Found a fix for "No Alde heat" when all fuses are good

Tabaz

Chan - thanks for your suggestion about that resettable fuse.  I ordered the exact one you specified above and will return the others to Amazon.

ChanW

@Tabaz , I didn't find a resettable fuse, all I found was a replacement just like the original.

Looks like I misunderstood your earlier question. I thought you wanted the part number for the exact replacement.

Sorry about that!

Tabaz

I did ask for the original part.  My tech friend recommended the resettable type after clicking on your link.

Tabaz

My tech buddy devised this emergency fix in case that F-2 fuse blows.  The fuse was soldered to the two alligator clips at the center and then a section of heat shrink was applied over the fuse and connections.

Bayliss

I like that idea, @Tabaz.  A simple solution.

sbutzen

ChrisK said:

Finally had a chance to look in to fixing this. A stent caused a stint in the hospital first. 
OK, so on to the repair. Like I said above, through testing, I determined the problem was probably the thermal fuse. Today, I found one of my jumper wires and bypassed the fuse and the Alde came right on (yes, I had reconnected it all first). Yup, bad fuse.



First step was to remove the board. Sorry, forgot to get pics of this. Pretty easy though. Remove the cover and 2 screws hold the plastic board cover on. Unplug all the connectors up top. Take pics of them so you know what goes back where. There are 3 more connectors at the lower right part of the board (you can kind of see them in the second pic below). ChanW mentioned you have to have small hands to reach them but like he said, once you free the board from the housing, pull the board up and then unplug these then. Mark these 3 lower connectors well. 2 of them look identical and can be plugged in to each others' socket. I marked one with a silver sharpie as well as its location on the board. **Note** in the first pic, immediately below, there are 5 wires but there are 7 places they can plug in to. Note where you unplugged them from.





There are 3 plastic clips (2 on the right and 1 on the left as you are looking at the board) and 1 screw on the left side holding the board in. The screw is hard to get to but an extension from a ratchet and the proper torx bit had it out in no time. Yup, the cover for the board and the board itself are held in by Torx screws, not the usual square screws. Slide the board out and unplug the lower 3 plugs. I know this isn't a common failure fuse but I didn't want to go through all this again so I went with a similarly rated replaceable thermal fuse (noted in one of the posts above) so it was time for a little reworking. I clipped out the old fuse bu kept its "pigtails". I removed them from the board and soldered these to some wires that will go to the replaceable fuse. 

This is the old fuse still in place.



Clipped



Wires soldered on to the pigtails. I did this to make soldering them to the board easier. Yes, I did put heatshrink on the connection. Even though it looks like I just soldered the wire to the side of the pigtail, they were folded over each other before soldering. More secure connection.



Soldered to the board



And routed, connectors installed and the new thermal fuse attached with Magic Tape. I did have to clearance the plastic housing a bit allow it to go back in place with the wires there. I thought about putting heatshrink over the connectors but there is almost 0 percent chance of something getting in there to short them out. 



And the final result!



This really wasn't that difficult to do. Had I just replaced the thermal fuse with the same thing (I bought some of those too in case the replaceable one didn't work), it would have been even shorter. I wouldn't have removed the board completely, just leaned it forward to access the solder joint on the back side. Like I said in my post above, I think these things just wear out over time and eventually fail. It is not indicative of a true fault but a component that got faulty over time. I have the camper on to test it overnight to make sure it stays on. 

Thanks for this ChrisK.  I'm going to solder in some lead wires too and use crimp connectors for the actual fuse.