Article: 7463 of alt.hackers
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
From: kelly@cray.com (Matt Kelly)
Subject: "unfixable" Car Stereo
Message-ID: 1995Mar1.123916.25935@ned.cray.com
Lines: 43
Nntp-Posting-Host: spyro.cray.com
Reply-To: kelly@cray.com
Organization: Cray Research, Inc.
Date: 1 Mar 95 12:39:16 CST
Approved: Are you SERIOUS???
Status: RO

ObAndTheySaidItWasIrrepairableYaRightHack:

I once had a car with a factory-installed AM/FM Cassette player (Ford -- no flames,
please, I've learned).  One day I was driving along, listening to tunes, when 
suddenly I hit a major bump in the road.  Immediately, the volume of the stereo
went to FULL BLAST, and could NOT be turned down. 

Later that day, I pulled out the stereo, and lo and behold, there was a break in
the "trace" leading from the volume control into the amplifier circuitry.  This 
"trace" was not copper, but was instead some kind of carbon.  It was integrated into
the incredibly cheaply built volume control.  I scraped away some of the carbon HOPING
to find a substrate of copper or at least SOME kind of metal, but no luck.  This
break was NOT solderable.

I called a bunch of repair-type places, including FORD service, and everyone said
the same thing: not fixable.  Humbug.

So, I talked to a mechanical engineer buddy of mine, and he gave me a sample of some
stuff a glue vendor gave him.  It was silver-powder impregnated epoxy!!  Incredible
holding power AND electrically conductive!!  I cleaned the area on and around the 
break, carefully applied (read glopped) some of this wonder-goo onto it, waited
overnight, and tried it out.  IT WORKED!!!  I re-installed the car stereo, and it
worked great!

It was difficult to resist the urge to call every one of them back and give them
a royal raspberry over the phone... B^)

Hack On!!




---


=============================================================================
|  Matt Kelly                       |                                       |
|  Software Engineer                |     My karma ran over my dogma.       |
|  Cray Research, Inc.              |     I hate it when that happens!      |
|  kelly@els.cray.com               |                                       |
=============================================================================

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