HI all,
Last weekend my reverse camera failed. I just had a white screen during the day but at night it was sort of still working, you could see a heat map type image so I knew it wasn't power related.

The problem as far as I could find in my research was that there are several options for replacement cameras for the pre-facelift cars (up to 2009) but for mine there don't seem to be any. I didn't call LR to enquire but I did see one new camera for £500 on an online retailer site. Ouch!

I decided to strip it down, thinking that it might be like the earlier ones with the corroded connectors but it's totally different. Anyway, reflowing the solder joints with a heat gun has done the trick (for now I guess). If you're interested and you have this issue, take a look at my ramblings on camera for inspiration on fixing yours.

All the best.

Richard

You see these issues a lot with electronic stuff now.
Unfortunately lead free solder doesn't hold up to thermo-cycling anything like as good as proper leaded solder.

It makes me wonder just how much stuff is needlessly landfilled simply because of cracked solder joints, where if proper lead solder was used, it would continue to function.
There's a reason that military and aerospace industry still use leaded solder, it's just more reliable long term.

Nodge68 said:

You see these issues a lot with electronic stuff now.
Unfortunately lead free solder doesn't hold up to thermo-cycling anything like as good as proper leaded solder.

It makes me wonder just how much stuff is needlessly landfilled simply because of cracked solder joints, where if proper lead solder was used, it would continue to function.
There's a reason that military and aerospace industry still use leaded solder, it's just more reliable long term.

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Cracked joints were not uncommon in the computer industry even when lead solder predominated. I put it down to the soldering method.

Datatek said:

Cracked joints were not uncommon in the computer industry even when lead solder predominated. I put it down to the soldering method.

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Cut my teeth in IT re-soldering keys on keyboards and CRT monitor repairs as well as programming EPROMs for Hasler Telex Units. It was handy having an EPROM reader/writer if your mate had a super chip in his Cosworth or Vauxhall GTE and you could copy it. Good ol' days.

A lot of cracked joints were caused by frustrated users too.

Blob said:

Cut my teeth in IT re-soldering keys on keyboards and CRT monitor repairs as well as programming EPROMs for Hasler Telex Units. It was handy having an EPROM reader/writer if your mate had a super chip in his Cosworth or Vauxhall GTE and you could copy it. Good ol' days.

A lot of cracked joints were caused by frustrated users too.

Click to expand...

Still got my EPROM programmer, sadly I no longer have a PC that will drive it

There's no incentive to make things last. Much easier to chuck something away

myfirstl322 said:

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For context, there was a spam post before mine for a £170 reversing camera, evidently it got binned by 'the management'.

Same applies to the other 3 similar threads where I've posted a tin of Spam.