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240 Intermittent Odometer AFTER Gear Replacement

(3) The cracks around the motor solder pins are a little more common than "a few others" because the motor's weight is supported by those pins being soldered, and once you remove the two frame screws, that's all that's keeping it on the board. The solder has become brittle over the years, and if you have any history with all the electronic relays in this car, you know the solder cracks around the heavy parts. And now you're handling it.

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This reflow being recommended often divides the failures from successes because care must be taken to keep from loosening the motor pins in the plastic bobbin or damaging the motor winding termination on them. That means reflowing the joint quickly - say one second - with just a touch of new resin flux core solder. These joints are tin/lead solder, not the stuff you can buy today at Walmart.

adding my own experience: re-flowing those two cracked solder pieces fixed the random intermittent odometer issue i was having. did a quick lap around the neighborhood and it worked perfectly the whole time. i'll update again if it fails again.
 
So, all that stuff I did hasn't changed it. Ive been resetting my trip meter to check if I lose mileage on the way to work, and my symptom is always both at the start of a drive, and when the trip is reset, but not every time. I've disassembled again and noticed that if the trip button is pressed very slightly, it may disengage the black drive gear at the very bottom right of the trip from the tenths wheel. I've removed my speedometer faceplate and I'll drive around for a while with it off to see if this is what's going on.
 
Update: I witnessed the odometer not rolling again on my way to get pizza. Two pages and over a year of fiddling with it amounted to very little. :-(

I officially quit. I have no idea what else to check or if there is anything else to check.
 
don't give up!

I'm out of ideas! I've replaced gears, re-flowed the solder joints, and shot a random part cannon at it. If it needs to come out again for some reason I'll re-flow the joints again, but I'm not making another special trip in there unless I learn something new. I think the plastic threads in the housing are getting worn out.
 
Did you read the entire brickboard posts as shown above?

I had to go back a year and see what you were talking about. lol Yeah, I've read it, but after reviewing again it seems like it might be worth trying a different set of gears again. It's just so hard to diagnose given the strange pattern at which it fails. I have these in my stash, so it may be worth a try.
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I thought maybe the issue could be all this solder build up contacting the small gear, but I think that would be a more frequent issue. I tried to fix it anyway and ended up making the solder look worse. Cleaning it up took forever too.
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Okay... I'm cooled down. lol

I actually made it worse this time. It doesn't work at all now. I'm going to re-solder this at work with better equipment tomorrow. I'll also try to pull the motor housing off and find a broken prong.
 
Entering new territory this morning.
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Please tell me I finally found the problem. :please: Does anybody have an idea of how to repair this little trace? Should I go to the wanted section, and find out who has a parts cluster?
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I tried soldering in a small piece of solid core wire.
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but I ran into a reassembly issue. I'm going to take the wire out and see if I can get away with the same fix without a loop (straight shot super short wire). I think both of those solder dots are within the housing.
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This would have worked in theory, but upon removal of the pink wire I found that the motor housing pin was loose. :-( I must have gotten this thing really hot when I re-soldered it the first time because this seems like a lot of damage. I dabbed a little solder in there so that the pin would stay put, but I'm not placing any bets. If it works, cool. If not, I'm going to place a wanted ad for a parts cluster anyway.
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To repair pads that came loose. I use solid core Kynar wire. It's usually about 24ga and goes up to 28 if needed. Then the trace that the pad originally went to gets some of the green conformal coat scratched off with an exacto pen knife. Next I wrap the end of the wire around the lead and let the end of it cover the trace. A bit of rosin flux on there and solder it to the lead and trace. Use a short piece of wire that you can snug down onto the board so you don't run into the clearance issue. I use a fine pointed round tip on the iron.
 
To repair pads that came loose. I use solid core Kynar wire. It's usually about 24ga and goes up to 28 if needed. Then the trace that the pad originally went to gets some of the green conformal coat scratched off with an exacto pen knife. Next I wrap the end of the wire around the lead and let the end of it cover the trace. A bit of rosin flux on there and solder it to the lead and trace. Use a short piece of wire that you can snug down onto the board so you don't run into the clearance issue. I use a fine pointed round tip on the iron.

I got that far. It's all put together now, but I'm not expecting it to work again. That pin from the motor broke off, so I don't think there's any way to fix it now. I posted a wanted ad. Hopefully somebody has a junk cluster that they're willing to part with.
 
Well I changed the symptom! It worked for 2.7 miles. Then I hit a bump and it quit. I must have made a connection with that pin, but there's no way to make it hold. I need a parts cluster!
 
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