Acura RSX DRL Control relay repair

The DRL light on the RSX had an occasional habit of staying on until I put a bit of amperage through the circuit by switching the main lights on, high beaming or cycling the lights. I had researched the issue and it is a common one, the solution being to remove a little circuit module from under the dash near the steering wheel and check the relay solder points and resoldering as needed. 

In typical fashion, even though I have all the time in the world, it has taken well over a year to actually do the job, various and numerous reasons getting in the way, winter for one, sickness and a healthy reluctance to get my body into the pretzel type position to access the relay. However, in the last week or so, the DRL light has been coming on more, occasionally flickering, being very annoying and I suspected that perhaps my driving lights were doing the same in the daytime, so it was time to pull my finger out and do the responsible thing.

Here is the module :

The problem area can be seen on the flip side of the circuit board :

I inspected the soldered connectors for the relays, and you can see the discoloration of the six main connectors and also the four additional joints. The numerous, very handy, youtube videos online show that reflowing these joints will fix the issue, so that is what I did :

Removing the module was an uncomfortable five minutes or so, but rather easy and accessible depending on your ability to strike the pose of a pretzel in the drivers side pedal bay. Then another five minutes to set up all the tools in the right place, suitable magnification for old eyes and then heat up the thing that burns fingers quite frequently. The reflow of the ten joints, with a little extra solder and flux, took another five minutes.

Installing the module back was equally, if not more so, uncomfortable, but after testing it went back into it's holder without too much of a struggle and the annoying under dash panels were replaced and the job was done in under half an hour. 

This is one of those little repairs that Honda would love to have the opportunity to fix, more than likely they would charge a couple of hours troubleshooting/labour and whatever the price of a new Honda part would cost. The investigations on eBay show that a NOS replacement Dorman 704306 can be had for around $75 shipped from the USA, so it would not be that bad if the module had completely failed and a DIY replacement obtained and installed.

However, my cost was zero and perhaps a week of mild sciatica. A small price to pay for one less irritating, false, warning light on the aging chariot.

DeWalt Batteries, Real and unreal

I had researched a little online, enough to be marginally dangerous, and had sourced what appears to be a bargain pairing of replacement batteries for my DeWalt drills. I'll say right up front, buying replacements that are not manufactured by the OEM is always going to be a risk and potentially a waste of money, short term or long term. However, to "do science" on a very small sample, for the heck of it, I spent a small amount of money and will review what I received, remember, what I receive may not be at all what others are presented with, as they say "your results may vary" and that is the truth when navigating the online marketplace/minefield of foreign stuff/crap.

Left to right, (a) new 12v DeWalt 2Ah, (b) used DeWalt 1.5Ah and then (c) the replacement battery, which is touted to be "upgraded" 4Ah - a figure I highly doubt and will attempt to calculate based on the cell type within. The DeWalts use (a) Korean cells and assembly in Mexico, (b) Japanese cells with additional processing in China and the replacement is assumed to be 100% China. I'm not reviewing or benchmarking all of the battery packs, there is far too much of that going on online, I am just going to report on the cheap one, and by golly it was cheap, from Amazon two of the batteries were $22.40 delivered to my door, that is a mere $11.20 each compared to $48.60 for the genuine 2Ah units. (Canadian Dollars)

The build quality is reasonable, apart from the soldering, the cells appear to be clean and new but could be recycled, overall for the price I am sort of impressed, and if the assembly will fail, it will be the soldering, or the questionable circuit board. The cells are PROS18650 3.6V with a code of 22G2015Y15 so I will see if I can find out exactly what that means. I am going to assume that finding out what those identifying numbers mean will be somewhat of a rabbit hole, so I'll end part one of the review at this stage, sort of a cliffhanger...

Well, not so much as it took less than five minutes to find the datasheet on similar cells and the reported "facts" being that they are Li-ion and the individual cells are probably 2150mAh which means, as they are in series, that the capacity of the complete battery pack, if new, is approximately 2.15Ah. but there is also some information out there that these particular batteries could be other capacities, which was completely expected for mysterious Chinese products.

The 18650 number is 18mm diameter, 65mm long and circular shape. The second code, 22G2015Y15 is the enigma, I will check....

An educated guess is that capacity is 2.2Ah which is first two digits, then manufactured date is 2015 and week 15. In this research the internet was not at all useful, although it appears that the PROS relates to Henan Prospower Technologies. I have put an enquiry into their website, we will see if anything of interest comes back.

Time passes...

I have no test equipment, besides multimeters and the like, so I did a "real world" test during the ongoing reinforcement of my old garden fence over the past week and have used one of these mysterious battery packs from a full charge, screwed a total of 186 wood screws, 1-1/2" long with at least enough juice to get to the 190 mark. I did not wish to drain the battery to zero, so finished while I was ahead.

I would say that represents a good return on a single charge. I subsequently charged the battery using the DeWalt fast charger and it took about 30 minutes, so that supports the idea that the mysterious battery pack is about two amp-hour, not the imagined four that the original listing reported.

Rampant Consumerism

I suppose this can be included in this blog because it floods my brain at the moment and perhaps I will explain how this suddenly happened : 

A panel on our fence blew down and we fixed it, during that process I realized that my cordless drill, a Black and Decker, purchased back in 2008, needed a second battery, because it was very clear that other parts of the fence needed reinforcing or improving, just to keep away the inevitable day when the whole thing would be replaced.

That sounds straight forward, buy a second battery and get on with it, yet things are never that simple in the cordless tool environment, because sixteen years had passed and of course, the smart people at Black and Decker have no desire for consumers to keep their old battery operated tools, they want them to buy new battery operated tools.

I sold the B&D for $40 on marketplace and after some research, bought a DeWalt kit with two batteries and charger, I must admit the little drill you see in the centre of the photo, the brushless DCD701, is quite an impressive little unit. The bag, two batteries, charger and drill came to $135 so with my B&D discount I was $95 out of pocket.

I hear you say, but OTG, there appear to be other things in the photo, other DeWalt things, and I will commend you on your observational skills, for a week or so after the initial purchase, I was intrigued by the comments online about impact drivers and found on marketplace a chap selling a set including an impact driver, so we can add another $80 to the expenditure, now I'm up to $175

I have plans though, I will attempt to recoup some of that back by selling the brushed drill with used battery and the additional charger on marketplace. I would say watch this space but that's probably the last anyone will hear of this story.

Absolute Garbage, PNY Flash drive

This is not a new acquisition, it has been in my backup box for a while, I suppose I bought it a few years back for a "bargain" price and because of that, thought nothing of varying from my normal brands of trusted flash drives. It has been trouble, it always needs repairing when inserted and therefore it is not a wise choice for a backup device, so I decided to fix it....

It didn't take long with my precision instruments....

Just a photo of the board before I fixed it even further...

The conclusion is a simple one, always make two backups and only buy Kingston, Sandisk or Samsung flash drives, prices are excellent anyways without resorting to the brands that are in the other leagues and as a final warning, be extremely wary of the no name brands that seem to proliferate the online merchants, if it seems too good to be true, it will be and the only thing that will result will be sad faces.