Wonky older AIM system

For those of you that have older AIMs (like an XG Log)

Had my dash go intermittent and it waited to show up right after I unloaded friday afternoon. Two hours of troubleshooting the wiring and I finally removed he dash and the data box.

You can remove the top cover of the data box and the front panel. They are a little hard to pry apart because they are well gasketed. The main circuit board is held in with 4 screws. Under the board is a header connector that gets loose.

i re-seated mine and it was fine for 4 sessions and then went wonky again in the flag race, requiring a reset every lap. So now I'll have to do this again - and this time I'll glue the connector down.

That’s a common issue. Hot glue on that ribbon plug is a common fix from Aim if they still serviced that system, which they don’t.

they fixed it once years ago after using the tach direct input killed the board. But the connector fix evidently wasn't part of it....

I have a AiM MXL Pista from the 2005 era.

The internal date & time clock stopped incrementing. Talked with AiM personnel at Road America during the 2020 Runoffs and that told me to send it to them for 'battery replacement'. They were not able to replace the battery and shipped it to the home office in Italy who likewise was unable to make the repair.

When I got the unit back an reinstalled it on the car - all the analog inputs maxed out. After conversing with AiM the time of death was announced. Thanks to Apex Speed, one of our members had one to get rid of and we struck a deal. Works fine.

Mine's an 05 as well. gotta admit, GPS would be sweet....

The MyChron3 in our ITB 924 finally kicked the bucket this past summer; internals just couldn't handle the coil-level RPM signal any more, blowing out the external filter too... consensus was time to replace. Originally purchased in 2003 IIRC; not a bad life for race parts! Will be nice to switch over to GPS with a new MXM (there are fancier units but that's all we really need for such an old analog car)...

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Originally Posted by Rick Kirchner

Mine's an 05 as well. gotta admit, GPS would be sweet....

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If you are running a Smartycam, you will have the fully integrated data and video as well. Along with GPS on the new systems, the analysis engine in RS3 Analysis is written around GPS info were as it was added to RS2!.

IMHO, the upgrade is worth it just for the increase in alarm functions that you can use.

I think this question is related enough to this topic:

Currently my Aim system (EVO4S) does not have an inline fuse for the 12v power wire.

Can I install one to protect the logger box?

I think we fried mine this past weekend when we had dead battery issues. It will probably have to go back to Italy to see if it can be fixed.

Blowing an inline fuse would have been a much better issue to deal with.

TIA.

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Originally Posted by RussMcB

I think this question is related enough to this topic:

Currently my Aim system (EVO4S) does not have an inline fuse for the 12v power wire.

Can I install one to protect the logger box?

I think we fried mine this past weekend when we had dead battery issues. It will probably have to go back to Italy to see if it can be fixed.

Blowing an inline fuse would have been a much better issue to deal with.

TIA.

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Certainly. I run an MXP, but have a 3 amp breaker on the supply. In practice, it probably doesn't draw a full amp. Were you at COTA and told by Bryc it had to go to Italy or assuming? I believe the guys in the US have the boards to do most any repair.

What is up with the Evo4s?

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Originally Posted by romoman

Certainly. I run an MXP, but have a 3 amp breaker on the supply. In practice, it probably doesn't draw a full amp. Were you at COTA and told by Bryc it had to go to Italy or assuming? I believe the guys in the US have the boards to do most any repair.

What is up with the Evo4s?

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Thanks, Matt. I was at Road Atlanta. It worked well beginning the weekend, but I left the race car's master switch on overnight and drained the battery. Later I noticed my logger wasn't working, no green light. We opened it up and saw an issue with one of the boards.

Yesterday I called the Roanoke, VA Aim shop and they said send it in, we'll look at it. It may need to go to Italy.

BTW, we were still able to use my Smartcam during the race. Instead of the Evo4S turning it on, I manually started it. So, that was great. I was happy about that.

Dave Ferguson should chime in here, but I wonder if a fuse would solve anything. A fuse would protect the car's electrical from an internal short in the AIM box, but I don't think it will do anything to protect the box.

In my experience a lot of black-box damage comes from operating in brownout conditions - current sometimes goes in the wrong directions in various places inside when you drop the input voltage too far.

I separately switch the power to both my tach amp and my dash to prevent this situation if possible. I don't turn the dash on until the car has started. the tach amp has a big-ass zener diode/capacitor combo to keep the voltage up as long as possible when I'm cranking the car over.

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Originally Posted by Rick Kirchner

Dave Ferguson should chime in here, but I wonder if a fuse would solve anything. A fuse would protect the car's electrical from an internal short in the AIM box, but I don't think it will do anything to protect the box.

In my experience a lot of black-box damage comes from operating in brownout conditions - current sometimes goes in the wrong directions in various places inside when you drop the input voltage too far.

I separately switch the power to both my tach amp and my dash to prevent this situation if possible. I don't turn the dash on until the car has started. the tach amp has a big-ass zener diode/capacitor combo to keep the voltage up as long as possible when I'm cranking the car over.

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I'm pretty well versed in the AiM technical details :) You are correct that the fuse will probably only help the car side of the system. The Evo4s has a reverse polarity diode and a robust power supply design, but it is possible to damage the system with a voltage spike and/or some other issues. The low voltage requirements of the AiM systems is actually pretty low and I have not seen that damage a system. The systems also have pretty good FW in them so if there is a low voltage condition, the system will reboot properly and still work. I found the problems in the original MXL2 with this and worked with hardware team Italy to get it resolved. Side point - there is a "power filter" available to put in line for the old systems, but most have been updated by this point or in an application where it is not a problem.

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Originally Posted by Rick Kirchner

I separately switch the power to both my tach amp and my dash to prevent this situation if possible. I don't turn the dash on until the car has started. the tach amp has a big-ass zener diode/capacitor combo to keep the voltage up as long as possible when I'm cranking the car over.

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I separately switched the data system everything on my 94 too. Going to split the data system from ignition on my 01 because I hate running the fuel pump just to pull data!

Confused: What's a tach amp? And if it's switched off during cranking/starting why does it need the capacitor?

When my dash first burned out it was because I ran the coil directly into one of the inputs (like the instructions say). When I sent it back to AIM they told me not to do that - there's this "tach amp" you could buy ($80) that takes the coil signal and turns it into a nice square wave.

Bought one and several weekends later it burned out. AIM then said "oh yeah, if the input voltage drops below 9V when cranking it will kill the amp". So, I added the switch for the amp, and then added the diode and cap, just in case I forgot the switch.

The frustrating thing is that it's all made with surface mount devices, so it's non-repairable without special tooling. Luckily I had a friend with access to a micro soldering station and he has fixed mine ever since. The little op-amps are only $1.89 from Digi-key.

I've reverse engineered the device and If I ever need another one I'll make it up out of 1/4 W components and full-size chips. Interestingly, I don't think it will be any larger than the surface mount version.

Oh. Yeah. That.

FFS, they could damn well include that in the destructions. My tach amp (which I referred to as a RPM signal filter) in mine did exactly that too, died in the first session during use. Though I guess since it died on-track, that means it wasn't an undervolt situation that fried it.

But I've been promised that the new hardware won't have a problem with my vintage coil pickup...:revs:

The new systems don't have the same RPM problem that the old systems did. I've run mine for years with an MXL Pista and now an MXP without trouble.

Toward the surface mount comments, AiM does all their own design, board manufacture, solder, assembly, and programming. It's all in house and they have made significant investments to do it all. They use the latest technology and components that they can. Having been through the operation in Milan, it's very impressive.

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Originally Posted by romoman

T AiM does all their own design, board manufacture, solder, assembly, and programming. It's all in house and they have made significant investments to do it all. They use the latest technology and components that they can. Having been through the operation in Milan, it's very impressive.

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Which is fine until you design an $80 fuse. I worked in military electronics production for 40 years, so maybe I'm less impressed. I've run wave-solder, shake/bake/altitude/EMI/salt fog testing, you name it. A $1 board stuffed with $3 of components and sold for $80 with a known and undisclosed issue....