Combination meter capacitor

I can tell you from personal experience. Barking at me and reporting my posts hasn't helped me learn. It has just made it so I can't even find my own threads and I have stopped asking questions because I'm afraid I'm creating duplicate posts and getting my head bit off.

 

Thanks. I am sorry I misinterpreted things. I was just trying to keep other contributors from feeling like I've been made to feel. I did not mean to upset anyone.

 

And your pic illustrates why we don't like it. It takes so much heat to flow, you can damage the board. Or the component.

 

Yes, electrolytic caps can suffer from over-heating. But if technique I described above is followed, very little heat is applied to the parts. Tinning the leads and pads is key as is a well tinned and well functioning soldering iron.

Electronic soldering is one of those things that needs to be done just so or it will not last or damage something. It's not difficult or complicated, but certain principles need to be followed.

 

As I almost always post in the Gen 1 subsection, I don't know the politics of the Gen 2 area. Your kind of butt soreness almost never occurs in the Gen 1, where people ask questions and we give our best shots at answering. Almost never does anyone get critical or report others, except when there's spam or a post in the wrong subsection. I'm no moderator, but I'd counsel you to have a bit thicker skin and resist whiny criticism. This isn't the ADV forum after all.

 

I rescued a 1080 Hi def tv out of a dumpster once. Wouldn't start, read up on it and replaced all the bad caps with new Panasonics. I think it cost about $5, total. 10 years later still works, tho I've moved on to bigger fancier sets.

I didn't learn in a military training program and certainly wouldn't try electronic repairs as a job. But I learned all those things, and I have about 8 different irons and half a dozen spools of solder. As usual, the correct tools and materials make all the difference in a repair or project.

 

AND that is YOUR problem, not ours.

And simply suggesting that you could do something a different way that is better is not "barking at you".

You need to get that stick out of........wherever it is.

 

Really good they way you showed us this repair!!

 

Original cap was an SMD soldered to the board.
A higher temperature and voltage is better than more capacity.

Yours will likely fail mechanically in time with the cap soldered like that,
it's flopping in the breeze on brittle solder.

They use RoHS compliant solder (lead free) due to new manufacturing standards for toxicity.
You can use 60/40 to repair.

So when it does fail...
If you can't find an SMD cap, digikey/mouser. Bend the leads 90 degrees to the bottom
of the cap body. Do not allow the bent leads to touch the cap body, including the insulating plastic jacket.
Trim the length so the leads do not extend past the solder pads on the PCB.
If you cannot see the leads to solder them, the cap is physically too big....
Carefully clean the solder pads with 99% isopropyl alcohol (Costco) .
Put a little rosin flux (never use plumbers flux or solder on electronics) on the pads and with a low
power soldering pencil, solder the cap to the board. The white band has a "-" negative mark on it.
Only takes 1-2 seconds of heat to make the joint, then clean again with Isopropyl.
60/40 will be nice and shinny if done properly.
Then a dab of silicone or hot glue to secure the cap to the board.

Good luck

 

I have also the same issue /my trip/disp button no working and i'm getting B1504 lost communication with steering SW code on scan tool. could you please guide me is there any fuse of this or anything else.

 

Welcome to Prius chat!
Well this thread above is a bit rambling at the end, but the thread orginally concerns repair of the Gen2 model years 2004-2009 combination meter, which was a common problem for the Gen2 Prii. If you have a Gen3 2012, there was not a similar problem, so you should probably make new post under Gen3 topic area.

 

Thanks for this advice. The "feet" idea made it possible for me to get this done by myself, and tinning the pads and feet made it so I didn't need to add much solder during the attaching step. (I am terrible at soldering, but for 45 seconds or so, I was tolerably competent, and my combination meter works again.)

 

I have several SMD 220uF 16V capacitors if anyone is interested in these surface mount devices, I would send to you far nominal amount.

 

So I replaced the capacitor initially with a 220 UF 16 v and after three months it failed. I opened it up and it looks like this. The outside layer burned up and there are dark spots on all corners of dash panel. Is this all ruined now?

 

Probably a low grade cap or over heated, just clean with isopropyl and replace with 105C grade.

 

Is the capacitor leg on the right side of the pic touching another trace on the board?

Really, there's no reason not to try a different cap and see how it does. I use "name brand" (Nichicon, Rubycon, Panasonic, etc) surface mount caps from digikey.

After soldering in the new cap, just plug in the CM and other parts- just enough to see if it will power on correctly before reassembly.

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General question, I had my Combo meter repaired by an electronics guy a couple of years ago -- he does this through eBay but lives close so I hand delivered and waited. His take was to replace 3 caps on the board rather than just one. He used the same size on all three positions. He said it was a little bit of extra 'protection' that he felt was better for long term health of the board. Wondering if any one else had an opinion on this. I have had no issues since ~ 2 years.

 

Most of the work is labor getting to the combo board. Once the board is out and on the electronics bench, it really doesn't take that much work to replace the 3 caps. I only did the one when I did my own and it's been a long time now and all is good. In fact, I put a used cap in there because that's what I had on hand. But if the guy replaces 3 caps instead of one, that's fine, as long as it's not more expensive. The cost is $0.30 at most for these caps and work for replacing them is pretty simple for those of us who do this kind of work. It's very simple, even though it's SMD. In any case, no harm in replacing 3 caps, but experience shows it's unnecessary. So as long as you don't get charged for "peace of mind", it's all good.

 

SMPS circuits use capacitors in different places to play different roles in the circuit, and they don't all live lives that are as taxing. I haven't looked closely enough at this circuit to know which one is which, but they don't all take the same beating that the main filter(s) do.