts doesn't make any sense at all Kev.
I think you've been put on a bum steer with this normally open or normally closed malarkey.
The difference between those two you linked to is the voltage, one is 12v and the other is 24v. Both won't close until a certain voltage level is reached, that's the job of a VSR, ie, the contacts are normally open at rest.
 
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