All 360 Repair Center

The towel trick

Some of the possible results . Your unit may

come back to life temporarily , If you repeat

the towel trick you will damage the fan speed

thermostat that is built in to the G. P. U. and will

reduce the chances for a reliable repair. The

heat sensitive parts like capacitors and diodes

will be damaged due to excessive heat. This

will shorten their life considerably.

Two red lights

Overheating of either the C.P.U / G.P.U. is

caused by air gaps bettween the heat sink ,

and the chips or a restriction of air flow through

the console This will cause the unit to go into

thermal shut down

One red light

All E66, E67, E68, E69, E71, E74, error codes

are hardware failures .The hardware that causes

all the problems is called the X clamp .The X

clamp is an over engineered spring / retainer,

that has serious problems keeping the G.P.U

chip connected to the board. Heating and

cooling of the chip can and will eventually crack

open connections under the G.P.U. An X clamp

mod done correctly after the C.P.U G.P.U are

re-flowed to the main board fixes all of these

error codes usually permanently.

The X clamp mod and re-flow

corrects the follwing :

Sound no video , Freezing , Slugish game play , H.D.M.I

problems ,White / Green vertical lines, 1, 2 or 3 red lights with

or without error mesage, E66, E67, E68, E69, E71, E74

Re-flow process

The re-flow process refers to precision highly

localized heating of integrated circuits and other

parts.In order to melt solder laden pins directly to

the main board .Establishing sometimes1000's of

separate connections at once.

R.R.o.D. Three red lights

The primarily cause is the G. P. U . heating the

P.C. board up which causes it to expand slightly.

lead /tin solder could tolerate this expansion but

The E.P.A. has required all electronics MFG. to

use Silver / Tin solder similar to plumbing solder

witch becomes brittle and has poor mechanical

properties with regards to shear loads, so heating

and cooling cycles will inevitably start to fracture

connections . PS3 also experience this problem

but to a far lessor degree due to a better cooling

system.

Tray doesn't open

The cause is from the magnet that clamps

and holds the C. D . in the drive.The magnet

is stronger then the eject motor, so the motor

can't break the magnetic seal. But if you slap the

top of your Xbox ( hard ) over the drive right

after you press eject the tray will open.

The fix is to open the CD drive and gap the hold

down magnet , allowing the motor to break the

magnetic seal with less force.

Heat gun trick

Most common results form this procedure are

a severely warped and useless 360 PC board.

It's not practical to try and thermal cycle chips

manually with a heat gun, you have little control

over damaging heat build up at the surface of the

P.C. board. A better solution is to have a repair

shop that has a Re-flow machine to re-flow the

G.P.U. back to the main P. C. board .

Laser Replacement

Your CD rom drive fails in two ways, It spins up

then stops , and the screen says there's no

disk load in the drive (open tray problem).This

is likely caused by a weak or dead laser .Dust

isn't normally an issue due to the hi RPM of the

drive . Dust gets swept off before it can settle.

Drive Replacement

The other cause is one of the two motors in the

drive is weak or dead . Same result (open tray ).

This repair requires that you replace the drive

and swap the old PC board to a new drive .

The 360 can be made durable

We here at 360 repair had to do an in depth

study of all of the primary failures of the 360

console in order to asses whether the unit

could be made durable.

Our finding and recommendations

First is heating and cooling cycles will cause

the P . C. board to distort slightly this will

inevitably start fracturing solder joints under

the G P U even newer boxes will experience

these types of failures after prolonged use,

also chips next to the GPU will start to loose

contact due to the same P C board distortion.

There are two remedy for 90% of all hardware

failures of this console . Some older units and

previously x clamp modified units require more

intensive repairs / upgrades in order to make

them durable.

Solution 1

Re-flow the G. P. U. and " properly " clamp

it to the heat sink and the P.C. board. This is

our current repair procedure and has proven

highly effective.

Solution 2

Remove the heat with a thermoelectric cooler or

other elaborate cooling system this will remove

up to 80 % of the heat from the G .P .U and

resolve the problem however this may not be a

cost effective solution.

This is a highly effective GPU clamping system

designed and manufactured exclusively by

www.northernsteeldesigns.com for all 360 repair

and when correctly installed will eliminate most

system failures related to G. P.U. connections

issues . The C.C.A will even straighten slightly

warped P. C. boards which will provide for more

operational stability.

* Kits with online video instruction will give you

easy to follow step by step instruction on

proper installation .