water in ECU

[Peter Berrevoets]

Had a dishwasher leak onto a running computer once.

Discovered the mess and pulled the plug on the PC.

Opened it up to discover dishwasher mess all over the internals, so I made
an insurance claim on the PC. Bought the salvage back from the insurance
company for about $50 CDN and proceeded to strip it, wash it in the kitchen
sink using dishwashing detergent, rinsed all the individual components with
distilled water, blew the bits dry with a vacuum cleaner, put it all back
together and voila! It worked as good as new!

Just took the PC out of service (Pentium 90 - IBM Aptiva) after four years
of trouble free use at the in-laws.

Just don't use any solvent cleaners, or metal pot scrubbers ;-) (I did use a
nylon bristled brush to scrub)

HTH

Peter

1990 200Q
1989 200Q - Parts
1987 Coupe GT

-----Original Message-----
From: quattro-admin at audifans.com [mailto:quattro-admin at audifans.com]On
Behalf Of Nicholas Lawrence
Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2002 8:16 PM
To: Audi (E-mail)
Subject: water in ECU


    Car is a '90 200 TQA.  Tuesday it wouldn't start during a rain shower.
Didn't connect at the time because it has had difficulty starting before.
Later in the day it started right away and I began driving. I noticed the
digital guage did not match the mechanical boost guage and it began to read
higher and higher.
    It stopped running and while I was waiting on rescue I removed trim
cover to see ECU.  It had a plastic bag around the wires and a large amount
of water sitting on the connector. I dried it off and drove home, digital
guage still climbing.
    I removed the ECU and opened it up to find water and small amount of
corrosion  one chip's pins. I'm cleaning it up with contact cleaner and a
brush. Haven't reinstalled yet.
    So... any experience with this problem?  First I'll attempt to track
down source of water leak.
    What is the likely hood of permanent damage to the ECU?
TIA
Nick