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Technical Topics => Equipment => Topic started by: IQ_imbalance on June 22, 2015, 0343 UTC

Title: Cleaning circuit board in YB 400?
Post by: IQ_imbalance on June 22, 2015, 0343 UTC

When packing up my YB 400 for a trip to the hills, I noticed that the alkaline batteries had corroded and left a fair amount of salt in the battery compartment.  I tossed the batteries, dusted out the compartment, and put new batteries in.  I used the radio all day Sat, and it worked wonderfully. 

Sunday morning, however, the bottom row of keys would only be recognized as "6", and the other keys were also jumbled up.  I opened her up and cleaned all the button contacts (finding a few flakes of salt here and there).  Put it back together and things are still wonky.  I suspect a bit of the battery salt has deposited somewhere I can't see, liquified in the high humidity, and is shorting something out.

I'm thinking a good cleaning of the circuit board might be the next step.  What are thoughts on using crc spray vs distilled water & isopropanol?  My thought is that distilled water would be the best at dissolving any leftover battery salt, but getting water off the board afterwards would be a pain (hence the alcohol)

Title: Re: Cleaning circuit board in YB 400?
Post by: IQ_imbalance on June 23, 2015, 0250 UTC

Well and behold...it's working again.  Odd.

Title: Re: Cleaning circuit board in YB 400?
Post by: Pigmeat on June 24, 2015, 1923 UTC

YB 400's and it's kid brother, the Grundig G5 are odd beasts. I've owned both. Sometimes you have to push the reset button and reprogram them when they lock up like that.

Title: Re: Cleaning circuit board in YB 400?
Post by: redhat on June 24, 2015, 1948 UTC

Isopropyl alcohol is probably the best, most of the other solvents can be rough on plastics.

+-RH

Title: Re: Cleaning circuit board in YB 400?
Post by: BoomboxDX on July 26, 2015, 0617 UTC

I've had good luck cleaning radio PCB's with tuner cleaner sprayed onto a Q-Tip.

Alcohol would probably work, too.

If your radio is turning off and on and such, it might be the battery terminals need to be cleaned, or hit with a bit of sandpaper or something similar to eliminate corrosion.

Also, sometimes the solder joint on the negative spring terminal can weaken. The spring can work the solder joint over time.

I had this happen on a DX398. The negative battery terminal's spring had weakened the solder point where the spring connects to the PCB. Easy fix. Just hit it with some solder, reheat the joint....

Good luck.