Possible aircon problem?

[DJW svx]

I'm sure you guys will find the answer, Arthur it would appear that the other owner Gez can't get the car back on the road at the moment so our proposed gathering seems to be delayed a bit but I'd be up for the Meet at Goodwood on the 6th. From a practical point of view can any harm come from wedging the dial?

[Arthur-UK]

No it will do no harm.

For Goodwood, lets swap mobile numbers using the Private mesage facility.
If its raining I would not bother going, but otherwise I suggest we should meet in the http://www.harvester.co.uk/find-a-ha...hichester.html car park at 0830 and then drive in from there.

[M30SVX]

Arthur-UK ... Did you come to any further conclusions about what causes the problem with the ACC control unit? The fact that they all seem to fail in the same way would suggest that there's probably one component that's failing. Or perhaps that's too simplistic.

[Arthur-UK]

I havent looked at it again. It is almost for certain contamination bridging of the hand soldered joints on the keyboard matrix. Because I found this almost straight away I probably missed some elswhere - the way it is assembled the various keys look like they are wired via more than one pcb, the big round button has its own pcb and this in turn links to two more. Just open it up and look at all the hand soldered joints on the inter-pcb connections. Resolder them and then clean the flux off using a solvent.

Mine has done just over 80,000m I have just driven Portsmouth to Leeds and back, about 600miles without any problems, these cars are soooooo good !

[M30SVX]

It's great to have your expertise looking at this particular problem unit.

Although I have a good working unit, at the moment, I am quite aware that they do fail after a certain working life and I have heard from several owners who have faulty units.

In your opinion, could the contaminant bridging that you found explain the identical way these units fail, ie,
a) round temp setter counts down to 18
b) outside temp button stops working

If you get around to having another look at yours, could you keep us up-to-date with your findings, please?

Would you be up for a repair service for these ACC units (at a commercial price, of course) ??

[Arthur-UK]

Yes its almost certainly the root cause. On mine the Outside Temp button is not affected, but that doesnt surprise me. The various keys all sit in a "matrix" so any that are bridged will upset others that share the same lines. Depending on where the bridges are different buttons will be affected. The other factor is how the software resonds to a closed switch, on the up/down buttons it counts up/down.

I havent really got the time to fix these, my own still needs doing again ! The biggest job is getting it out of the facia, once its on the bench it takes 10 minutes to pull it apart and resolder the joints. I would like to get a spare faulty one so I can fix it first.

Has anyone out there got a circuit diagram for the unit ?

[DJW svx]

Problem sorted?
We have all been snowed under so yesterday I started the SVX up before heading out, to cut a long story short I got distracted on the phone then had to send an e-mail and one thing lead to another and I forgot that I had left the SVX running. So for about 2 hours the car was running with the heater control wedged on to hot and flat out, when I got to the car it was like an oven inside anyway I drove away to my destination and on the way there I pulled out the wedge of paper from the round heater control to adjust it and guess what it works perfectly even the outside temp button works! so so far for 2 days the heater control knob functions perfectly as does the outside temp reading could I have stumbled on a cure? Perhaps the very hot air dried a damp joint or maybe dried off some condensation that may have affected it who knows but so far its working.

[blueji]

Originally Posted by DJW svx

Problem sorted?
We have all been snowed under so yesterday I started the SVX up before heading out, to cut a long story short I got distracted on the phone then had to send an e-mail and one thing lead to another and I forgot that I had left the SVX running. So for about 2 hours the car was running with the heater control wedged on to hot and flat out, when I got to the car it was like an oven inside anyway I drove away to my destination and on the way there I pulled out the wedge of paper from the round heater control to adjust it and guess what it works perfectly even the outside temp button works! so so far for 2 days the heater control knob functions perfectly as does the outside temp reading could I have stumbled on a cure? Perhaps the very hot air dried a damp joint or maybe dried off some condensation that may have affected it who knows but so far its working.

Hate to dampen your fire......but, mine had the same performance for a while....then the problem came back

will keep the fingers crossed for you

John

ps I know I like to take my SVX off the road for winter to preserve it's good looks, but I do envy you guy's runing yours in winter with the snow and all that

[DJW svx]

Oh well, anyway at least so far I have it fully working.
In all this snow despite having Toyo high performance tyres with care I can just waft past stuck cars.

[svxistentialist]

That also happened with my Jersey car. It was stuck on 32 when I got it. After a long drive home from England with full aircon on, it returned to normal working.

At the time I surmised that dehumidification had cured the problem, there were some circuits or boards fouled up by dampness, perhaps. That may well have been the case, but the problem returned some time later, and I was never able to "dry it out" again to the level that the control unit stayed fixed.

So like John says, the "drying out" fix may only be a temporary one.

With bad weather and being busy at work I have not been able to conclude the replacement of the bad control unit with the replacement capacitor installed unit. Now that Christmas break is here I hope to finish it. If it cures the problem I'll furnish a complete illustrated report.

Joe

[DJW svx]

I'm sure you are all right in so far as it may just sort it short term still it will give me time to make up something to wedge it discreetly when it returns. Thanks to everyone who have taken the time to reply to my questions so far and I'd like to wish you all a prosperous new year.

[M30SVX]

Just before Christmas, I sent my old faulty ACC control unit off to BBA-Reman (http://www.bba-reman.com) who supply and repair a big range of ECU's etc. They had previously looked at it and returned it as irreparable. So I sent it off to them again and asked if they could at least diagnose the fault, even if they couldn't repair it.
However after hearing nothing from them for five or six weeks I phoned them and they admitted that they were unable to either diagnose or repair the unit (even though I offered to pay for a diagnosis). They were very polite and returned the unit to me FOC.
So BBA-Reman is a non-starter as far as repairing faulty SVX ACC units.

So Joe - would you like my old unit to experiment with?
I'll happily post it off to you.

[svxistentialist]

Roger, don't throw it away for the minute in case we find a miracle cure.

Apologies I have not been able to find time to fit the revamped unit. I have a number of problems, chief amongst them being deep dislike of cold weather [That particular car is outside with a flat battery and I loaned my charger to my son who was beset by cold weather weak battery blues. ]

If by any chance the refurb works then proof of the pudding would be to do the same on another unit, yours maybe, and see if it proves to be a reliable fix.

Hopefully I may finish the test fitment this weekend if the weather normalises.

Joe

[DJW svx]

Mine works fine with the wedge inserted

[blueji]

You would have thought.......

That these cars been so rare and cared for by the few die-hards, if Subaru were approached for help....(well they did build the b****y thing) they might just offer assistance to keep THEIR iconic car on the go.....

This car, really does rely on the air con on warm/sunny days

Just need an ambassador, JOE