e-brake mod gone wrong, damaged shifter

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Hi all,

I, like many others, decided to do the chilicoke e-brake mod for my cockpit but unfortunately it's ended up in a damaged shifter. I'm wondering if there are any members who know enough about electronics and circuits to give some advice on possibly fixing the damage (i have ZERO expertise). Here's my sad story...

So it was actually a friend whom i got to do the soldering, since i knew i'd end up guaranteeing a wrecked shifter if i did it myself. He soldered it and gave me back a shifter with the extra wiring all fine, i have it hooked up to the handbrake switch, etc. ready to be mounted to the rig. So here's the problem:

- When the switch is in the on position its fine, circle button registers, however,
- When the switch is in the off position it acts weird, circle button sporadically registers, flickering on and off intermittently.

In the game it has a slightly different effect again, it forces the handbrake on permanently regardless off the switch being in the on or off position.

So it seems his solder job was bad, and i decided to desolder the darn thing since the turnaround on the job was WAY too long and i wanted to start playing again. After i desoldered it circle button works like before, but when the cross or triangle buttons are pressed they now also trigger the circle button for a split second.

Long story short, it's playable but now has annoying 'quirks' which i'm forced to live with. Plus i'm still minus the handbrake.

If anyone can tell me if theres anything that can be done to improve the shifter i'd be grateful, if its unfixable i can deal with that too. Any advice is appreciated.
 
Sounds like you have a solder bridge between the three buttons. Carefully clean the area where the soldering was done (Alcohol works well and wont damage the board or components) Then use a magnifying glass to examine the spaces between the contacts for the switches. If you see any solder in between, or that looks like it is touching both contacts GENTLY scrape this excess solder away so there is separation between the two contacts. Also check the side of the circuit board where the little black contacts from the flexible membrane that the outside buttons push on. Make sure there is no flux or solder on the contact area where the black things land.
 
Another thing to check is the switch that the e brake uses. You could test this by removing the switch and twisting the 2 wires together, which is like pushing the circle button. If it functions normally without the switch, than its likely that ithe switch is bad. If nothing changes then your issue is most likely the soldering.
 
Check the switch to remove that from the equation first like grog said, its the easiest to check, and requires not tearing down your shifter. But more than likely its a solder bridge, you can use a temperature adjustable soldering iron, be very careful around the resistors used for the circle button that the mod uses, these resistors are tiny, and very sensitive to heat, chilicoke mentions this in his tutorial. You can use the iron to heat any bridges that you see, and gently scrape them away. BUT the best way to remove solder is to get some Desoldering Wick, it looks like woven copper ribbon, you can find it at electronic supply stores, possibly The Source, this stuff will literally suck up solder. All you do is hold it against the solder you want removed, and apply the iron to the top of it.

If you need help identifying a bridge post a close pictures of the front and back side of the board around the X, Square, Circle, and Triangle buttons.
 
Thanks for the responses guys, i will be taking everyones advice when i try to fix it but at the moment the shifter works without issue in gt5 somehow, so i'm using for that. I will reopen it to try and fix the solder issue in the near future to coincide with other work i'm doing on the rig. So i will repost when i get around to it with my results/questions.

*update*
work on the rig is done, everything is up and running well but the circle button is still faulty.

I tested the switch and it was indeed bad, the bare wires themselves trip circle cleanly but the switch itself does not
However, this is in addition to the abovementioned faulty behaviour.

I didn't think to take photos of the switches when i cleaned it (oversight) but there didn't seem to be anything there. So post cleaning it's still playing up, but is still usable for gt5 and dirt 3 which i'm happy with for the time being, and on pc i can just un-assign the problem buttons.

Next step is making an external handbrake mod, for which i'm stealing inspiration from designs of other members on this forum
 
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