Mini Maxx Race Tuner - No Power Black screen Repair using Flir Thermal Imager

Here we have a minimax tuner, it came in for no power now i opened up the device and i can see signs of liquid damage right here. So it looks like the tuner suffered liquid damage. Customer did not mention that, but that’s what i see. Let’S take a quick look here: this is the sd card. Reader hdmi port looks good okay, so nothing really obvious on this side of the board, except for residue that was on top of this component.

 

Let’S flip the board screen connects here, but the reason i kept the tape is because i saw a black spot on it, so i wanted to show it to you. You see the black spot here. Look at this, so it looks like this component is fried and that’s why the color transferred over to the captain tape. So, let’s remove it. I do not need it anymore.

The connector itself, the lcd connector, looks good. The component is definitely blown. I mean there could be other blown components on the board, even if the component looks good, but right now we are going over. What looks bad physical inspection is important. This component is the only thing i see wrong with the board right now.

 

The good thing is, we do have a donor board and we’re gon na extract the component from a donor board and replace this one here. Hopefully, that will fix the problem and right now we’re going to be using our magnetic board holder, because if you notice the board has an hdmi port on the bottom here. So there’s no board holder that will fit this board, except probably the magnetic holder, because the magnets are a little bit high, so we can fit the board. It’S solid, okay. So it’s tilted it’s not making a connection from here from this side, but that’s okay, because the board is solid and that’s what i want.

I could not have used any other board holder to hold this board and that’s where this magnetic board holder shines. Let’S go to that burnt component, remove it and then we’re going to extract one from a donor board, and i do have a donor board right next to me here, anytime, i’m working on an xrt minimax that has no power. I always grab a donor board just in case. I need parts, let’s remove this component, but i’m gon na use a narrow nozzle. I do not want the big one just want to focus heath on the one component and maybe we’ll do 370 

 

I do not need a lot of heat here.

You see how i’m focusing heat only on this component and that’s because of this very narrow nozzle, i’m at a low temperature of 370.. Usually 370 is a joke. If you are trying to desolder a component off a macbook motherboard, let’s say but on here, 370 is okay and now we’re gon na grab our donor board, and i do not have this in a board holder, so the board may wobble, but that’s okay. I do not want to lose that component see what happens when the board is not being held by a board holder.

 

It wobbles all over the place. I mean 370 is not working on this board. I was able to remove the other component with 370, but this one we may have to bump up the heat. For some reason: it’s not coming off. Let me bump up the [ Music ] heat okay and i’m gon na go back to my original 370 celsius.

 

Oh wait: there we go. I was super careful with this component. Where did it go? Oh boy, all right. There we go.

Maybe it’s still stuck somewhere on the board right there wow, that’s the only one that i have okay and, like i always say those components. They can snap and fly away if you’re, not careful, especially when you are dealing with a smaller component like the 201 smd component or 1005 or 402 or whatever the case may be, and when they’re gone they’re gone. They fly away to the ninth dimension and you’re. Never ever gon na find them anything else wrong with this board, one way to find out we’re gon na test and see if the device will turn on i mean based on physical inspection. I do not see anything obvious flip the board and that’s where i don’t know what this is honestly.

 

I do not know what this is, but it’s not normal. It’S not a thermal paste. It’S nothing like that, because this device does not have any thermal paste on it. If it was a laptop next to the cpu, you could say that this may be thermal paste, but not on this device. This is something i do not know what it is.

One thing that looks a little bit off is this component: here it looks kind of burnt, but i don’t know i may be wrong, we’ll keep that in mind and i think i’m gon na assemble the board and test. So all we need to do is connect the screen plug the power, cable and test. The screen will go on like this. Let me do it under the magnifier okay, so the screen is connected. Let’S go ahead and test.

 

Let me plug this to the computer and nothing uh dead still, so there must be something else, that’s wrong with this device. That component is one of the things that’s wrong, but we have something else, that’s wrong unless the screen itself is not good, i do not see any corrosion anywhere on the screen, so i’m going to assume that the screen is good. Let’S take another look at the board, specifically at the usb port area. I mean what can possibly go wrong, maybe it’s time for our thermal camera, because right now i do not know where to start. But let’s see if our thermal camera can be of any help, we see heat at the hdmi port area of the board right here.

What about back of the board? Oh look at this look at this. We see a big heat spot right here. Oh, this is the component that we just changed. It’S heating up a lot.

 

We need to take a look at the hdmi area of the board and at the component that we just changed. Why is this component heating up? I mean why is this component heating up? It could be that one of the components next to the hmi port area is what’s causing this component to go hot. It could be that this is what’s causing the other component to heat up, and i suspected that this component is bad because of the discoloration that you see here.

So it’s possible that this component is bad or it can be any one of those components. But i do see this coloration here. Let me take a look under the thermal cam one more time we’re going to try to pinpoint what’s getting hot on the board. Okay, so we’re gon na turn the power bank on and right there that’s what’s getting hot. So the first thing that got hot is here: that’s the component that got hot first on the board: we’re going to focus it on this component.

 

Only okay, so we were able to get it done with 370 degrees. Have one viewer that was asking how come sometimes when you solder something the joint is not shiny. It’S dull: it depends if you clean unless the solder and you apply leaded, then the joint is going to be very shiny. If you mix leaded with unleaded it may be semi-shiny, and if you keep unleaded then you may not get that shine so right now we did not completely remove unloaded. We just applied, let it over so you’re not going to get that full shine, but it doesn’t really matter.

I like it when the joint is shiny, but right now we do not need to clean unleaded we’re only soldering a three-legged component unless it takes a lot more heat to this holder than loaded just grab this component firm, not too hard and not too soft. We do not want it to snap. I lost enough components to the ninth dimension, so enough is enough. Perfect. Okay, let’s see what do you think awesome awesome it’s on look at this amazing.

 

The tuner is fixed and this tuner is anywhere between 600 to 1 000. It’S expensive, it’s a cartooner job is done. The job is done amazing. My sister was surprised that i fixed it because she said this one is going to be tough, but it’s fixed. That’S it.

 

I hope you enjoyed the video don’t forget to like and subscribe leave a comment. If you have any questions and we’ll do something else in the next video it win, this is a win. You