Today at Atelier Kaz - ex-Honda R&D, F1, Indy/CART engineer

The 3rd one of the recent week….

This one is in the worst condition and already told the owner that I may not be able to fix it within my own cost limit.

The owner completely lost the power to the audio head unit and left it for a few months and then contacted me.
So, I already knew serious damages were done.

Even before disassembling the entire unit, I already found serious damages to the back side of the bottom circuit board.
The acid leaked from the cap located at the upper side of this board reached to this side and causing serious damages.

Probably it already damaged some of the surface mounted chips.












It managed to cut through some of the tracks and pads including the power line but the worst one was at this OP amp.

It’s dead….

From my past experience, when this one is dead, it tends to take out other components as well.

Before committing in going any further, I must check several things as I don’t want ending up replacing so many parts only to find that I couldn’t recover the power or the sound.

Not looking good.








At least 3 tracks were completely gone and part of them were the power line so that will explain the loss of power.










The pads under the OP amp were also gone or damaged.
At the end, I had to drill a tiny hole through the circuit board to create the missing connection although I always worried about the noise interference.