replacement IR roof sensor for 306 XSi

Jon. I cant help with your sensor problem, but I had a leaking sun roof, it turned out to be the drain holes were blocked, I cleared them with a wire coat hanger.

Bryan

Hi Bryan Thanks for your message. i've been having a look for the drain holes after reading back old messages on this group. Can you advise where they are - I can't see them yet?!

Thanks Jon

Hi Jon. They are in the corners at the front, if you can't see them I would think that they are full of muck and need to be scraped out.

Bryan

I got hold of a spare plip key for my wife's 306 and that programmed ok. It's now gone the way of the other two though with dead batteries after a couple of weeks so if you do find the answer to that one I shall certainly be interested.

Hi Keith

Thanks - actually that's a good point (about spare plips working) now that I think of it.

I 'fixed' the plip by replacing the capacitor, which I'd heard might be faulty. It did look as though it might have been ... electrolytic capacitors can 'burst' and the ones on my plips do show some of the symptoms. I'll see how long the batteries last before posting full details ... and obviously I'd rather prove the whole system first...

Regards Jon N

I shall wait with all fingers crossed. tyhis nmay asfffect mny typimng ;o)

;-)

It also looks like the roof receiver is not tied to the Plip. For those of a technical bent ... the Receiver PCB in the roof only contains a set of Infra-red sensors, and an amplifier chip, together with a few other parts. The decoding part must be elsewhere (any clues anyone?).

Cheers Jon N

I have had exactly the same problem with the receiver due to water through the sunroof. I took the receiver board out and cleaned all the corrosion fur off very carefully, particularly where it bridged any printed circuit conductors. I then sprayed it with electrolube to keep it water repellent, and in my case it then worked OK. Worth a try in yoyur case too i would think. Now to have a look at the plip, which is also running down batteries in no time. I checked the little switch inside, and it now never seems to be open circuit, there is always a resisance of 100 ohms or so, which is what I assume to be the cause of the batteries not lasting. Though whether it is the switch or the electrolytic I do not know.

ECU? The post from Brian looks interesting, yours might be fixed the same way.

Keith

Hi Brian

That's the sort of thing I am doing. There is actually one track which is damaged; I have repaired that without success. But I have also found the data sheet for the chip used, so I can probably work out what is & is not happening. Sometime being quite technical is a bit tedious... I will keep you informed...

seemed to be acting fine. I've heard a few stories about the plip (apart from the 'They stop working' one):

- there's a short on the PCB. Plausible but unlikely IMHO

- some mechanical problem causing the batteries to be loose, or something. Not in my case

- it's a capacitor ... plausible in my case ...

... although I wonder why in the case of both plips the batteries only started failing after I changed them. Maybe the slightly higher voltage of the fresh batteries did the capacitor in???

I've also wondered about a failure of the plip semiconductor over time ... but have no evidence of this.

On the sunroof front, I've found the drains and shoved a couple of feet of wire down them to clean them. Any idea where they come out, I can't tell if I've done this properly?

Cheers Jon N

They come out at the bottom of the A pillar. Just run some water gently down the tubes.

This may be completely unrelated, but as you mentioned capacitors bursting it may be interesting reading:-

Hi Nigel

Thanks ... I was being a bit idel to write before checking ... I've done this & all looks good ;-)

Hi Matt

reading:-

Thanks - I know about this (I'm an electronics engineer in another life) and it may well be related. I've mended PC motherboards by replacing capacitors like this in the past. I wasn't expecting this on the plip because (a) the timescale is different - mid-90's rather than early 2000's, and (b) the bulge on the capacitors I've seen is quite slight, much less than eg. the pictures in the wikipedia article.

I will post a picture of the caps when I get chance, and if I show that this fixes the problem. Notwithstanding my IR receiver problem, with the replacement cap. my plip *seems* to have been working (ie. the red LED flashes on when I press the button) for several days now, which is more than used to be the case.

HTH jon