Marine Air Conditioning System - Problem Solved

[Jim Logan]

I've posted over the last couple of months several times as I tried to fix my Marine Air Systems cool/heat system. Finally isolated the problem to the controller board, which is a 5x4 printed circuit board with some memory chips, relays, a triac, and associated circuitry - but a fairly standard industrial controller board as far as those things go - anyway - price for replacement was around $600!!! this for a system whose total replacement cost would be around $2000. This started me looking for an alternative - I have a friend that is a very good electrical engineer, we looked at the board, he found an old "cold solder joint" that had somehow failed after working for 8 years - took 10 seconds to resolder - everything works now. So if you have a problem like this, take a look at the solder joints on the back of the board, might save you a lot of money.

 

[Bill]

Thanks Jim

Good tip. My unit is a bit flaky--sometimes the buttons work, sometimes not. You've given me an avenue to explore.

 

[Jim Logan]

For Bill

Mine has always had that problem - this fix did not make any difference to that problem. I think that is just the way the circuit polls the switch(button press) positions-it does it slowly, so sometimes it seems to take longer for the system to respond.