Lost reception

Newbie here and I originally posted this in the wrong place.
Reception been going in and out for a spell. Checked the board and found a couple of cold joints. Resoldiered and it worked great for a bit but now the reception is completely gone. Checked it on another antenna that I know is good and still no reception. Can't identify any other cold joints on the board. Nothing looks overheated. Looking for a good repair shop around the Tri-Cities Tenn. area. There used to be one at the White Pine exit (4) on I-81 but it's no longer there. Thought it moved up toward Greeneville but not sure. Any ideas about a good shop local to Tri-Cities Tn appreciated.

 

Maxum-MCD30 I believe. I'm at work and it's at home or I'd take a look. Not sure what you mean by SMD.... but when looking at the solder side, some of the componants that have multiple solder points in a straight line appear to have a layer of lead which I thought might be corrosion but when I tried to clean it off wth a pick, it wouldn't clean so that may be the lead you're speaking of. I've tried running it seveal times without the cover and no difference. The way I look for cold joints is to take the cover off, turn it on and using a pencil eraser, press on various places on the board to see if I can make it work. All the solder joints are low. I checked for solder bridges and can't find any. My pick goes between all of them down to he board. This has got me scratching my head......

 

Well I reckon if I was closer to Statesville, I'd just as soon bring it to you. Anyhow a huge THANK YOU for telling me NOT to take off to the repair shop right yet because I took the cover off again and started pressing around on the solder joints. Well low and behold I found another cold joint and wouldn't you know it, it was on the other leg(s) of the componant that I had re-soldered previously. It either was breaking down too or I didn't localize as well as I thought. Anyhow I heated and added just a tad bit of solder to all six legs and it worked GREAT - until I reinstalled it in the truck. I took it back out, went in the house and set it back up but turned it on before taking the cover off and again it worked fine. I checked for another cold joint but didn't find any although I'm sure there's one there. It's just is not bad enough to reproduce yet. I think the mounting screws are "stressing" the chassis of the radio which is in tun stressing the board and breaking a joint somewhere because when I leave the mounting screws a tad bit loose, it works great. I have a 94 Ranger so you can guess there's practically no room to mount a radio so I made my own mount from 1/8 x 1" bar stock and mounted to the floor just in front of the seat. The uprights must be just a tad out of parallel which would explain a lot. Anyhow we'll see how she does for a spell. I'm still going to go down towards Greeneville tomorrow to see if that CB repair shop is still there. My wife and I like to get out on Saturdays and take short trips either in one of the 4-wheel vehicles or on the bike. BTW, I have and o-l-d Teaberry Mighty "T" - 23 channel crystal controlled that didn't want to hear either. Just like the Maxon, the tx and drive was good according to my meter. Anyhow I took the cover off and lordy day I'd forgot how those things used to look. Anyhow I'd bought this off a friend so I reckon he's had it "worked on" cause there were some corroded joints that apparently had shorted. I cleaned the corrosion and it is back to life. Just for kicks and giggles I took the speaker side off to see if anything had been done there and it looked like it had been peaked and tuned. When I use to use it all the time, I checked it with my meter and remember that it would drive really good. Don't recall the numbers but they were pretty good. Anyhow THANKS handlebar for all your help! Have a GREAT weekend there in Statesville.

 

Something else I have noticed in the past is that if my RX falls off, I can do just a quick key on the mike and it's back to strong as ever and probably will not have to do it again for a while. Does the RX go through the mike? Is this possibly a mike problem? Or maybe a squelch problem?

 

I have a spare mike but it's not wired the same cause when I plug it in, all I get is a squeal. It's a good MIke though - Realistic pre- amp that I have on and old 23 channel Teaberry Mighty "T". I read on another site that the Cobra 5 pin plug in will work - not sure of the product number. When I had this readio tuned in '03, the tech showed me a Cobra that worked pretty good but then when he compared the mike performance againt the stock maxon, the Cobra was no better so I didn't get it. Probably should have gotten it anyhow. I posted a question asking which mikes would fit the maxon mcb 30 without re-wiring but haven't gotten an answer yet.