The CRUSTIEST bit of electronics EVER! 

A flooded engine computer that remained connected to 12 volts

I think this is the smoke tying to escape. I think you should hook it up to a power supply and ramp up the voltage until it learns its lesson to not do it again

That's why marine electronics is conformally coated! LOL (speaking of which, I'll be doing a teardown video of a boat power distribution panel in a few weeks, if anyone's interested - there's some nice stuff in it)

Had a couple of transistor radios that I once found on a beach pretty much like that. I think they were washed up from a boat. Must have sat on the beach for at least a year. Lots of rust, leaky batteries (still in them) etc. I literaly hosed them off replaced a few compenents including the speakers, and re did the battery compartments. Good as new. Sold them on e-bay many years later when I can across better examples. I've also had some pretty bad radios from farms and sheds with rodent droppings and who knows what else.

I have seen the effects of salt water on a board for a skid steer loader that spent time aboard a ship on the St-Laurence river here in Canada. It was old enough to be a through hole board. Many traces were replaced with 30AWG wire wrap wire. Many vias needed to be repaired by feeding through a wire and soldering on both sides. All the new wires were coated with liquid electrical tape to seal and fasten them down. The loader has worked for decades now on land.

Not a valid comparison, but I've seen amazing corrosion on a unit of test equipment that occurred within 24 hours of leaving the facility. When I worked for a company that made radio test equipment we won a bid for a slightly customized variant to be provided to the US Army. As soon as we had samples ready they were taken across town to be tested for meeting the stated specifications when subjected to vibration and temperatures and humidity required by the contract. Of 12 units one was functioning after 2 hours of temperature cycling but failed before 3 hours of the 24 hours required. All the others had failed more quickly from temperature, humidity or vibration testing. Had any survived 3 hours they would have been put into the next test and then the third. Then the combination tests. The units came back partially disassembled because they documented what failed. Every possible place there were dissimilar metals in hardware used structurally or electrically. Lots of rapid corrosion. Paper speaker cones all failed. Modules, wires and rigid coax came loose. It was total carnage. We reworked everything and cleaned up the design flaws and assembly procedures and made lots of units for them over the life of the contract and another contract followed in a couple of years for a much more customized test set.

I absolutely like the sheer enthusiasm of this video. I rarely see such exhilaration for such decrepit PCBs.

Battery leakage is a pain. Got a substantial amount of Varta High Energy leaks recently. One of them destroyed a Hue motion sensor where components and PCB coating corroded away just like in your video. On my DMM I fortunately blew a fuse recently just to find the Vartas have started to leak too. Luckily only messed up the battery compartment yet. Moved to some eneloops in some devices, never seen any leakage.

A family member brought me a remote control to a piece of AV equipment that looked similar to that thanks to battery damage. Turned the traces into Swiss cheese.

Duraleak FTW. Yes i've seen pictures of such carnages on automobile alarm sirens with an integrated NiMh battery (common fault on Volvo XC90s). As this headlamp, it's a completely sealed enclosure. Maybe when there is no air to get inside, the chemistry of batteries produces gases that also helps in eating away everything?

Working as a tech I once had a telematics unit that was returned as "not reporting", opened it up and found that it was basically wearing a fur coat of mold, except for the parts where the board had been totally eaten away by water ingress. As the units were in the vehicle cabs and should have been perfectly dry it did make me wonder if the company had taken to employing dolphins as drivers. I also had a tough PDA come back as "suddenly not working". A routine inspection of the outside showed no damage. However, upon opening it up I was confronted by an LCD screen shaped like a banana. Obviously the driver had deliberately run it over. Amazingly, after replacing the screen the device worked perfectly, and continued to do so until it was retired.

It just looked like battery leakage to me, as soon as you opened the back, but yeah i agree it's spread so widely and you don't normally see it wick everywhere like that.

No battery leakage required. Just some conductive moisture and DC current. You get a nice reaction where the negative connection will release hydrogen gas while the positive connection will release oxygen. But copper is fairly reactive and the positive side will NOT release oxygen gas, instead the oxygen will immediately react with the copper producing that nice green copper oxide. But I've seen crustier. Way back when I was a child, I attended an Altar8800 demonstration with my father. And I happened to win the door prize which was a calculator kit. Now, we're talking old school. The calculator used 6 AA batteries (they were in the rear half of the case, held together with 4 screws). In any case, one day my sister "borrowed" it and visited our grandmother. While there, grandma gave my sister some wet cucumbers, which she prompted put into her purse along with my calculator. Batteries and impure water being what they are, caused the batteries to discharge, causing all that lovely electrolytic corrosion. And 6 AA batteries have quite a few joules stored to cause quite a lot of corrosion.

Wow! I don't think I've seen any electronics quite that crusty before. It's possible the light could have been sitting at an angle and all the electrolyte to just run over the side of the battery holder. The electrolyte also seems to wick along everything too.

I have seen electronics like this before! I have taken apart stuff that was left outdoors for many years and some of it looked just like this!

That is a Krusty Burger indeed

1:02 Ah, the look of pure, innocent joy on a kid's face when they find a new toy to play with!

that A3000 with the motherboard battery leak that you tried to fix many years ago was pretty ruined too, i still have that as my desktop wallpaper :)

But a wee scratch, will buff out.

Ah, she’ll be right mate - chuck it in the ultrasonic cleaner!

The traces look in remarkably good condition, but it looks like it's attacked every thing else.

I've seen only one crustier: a pair of active "hunting" headphones to pass sound but block loud noises. I bought it for something like $3, hoping to fix it or at least use the housing for my own active audio testing. The entire thing ended up being a loss, with the circuit board on one ear cover covered in corrosion. The board was pitted like a macbook with water damage, corrosion in the wires that went to the external microphone (busted) and the speakers (rusted).

That'd definitely be a 'no parts required' repair job👍 Should clean up the outside all nice and schmick, then go leave it in the dumpster room and set up a hidden camera for a laugh🤣🤣🇦🇺

Dave is 1 sweaty boi

Oh that's a spectacular specimen!

2:02 TFW when you can't remember which parts went where because you LITERALLY SCRAPED OFF THE SILKSCREEN DESIGNATORS

Yes, I have an Arcade PCB that looks like it was stored in water. One day when I'm bored, I'll probably try to repair it :)

Is it worth spinning a new board the same shape and size and with the same mounting holes, designing a new circuit and saving the LED assembly and backing plate?

Looks like it got durahelled, then left nice and damp for a year.

Looks like someone used it hiking in the rain and prooved it isn't water proof lol

I’ve seen that with Alkaline batteries on a pinball machine that retain the high score. The battery pack is mounted to the pc board, and it gets crusty like that and eats all the copper away. No water necessary! Except maybe what’s in the air.

Since I took up diving, I've come across electronics on the bottom of the ocean a time or two. I've definitely seen at least that bad. At some point, it becomes hard to quantify what would be worse. Kinda looks like salt water + batteries in that light. Maybe someone got it wet and then removed the batteries thinking they might be able to clean it up?

Years ago I had an old Dynatec multimeter with the same problem, a 9V battery, ate my PCB too. So that one was for the waste bin. Good I had another new one. But yes this looks familiar to me.

I was hoping you would clean it up, putting it in a ultrasonic cleaner or something

The PC modules in the US military aircraft was coated in formvar in the 1970's when I served in the US Navy. When I replaced the components, I had to brush on a fresh coat over the areas I chipped off. We had broken sewing machine needles we got from the paraloft guys in a trade soldered to the voltmeter leads to penetrate through the formvar to troubleshoot. Simpson 260, Baby!

Surely, that is a battery leak that for wahtever reason the last user didn't notice, maybe it dripped through slowly due to the orientation of the lamp in storage and had dried by the time the next user replaced the batteries. I've seen this in battery powered gadgets that were left in cars for years and years, cycling between cold overnight and boiling hot during the day.

30-50 percent of it still useful Sir

I have worked on boards that look just like this. Usually it’s from a pet urinating on the device. Power strips, game consoles, routers.

Must have been Duracell.

I've run across (and repaired) some pretty bad corrosion from electrolyte leaking out of capacitors, but this is on a whole different level. The electrolyte damage was bad, but still repairable (it had only eaten through one component leg that wasn't just an easily replaceable part, along with many traces on the board). I don't think there's any hope for this thing - chuck that thing right into the f__k-it-bucket!

YEs, seen multiple lights like that or even worse. Battery-leakage and moisture from the air. Or even just the salty sea-air that corrodes anything especially with a little rain that keeps all moist. That cristals just suck the moist air in to capture it... ;-)

duracell's that's what

looks like a Jackson Pollock painting.

I've seen military hardware that looked like this inside when it finally broke and needed repair. It was often cheaper to throw it out and buy a new one.

That thing was found beneath the Antikythera mechanism! 😂

I've seen that before on devices that were drowned while still powered

This as the same level as SamCrac Aston Martin Body Control Unit 😂😂

Looks like its been underwater at sea for months, but hot flux will likely fix most of the board damage.

I had HP n36l micro server that was home to a number of generations of gecko's that beats that.

ROFL, coincidence or not, the crustiest piece of tech I found recently was also a headlamp kinda like that one. Not the same brand though. Some parts of it was so corroded it basically kinda fell apart. Similar thing, components just fell off in pieces. And just to be clear, I never took that headlamp to the beach or somewhere you'd expect more corrosion and rust... but I did forget batteries in there, and they leaked and corroded the whole thing.

It was a mouse that peed ammonia on him. 😆

Salt water yes. SWEAT. It’s a head lamp and foreheads are awash in sweat. And sweat is crazy amount of organic sand corrosive compounds

Looks like something you'd expect some far future archaeologist digging up the remnants of our civilization to dig up.

Repair challenge!

dissolved by human sweat more likely leaked batt

I work at a place that services engine ECUs etc I’ve seen stuff on par or worse than this

My first thought was moss or algae.

Looks like a dog pissed on it. But can you get it working?🙂

Looks like perspiration ingress to me! (And you were touching it 😉)

did you find that on the side of the road

Last time I checked water and electricity don't mix well.

Dave, you should use white vinegar.

Found a Hitachi AA battery in a device last week, from '81. Not a spot on it.

That's definitely crusty 😮

Power up the LED! I bet it still works.

Yep, they used Duracell.!!😉

a toothbrush and some jumper wires over decomposed traces an you can get it to work again !

You just need to sandblast it to remove the crusty bits....:whistle:

that's 100% saltwater damage, probably less so the battery.. it sat in salt water, and just corroded everything away

Battery juice gone to another side by osmosis.

Send it to Rossmann.

Was that fished up from the Mariana Trench?

Send it to Northbridge to be fixed, would be funny.

My level sensor under My car looked like that....

😂😂😂 you can fix it

Sweat is pretty salty.

Head sweat did this to mine

Duracell batteries? Only those can leak that much.

whole bottle of isopropyl 🫠🤣🙈🙇‍♂️

minerals!

Drop this in the ultra sonic cleaner

Someone vomited and fell face down in it, wearing a headlight? 🙄

Yeah, but does it still work?

damn this is crazy haha :D it made transparent components :D

Send it to those vintage stuff 'restorers' lets see what the can do with such crusty item 😂

I've seen phones & laptops worse than that but they of course say no liquids have near it till I show photos & they cumple & confess, I love being the truth gatherer of people who talk B.S.

Couple of minutes in the ultrasonic and she'll be right

Nope. You win.

I believe "water ingress" implies a level of decency. this has been submarined for months! it looks like part of a reef

Designed by J-Rod.

this is easilty fixable, put in a rice jar 24h 😁

Well, I Was trying to eat dinner. ..... 🤑

give'er a good iso scrub, flux and boil that bad boy and it'll be rite

Okay, but can you fix it? 😄

that thing shouldn't have electronics anyway

Antikythera Mechanism?

Repair video? 😀

I've seen worse. :(

Probably had high quality Dick Smith batteries inside.

I'll see your torch, and raise you this flood damaged Aston Martin control module - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-CgeUyoFmYEg.html