Another Router Problem

[p8ntblr]

You guys are friggin geniuses. Finally made my way down to the Shack and bought some contact spray. Ran it on 6 and it's smoooooth. It's kinda late and the router is a bit noisy so I didn't get to try it out for too long. Will give it a much longer test run tomorrow and maybe even cut some wood. Again, Loring, Uncle Cracker thanks!!!

Loring you said you use this stuff on other household devices. Like what? The bottle says it "...especially drum-type TV tuners". What exactly is a drum-type TV?

[mpc]

Loring you said you use this stuff on other household devices. Like what? The bottle says it "...especially drum-type TV tuners". What exactly is a drum-type TV?

Remember old TV with mechanical tuners - the knobs you grabbed and turned... listening to the "clunk-clunk-clunk" as each channel was selected? That's a drum tuner. Basically a giant rotary switch. And prone to failure: the contacts would get dirty/oxidized (usually they were copper "fingers"), they'd loose their springiness and would fail to make reliable connections, etc.

As for the router speed control... ever have a TV, radio, stereo, etc. with a rotary volume control (or tone control, balance, fader, etc) control that made "scratchy" sounds in the speakers when you turned it? That's what Loring was describing. It's a common failure mode for "potentiometers" (variable resistors used as volume controls, speed controls, etc.). Also a common failure in "throttle positions sensors" on modern fuel injected cars... causes a "hiccup" if you happen to put the throttle pedal where the dirty/worn spot is. The sudden resistance change (the source of the "scratchy" sounds) confuses the engine computer leading to excess fuel (computer thinks you just mashed the gas asking to accelerate) or more commonly a fuel cut. Very annoying... yet the potentiometer's output could still be within "normal" limits so it won't trigger the diagnostic code/light.

mpc

[LCHIEN]

Remember old TV with mechanical tuners - the knobs you grabbed and turned... listening to the "clunk-clunk-clunk" as each channel was selected? That's a drum tuner. Basically a giant rotary switch. And prone to failure: the contacts would get dirty/oxidized (usually they were copper "fingers"), they'd loose their springiness and would fail to make reliable connections, etc.
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mpc

MPC's right. They used to call that stuff tuner cleaner, for cleaning the complicated TV mechanical channel selectors, in the old days they only had 12 channels and each went ca-chunk as you turned the dial.

Also works good on speed controls for other equipment, on volume and tone controls for stereos and on input selector switches for stereos. Of course, stereos that use these switches are pretty much made before 2000... or earlier. They use solid state switching now instead of mechanical switching. But, its a great save for those classic stereos or maybe built-in equipment you can't replace from the 70s, 80s and 90s.