Footwell Relay Box is the new Door Connector! Just thought I´d post this in case the info might help anyone else tracking an electrical gremlin...... Last year I installed quite a bit of stereo and anti-theft stuff in my 348. When doing the work, I noticed that a previous owner had bridged two connectors on the back of the footwell relay box. On testing the box after removal, I found out the reason. There was an open-circuit within the relay box and a certain pin wasn´t getting power as it should, so he´d jumped two connectors with a piece of wire. No major issue, really, but I found it a somewhat seldom defect. A couple of weeks ago, my drivers window lift stopped working every so often. I thought the problem would be the old door jamb connector but, after about 4 hours of chasing an intermittent voltage from the window lift right across to the footwell relay, I fiound it was a bad contact on one of the relay connector sockets. I took the box out and, opened it up (took a bit of force). WOW!!! Inside, there is a 4-layer circuit board foil and literally dozens of soldered joints were also just on the brink of going "dry". I resoldered ALL of the pins from the inside and everything works fine now. I also found that open-circuit which the previous owner had bridged. Again, another dry-soldered joint! When measuring the resistance of some of the paths, I was getting all sorts of readings. It seems to me that this may be a potential source of several of those strange intermitent problems and low voltages that we all know and love (=hate) on the 348.
Can you explain the "dry" connection? I'm not going to pin any hope on it, but it could possibly have something to do with a fairly serious intermittent problem I am having with my 348. Would a local electronics repair place be able to resolder all the connections? I did this to a circuit board on my last Trans Am (just doing the repair, but not really knowing what to look for, based on a net suggestion), and it worked for about a year and a half, proving that I didn't do it quite right. If I were to attempt it, what type of solder did you use, and what kind of soldering iron, temp, etc?
Tom, the relay box doesn´t have any electronic components in it. The circuit boards simply connect the connector pins, relay pins and fuse pins to one another. It´s all very macroscopic, so you can´t do much harm. I just used a very primitive soldering iron (quite small) and solder from the DIY store - nothing fancy. The most difficult part was getting the box open. One one of the short sides there were two screws (mine had just one, but I think a previous attempt to open the box had lost a second one). Then there are two plastic rivets in recesses next to the screws and I just drilled off their heads. It took a bit of leverage to get it open and it makes a mess of the plastic. Then, the whole box unfolds like an Origami lesson! A lot of the soldered areas were really rotten. Solder was matt, and there was a lot of oxidation.
Good job this could answer a lot of peoples problems including mine, I have checked and rechecked all connections in the door jams and relays but to know avail I have not checked by the foot well.
