Okay, so long story short. The wheelchair ramp/power door/suspension kneel system in my dad's Dodge Caravan basically stopped working a few weeks ago. This is a "new" one he'll be moving to (a 2000 instead of the 199 worn-out one he's driving now) and he hasn't been able to properly move into this one because of it. After a while of trying to find the problem myself, we took it to the shop that services these things, and they found this:
Yeah, that'll do it... One of the female spade sockets that the fuse plugs into is broken off, and the other one is starting to. This is on the control module that controls the system, and I hadn't been able to find it. Turns out you have to remove one of the rear speakers and get to the module through that hole, which I hadn't even thought of.
So, since the shop found the problem for us, and it's very simple, it's time for me to fix it. We went to a liquidation/surplus warehouse in downtown Dayton last week and got some parts to make a new fuse holder, after trying and failing to find any way to get the exact same direct-to-board female spade connector as the broken one. That's not a very strong way of doing it, anyway...
Version 1 of the fix. After getting the broken parts desoldered and removed, I cut the wire and made the pieces, which is a female spade on one end for the fuse, and a fork connector on the other end, filed down with a Dremel to fit the holes on the board. It works just fine, but the forks won't take solder, presumably because of the kind of metal they are, even though I filed off the aluminum coating so the contact would be direct to the copper.
Since not being able to solder it in place is obviously a problem (even though it works without the solder, there's no way in hell it'll stay in place when installed inside the wall of a moving vehicle...) we went back to the surplus place a couple days ago and got new pieces/wire for my idea of Version 2 of the fix.
Version 2 of the fix, completed except for soldering just about 20 minutes ago. Works fine in pre-soldering testing of all functions. Smaller-gauge wire (18 AWG instead of 14) that fits directly into the holes on the board, since I assumed copper wire would solder easier than those forks. The spades on the fuse are meant for 10-12 gauge wire, because I had to twist two wires together as best I could and crimp them both into a connector meant for a single wire, since I didn't have a fork on the other end.
Now obviously it'll need to be soldered on the other side of the board, but are there any special techniques or tricks I need to use? I've never soldered anything like this before (only my
camera surgery in 2007), and I don't want to
break it more fuck it up.
