"Working" OEM Head Unit replaces Pioneer AVIC-X910BT - Now no sound

[tof]

Well, the Radio Roller Coaster takes another downward turn. Alpine Electronics customer service called me today. They had three spare reconditioned units but, of course, they always bench test replacement units before sending them out. Turns out all three units failed and, when examined, all three have leaking capacitors. So, they are sending my unit back as is, along with a check for all but $25 (diagnostics fee) of the money I paid for repairs.

The search for a solution goes on.

 

[BB]

Well, the Radio Roller Coaster takes another downward turn. Alpine Electronics customer service called me today. They had three spare reconditioned units but, of course, they always bench test replacement units before sending them out. Turns out all three units failed and, when examined, all three have leaking capacitors. So, they are sending my unit back as is, along with a check for all but $25 (diagnostics fee) of the money I paid for repairs.

The search for a solution goes on.

You can always pay $2100 for a new one. At some point the amount of effort required to research and find a cheaper solution becomes not worth it.

It might be insightful to learn why both BrianK and Willman's Electronics aren't willing to repair these units any longer. Has anyone tried asking them? Is the amount of labor involved so large that they feel nobody would be willing to pay the price? Or are these units more difficult to troubleshoot and repair than simply replacing leaky capacitors?

Another idea is to try talking to a place that specializes in repairing classic car radios. If you do a search there are many small companies in this line of business. I suspect at least one of them would be willing and qualified to do the job.

 

[tof]

I don't think most classic car radios typically don't have etched circuit boards. I think the challenge there is finding replacement vacuum tubes.

I have exchanged emails with BrianK and he has no interest in taking on failed head units. I just sent an email off to Williams to get some feedback from them. I think the amount of damage that shops typically find in a failed NSX head unit simply makes repairs too big a job to take on.

I wonder how old the "new" oem head units are. 2100 is pretty sporty if the unit only has five or ten years left on its life-expectancy.

 

[ofdlt10]

sadly, $2100 won't buy it:

39100-SL0-A04 TUNER ASSY. (AM/FM/CAS) (ALPINE) 001 2005 NSX 2989.87

i've contacted both alpine and willman's and they both said the parts to make the repairs are no longer available. i've sent units to both for repair estimates and they were returned without repairs being made.

 

[BB]

sadly, $2100 won't buy it:

39100-SL0-A04 TUNER ASSY. (AM/FM/CAS) (ALPINE) 001 2005 NSX 2989.87

That's list price you're showing, but you can easily get it for less than that. Example....

http://www.oemacuraparts.com/auto-p...haust-heater-fuel-cat/auto-radio-antenna-scat

39100-SL0-A04 TUNER ASSY. (AM/FM/CAS) (ALPINE) $2,212.50

- - - Updated - - -

I don't think most classic car radios typically don't have etched circuit boards. I think the challenge there is finding replacement vacuum tubes.

I noticed many of the places that fix "classic" car radios say they do stereos from the 70's and 80's too. The NSX stereo was clearly designed in the late 80's. Why are these stereos fixable but the NSX's is not?

 

[GraemeD]

I think, I found my problem. Capacitors are ordered. We'll see how it goes.

 

[Old Guy]

I think, I found my problem. Capacitors are ordered. We'll see how it goes.

No surprise.

If you are an electronics whiz and know how to sling a soldering pencil, you can ignore the following. If not, then the following comments may be helpful in providing a successful outcome:

- Do not use a soldering gun, too much heat. Use a 25 watt fine tip soldering iron / pencil for installation of the parts.
- A solder vac hand tool can assist in the removal of the old capacitors and clean up of excess solder.
- The circuit board will have a conformal coating applied on it to protect the solder and traces. Depending on the type of conformal coating, it can be removed with the appropriate solvent; however, some conformal coatings need mechanical removal. The conformal coating at the repair point should be destroyed in the de soldering process. Use a tooth brush to clean off residue. If the solder repair goes well, you probably don't have to do anything more in terms of removing the existing coating. If you find that you are having trouble getting a nice clean solder repair, you may have to clean the repair location surface to remove any residual conformal coating. Look up removing conformal coating on the web. It can range from easy to messy depending on what the original manufacturer used to coat the board. Here is hoping that it is not an issue!
- There are circuit board cleaners or you could use an electronic contact cleaner to help remove the capacitor residue.
- Solder in new parts using a resin core solder. Solder for use in electronics comes in different diameters. Try and get 22 gauge (.032 ") as the amount of solder deposited is smaller and it makes soldering on a PC board easier if the spacing between the traces is fine (bridging traces - bad thing).
- After completion of all the solder repairs, clean the circuit board repair locations with flux remover.
- After cleaning the board, spray with a conformal coating (I like the acrylic versions of conformal coatings).

The conformal coating is important in terms of preventing corrosion and bloom on the circuit board if you want a long lasting repair.

I, as probably other owners look forward with interest to your repair results.

Edit:

Looking at the photo, it almost looks like one of the traces next to the 1000 uF capacitor is lifting. Be careful when cleaning that you don't lift or tear the trace. You may have to confirm that the trace is intact and making contact with whatever it should. If the trace is not badly lifted, the confomal coating may be sufficient to hold it in place and prevent further problems. If it is badly lifted, you may have to explore repair options (something that I have never had to do).

Also, next to the lettering E315 on the board there looks to be a black spot that looks like burning on the trace. You may need to examine that and make sure that the trace is intact. If the capacitors shorted out when they failed there may be collateral damage on the board in addition to just the failed capacitors. Check the board over carefully.

 

[GraemeD]

It's Alive!

Old Guy, the trace next to the "E315" was corroded thru. Had to bridge four traces then replaced the large caps and the two on the connector board because they were the same as the one that leaked. I also put a Teflon disk between the repair and cap to protect the bridges.

Tested it on the bench with a scope, no smoke and the output signals responded to the control knobs. So I put it back in the car and it works. I'm happy again.

 

[warrenw]

It's Alive!

Old Guy, the trace next to the "E315" was corroded thru. Had to bridge four traces then replaced the large caps and the two on the connector board because they were the same as the one that leaked.

Tested on on the bench with a scope, no smoke and the output signals responded to the control knobs. So I put it back in the car and it works. I'm happy again.

Nice work! I am wondering instead of waiting for our head units to fail, if we can replace these capacitors ahead of time and prevent the board damage.
What board did you work on? Can you provide the cap location info in more detail? Are there other capacitors by the same manufacture/type in the head unit that we could preventively replace?
heat and age are our enemy with electrolytic capacitors.

 

[GraemeD]

Nice work! I am wondering instead of waiting for our head units to fail, if we can replace these capacitors ahead of time and prevent the board damage.
What board did you work on? Can you provide the cap location info in more detail? Are there other capacitors by the same manufacture/type in the head unit that we could preventively replace?
heat and age are our enemy with electrolytic capacitors.

it was the bottom board. I bought a few other caps that were around the damaged area, but decided to change only the large ones. The ones I changed were 3ea of the 1000uf 16v and 2ea of the 2200uf 16v. The 1000uf on the bottom board was the one that leaked and caused the damage to the board, there are two more 1000uf caps on the small back board.

I am sure this is not the fix for all head units, as mine was only a "no sound" issue, everything else worked fine. I am sure that a preemptive replacement of these caps would head off any board damage in the near future, at least from these caps.

Kaz from NSXCB, was the guy that documented all these repairs, I just read everything he wrote on head units. I suggest if you are contemplating repairing one of these, you read his blog.

 

[Old Guy]

It's Alive!

Old Guy, the trace next to the "E315" was corroded thru. Had to bridge four traces then replaced the large caps and the two on the connector board because they were the same as the one that leaked. I also put a Teflon disk between the repair and cap to protect the bridges.

Tested it on the bench with a scope, no smoke and the output signals responded to the control knobs. So I put it back in the car and it works. I'm happy again.

Excellent news! The fact that, at least in your case, replacement of capacitors appears to have brought the head unit back to life is great. If it had been one of the proprietary ICs on the board that was dead, then the repair ability future for the head units would indeed be dim.

To warrenw's question about replacing capacitors in advance to avoid collateral damage to the board, I offer two points:

First, the capacitor failures are most likely due to some electrolytic formulation errors made by a capacitor manufacture in the late eighties. Unfortunately, the error did not show up until early capacitor mortality cropped up a few years later. As a result, depending on when the head units in later model year NSXs were built, they may not suffer from this problem. If they got capacitors that have the revised electrolyte formulation, they may be just fine. If Alpine did a limited production run of the head units in 1 or 2 years, then all head units may suffer from this problem regardless of the model year. Since the NSX is such a low production vehicle, my bet would be that Alpine probably did the production over a limited period of time 1-3 years and Honda put the parts into inventory. Large volume manufacturers like Alpine probably are not interested in keeping a production line open to make 200 units per year. The date of mortality info that tof is attempting to collect may help in determining whether it is just early units that suffer from this problem or whether all units will suffer this problem. This may assist later model year owners in deciding whether they want to do exploratory surgery. Its looking like exploratory surgery might be a good option for early model year owners that want to keep it stock.

Second, all of the capacitors may not have come from the same vendor. As such, even though they are of the same vintage, it may not be necessary to replace all of the capacitors. If they are all from the same vendor, then preventative replacement may be a good approach. For all the early adopters of this repair strategy, it might be useful if they could document which capacitors they replaced using the ID numbers on the boards. If we have a record of the failure candidates, this could greatly facilitate future repairs to the head units. I have perused Kaz's excellent site on a number of occasions; but, never run across his head unit repair thread. Did he provide any record of which capacitors he replaced or did he just do all of them.

Finally, congrats for stepping up and attempting the repair!

 

[tof]

Nice job, GraemeD.

To add to Old Guy's observations...I asked BrianK about preemptive cap replacement and he thought it could be useful. He has a pretty good idea of which caps tend to fail, knowledge he gained when he was attempting to repair some units in the past. (He doesn't do head units any more but does offer speaker mounted amp repair.)

 

[tof]

Happy Ending: I picked up a head unit from Rog, another primer in Orlando. It is out of a low mileage 2005 but Rog had some 91 style knobs he swapped in. Works flawlessly, including the tape deck. So now my center stack is complete and completely OEM.

 

[Scrapdog2grand]

I personally think its a great idea to replace them with newer panasonic branded caps before board damage takes place. I have never seen panasonic caps go bad and i do all kinds of board repairs. To address Old Guys comment about a 2 to 3 year run. I do not think that was the case. There are many revisions to the boards used in these head units depending on the year. If anyone has units they want to sell pm me. I also have a brand new unit never used if anyone is interested. Not sure if they are even available from the dealer anymore.

Nice work! I am wondering instead of waiting for our head units to fail, if we can replace these capacitors ahead of time and prevent the board damage.
What board did you work on? Can you provide the cap location info in more detail? Are there other capacitors by the same manufacture/type in the head unit that we could preventively replace?
heat and age are our enemy with electrolytic capacitors.