Aarcuda, what is your procedure for cleaning connectors?

Do's and Don'ts?

 

My 03 has been a garage queen its whole life. And my battery is testing 12.1V and 60%-ish after 24hrs (I have a digital battery tester)

The corrosion thing has NOT been apparent on any I've taken apart and the car is working just fine. Maybe this is why I've not had any concerns?
(although I'm a bit nervous and will be replacing the battery soon)

 

Depends on the extent of the corrosion, I clean the pins using a combination of baking soda and water slurry and a brush. I have tried a brass brush, stainless steel brush and plastic brush and found the metal brushes (thin gauge wires so it isnt too aggressive) can be too aggressive and its easy to remove the thin tin plating. if that happens you might as well toss the pin/socket because it will re-corrode quickly.

Then I flush with water and contact cleaner and blow it dry.

This cleaning only works if the corrosion hasnt eaten off the tin plating. If it shows copper, its pretty much finished- at least for sockets. For pins, you can recaot them with tin/solder to protect them. the pins cant be replated as the solder just fills up the cavity and spring contacts inside the barrel.

I also use barkee0pers friend which is oxalic acid and great for cleaning off oxides and isnt too aggressive.

After doing the cleaning and seeing corrosion come back, I am starting to lean towards replacing the entire connector. I wish I had a source for the OEM connectors and pins as that makes compatibility issues disappear. We shall see if these chinese connectors work over the long run

heres what I used for the 12 pin connector. I always buy two so if I fark up a crimp i dont run short on pins. This kit had little red rubber seals meant for bigger gauge wire so I just reused the original seals.

I just remembered that in the connector I replaced, there were two open holes on one side of the connector and there was nothing in the holes (like a closed seal without a hole in it). This allows water into the connector so I took two of the red seals, and inserted a small wooded dowel pice I cut off a wooden stick from a cotten swab and inserted that to block the water. i need to figure out why those two holes were open only one side (the other side of the connector had a big brown wire with a white stripe (pin 12 maybe on the main harness side) and a solid black wirte (pin 9 maybe on the harness side) but the mating connector had no wires in those two spots.

 

Thank you Sir

 

just make sure:

1) you use ELECTRICAL CONTACT CLEANER and not brake clean, or carb cleaner or you can melt the plastics. Isopropyl alcohol works well
2) you thoroughly flush out the connector after cleaning as baking soda or oxalic acid continue to eat away at the metal. (i noticed there was still a lot of baking soda in the the barrels after I removed the pins)
3) If you see copper on the pins, you can re-tin them with solder. good luck on the sockets!
4) use dielectric grease on the pins to prevent future oxidation
5) ALMOST FORGOT!!! VERY IMPORTANT! Many of the signals on these cars are "switched grounds" which means that many of the sensors have power going to them straight from the fuse box or battery. So some of the signals are HOT even when the car is OFF. Using a metal brush can short one of those HOT signals to SOMETHING ELSE and destroy it so only use a metal brush is you are sure theres no power in the connector or just use plastic bristles brushes

 

Aarcuda, I've heard to use and also not to use dielectric grease.
I get that the metal pins will touch and displace the grease. And that it can help prevent corrosion... but over time will it increase resistance or maybe cause non-contact?

Thanks for your input!

 

well this is how I see it (after reading both pro's and con's), my connectors were not coated and 13 years later, I have a bunch of corroded contacts. So now I have coated some with dielectric grease and will monitor for trend, If I start seeing contact resistance increase and problems arising, I will have learned a valuable lesson. Right now I know what uncoated contacts do- they corrode over time. So eventually I will find out if this dielectric grease is the long term solution.

 

Thanks Aarcuda

 

One more check in the battery column. Looks like this one just needed a good charge, but is going to be replaced as a precaution:

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/s...-fault-225200/

 

Another battery, post #14:

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/s...6/#post2157544

 

I'm going to call this one batteryish due to low prestart voltage, but with the exact cause still undetermined:

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/s...-fault-226381/

Most likely it's the battery, but for the moment he's getting around that by use of a battery maintainer.

Lots of interesting background info and troubleshooting ideas in that thread, making it well worth reading. Specifically, try reducing prestart electrical loads, such as shutting off the auto headlights, and see if that helps. Or when you get the message right after start, stay in Park, reduce electrical loads as much as possible, and rev the engine around 2000 RPM for a couple of minutes. The idea is to give the charging system a chance to replenish the battery, even if only a little bit. Then turn off the engine and immediately restart. If either trick helped, you're probably looking at low prestart voltage, which will help determine how to continue troubleshooting.

This thread also mentions a service bulletin, with reprogramming available to make the trigger level less sensitive for this fault.

Also note how cold weather seems to make this fault more prevalent. This has been mentioned in several threads. My hunch is this creates a triple whammy:

1) Cold affects the battery, reducing available voltage before start.

2) The starter has to work harder and longer getting a cold engine going, further reducing voltage.

3) The lubricant in the actuator gearbox and cables congeals in the cold, making the motor work harder. When the motor works harder, this further reduces voltage.

 

Here are two caused by tired actuators:

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/s...simple-217398/


In this thread, note the rust stains inside the actuator gearbox. That would indicate moisture intrusion, leading to corrosion and binding:

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/s...r-apart-53753/

 

For anybody rooting for the battery:

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/s...cement-227381/

 

Another battery, see post #15 here:

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/s...0/#post2274045


Please note the battery had passed some basic home-level voltage checks, but was still bad. A professional test machine (capacitance-based?) faulted the battery, and this was also confirmed by the faults clearing with a new battery. This would indicate the magic 12.6V prestart minimum is not a conclusive test. If below that, yes, that is a problem. But if above 12.6V, that is still not a guarantee of the battery being good.

 

I wonder if the 12.6 was measured under load. It's hard to see how it could have been...

We do also point out that the voltage must not sag much under cranking.

 

This morning I pulled Joyce's Jag out of the garage, fired up without any issue. It sat out in the drive for 2 hours. I got in to back it into garage, it would not turn over, all lights, radio, ventilation blows. No idiot lights as far as DSC, Parking brake, Cruise Control.

Tested battery 12.46 volts. Upon inspection of terminals the negative cable had just a small touch of corrosion on 1 side of terminal. The terminal was loose as well. I haven't touched the battery since replacing it 2 years ago. I cleaned terminal and post, reattached and tossed 10 amp battery charger on it for a couple of hours. Fired right and haven't looked back. As it ran, I checked voltage and it was charging at 15.61. Had to reset EPB.

 

I just can't help myself...

Post #7 here, for another battery:

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/s...1/#post2280894

 

Interesting thread here:

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/s...-wheel-241634/

This one started out with the three common faults (DSC, Cruise, EPB) but also morphed into a transmission fault. The fix was a wheel speed sensor, not the battery.

 

This one was the control module:

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/s...-stuck-236045/

Slightly different symptoms, as this was a 2.5 V6 with a manual transmission. In addition to the parking brake message, the defective module was also generating a misleading fault code for the (perfectly good) clutch switch.

 

I'm going to rate this one as batteryish. This was a long thread mainly about AC problems, but in post #74, EPB and ABS faults were cleared by giving some love to the battery cables:

"BTW all the problems with the Parking brake and ABS warnings were sorted by soldering the cables into the battery connectors and the body end of the - terminal. Importance of good battery and contacts cannot be under estimated !!"


https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/s...4/#post2400565