Home Maintenance Project: Furnace Circuit Board Replacement
Last Saturday (while watching
Wild
Hogs), Kristy and I noticed a strong electrical odor in
the house. After we tried to find the source inside to no avail,
we traced the smell to the garage where we heard
a loud buzzing noise. It was the furnace. I popped open the furnace
cover and noticed immediately that the circuit board was fried...
and there was a lot of black residue in the immediate vicinity; it
appeared that there was a significant spark created or perhaps even
a small fire.
Our furnace is a Trane, model XL80. The board itself isn't made by
Trane, but by White Rogers. The
original White Rogers part number on the board is 50M61-495 (the Trane
part number is CNT-3077). This board has been replaced by a new improved
model (hopefully)... White Rogers model number 50M61-843. I found a
replacement board at a couple of web sites, but eventually
decided to place an order from
part-s-mart.com. Only
$108 + $11 expedited shipping.
I swapped the board out myself. I figured that the task could not be
too much harder than swapping out a motherboard on a desktop computer, a
task I've done more times than I can count. In fact, it was quite
easy. The boards are laid out identically, so it was just a simple
matter of removing wire X from connection Y on fried circuit board and
putting it in connection Y on the new circuit board. After about 15
minutes, it was done!
Here are a couple pictures of the fried circuit board and the newly
installed board (click to enlarge):
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