SID's digits

If you google this newsgroup you should be able to find a link to SID repair instructions.

Thanks, I found some excellent instructions. I will however wait to the condition gets worse before i attempt this.

thanks, keith

the fixes worked on mine for about a year, now it's back. I've taken the whole thing apart and found that the design is really lousy but that about

10-15 traces from the flex are loose (the end near the power connector for the lights)

haven't figured out what to do yet, you can't solder it. Might find some more of the conductive glue that they use and try to re-glue it. But that's pretty involved.

Conductive glue might be worth a try. I wish you luck! If you find a better soloution, please let me know.

Keith

yea, it's held on with conductive glue, that's what you need to use but that stuff is tricky. It's got to be heated to the right temp, cooled properly, etc. The challenge is reworking that flex since it's so damned thin and the traces are pretty small with little room for error.

the design is lousy.

Yea try this:

The saga goes on....

Took the entire SID apart over the lsat few days and found out a bunch of stuff:

1: the flex is NOT glued to the PCB with conductive glue/tape. It's "hot bar soldered"

In doing this, a small amount of solder is put on the PCB and the flex is put into position and a "hot bar" is laid along the entire length of the flex. the flex is heated, the solder melts and the connection is made.

(we looked at this with a microscope to verify that the flex was indeed soldered to the PCB)

2: the flex is very fragile!

the flex has very small traces in the main part of the flex and then the pads for the hot-bar solder are beefed up to take the solder heat/stress. unfortunately, those pads appear to not be attached to the flex substrate very well. On my SID the pads have separated from the substrate, thus the problems. What I really have is right at the edge of the PCB the small traces of the main flex have become disconnected from the pads that are still soldered to the PCB.

(this was also verified with a microscope)

3: this is NOT an easy fix!

in essence, on my SID (which had gotten pretty bad) the only real fix to this is to replace the flex, which involves taking it off of the PCB AND disconnecting it from the glass of the display. Not for the unintiated. (and you'd have to find a source for the flex since it is unique to this design)

Has anyone had any success in convincing SAAB that they should do something about this? I went to the dealer today and they gave me a price of $314 for a new SID (me installing it) Given that so many people have this problem, you'd think that they would try to quietly try to take care of this.