|
Locks that won't lock
Shortly after removing the alarm system,
the power locks, which had been working intermittantly at best, pretty
much completely gave up the ghost, making entry and exit to / from the
car a nightmare. It was obvious that the time to intervene, and do
something about the problem was at hand. Since there was no school
during the first week of April, I waited for some decent weather, and
with the help of my youngest daughter (Krystal), I tackled the problem.
A little research on the internet (http://www.maxima.org
is a great resource for Maxima owners) I determined that the most likely
culprit was the lock timer box. We headed out to the car, removed
the trim panel from under the steering column, and then disconnected the
wiring from the lock timer, and removed the timer from the car.
With the timer out of the car, we went inside, and
removed the timer circuit board from the plastic box that protects it.
I then gently clamped the circuit board into my vice to hold it in
place, and heated up the soldering iron. For this job, I used a
small pencil style iron, so I wouldn't get too much heat in the board.
I then looked over the board carefully, and identified the connections
that carried the main current from the wiring harness to the relay, and
back to the wiring harness. These main connections were where I
believed my problem was. I heated each of the connections, and
with the solder hot, I used an ice pick to scrape the circuit traces
under the solder, as well as the terminals from the relay. This
helped the solder make a good connection with each. When I was
done working on all of the connections, I gave them a few minutes to
cool down, then put the circuit board back in the plastic box.
We took the timer back to the car, connected the
wiring, and gave the locks a try. They worked fine on the first
try, so I bolted the timer back in place, then tested the locks one more
time before installing the trim panel back under the steering column,
and calling it a job well done. |