Re: 5k A/C programmer debugging

[spsherm@ibm.net]

>From my experience (all too much in my opinion ;-) with the AC
programmer...

Yes the solenoids are suppose to close, eg hold vacuum without power,
BUT they rely on gravity pulling the center thingie down to do this...
In other words, you need to orient the thing more or less like it is
held in the car in order to get the valves to hold vacuum when off.  
This threw me off at first, I had the thing horizontal while testing it,
and it did not work well at all,  Turning it 90 degrees to more or less
the 'bolted in car position' made it work well.

It should not be too hard to unsolder any valve (solder wick if you
don't have a de-solder station).  But I've had good luck just removing
the existing hoses, and putting a longer test hose on, and testing via
my mouth.  With the valves on the board, remember the orietation.  Be
careful remoing the hoses, it's easy to break the nipples off the
valves.

(You're sucking here, so you should not need to worry about moisture
entering the system. If you see oil in the lines, you may want to defer
to a vacuum pump and save your mouth and lungs).  

With the right sized hose, you can also use the mouth (or pump) method
to check out the vacuum motors that move the air flaps.  The which
should be visible.

In the 2 controllers I've had problems with, it has been leaky hose
connections within the controller, which were solved by replacing hoses
and using rubber cement.

Good Luck