Has my MJLJ gone bad?

General Megajolt Questions and Answers

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electro_gyrocator
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu Nov 26, 2009 6:01 am
Location: Olympia, WA

Has my MJLJ gone bad?

Post by electro_gyrocator »

Well, after a few years of great service, I'm wondering if my MJLJ hasn't kicked the bucket... I noticed for some time that my car seemed a little low on power. So I went to check the system, and the LED light is on just fine, but when I went to use the software, it kept crashing. It would crash at startup if the unit was plugged in, or it would crash as soon as I plugged in the MegaJolt.

Admittedly, they were running in Virtual Machines on my laptop. But it had always worked fine before. I tried 3 different VMs with the same crashing result. So I thought I'd try a machine running Windows natively, so I brought it in the house. I hooked it to a 9v DC wall wart (tested at 10v, which seems . Hooked it up to the Windows machine directly, and got the exact same crashing. And the serial port doesn't respond when I terminal directly into it. I occasionally get some strange characters, and that's it.

Then I noticed the thing was HOT. The case was really warm, the 3 main ICs are hot, along with the big silver capacitor on the board. LED was lit up just fine. So, do you think I need to buy a new one? :(
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electro_gyrocator
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu Nov 26, 2009 6:01 am
Location: Olympia, WA

Post by electro_gyrocator »

Hmm. So I was looking through the kit assembly guide (even though I bought it pre-assembled. Looks like the LM2937 is supposed to have 5v on it's output pin. My multimeter is only showing 3v. Would that cause the 3 main ICs to heat up like that? Seems like they might just not function. I am hoping that maybe I can replace the regulator and it might be good to go again.
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brentp
Site Admin
Posts: 6275
Joined: Wed Jan 24, 2007 6:36 am

Post by brentp »

Hi,

Ouch! Nothing should be "hot" inside the Megajolt case. drop us an email at [email protected] and we'll see what we can do for you.
Brent Picasso
CEO and Founder, Autosport Labs
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