@Zarko, thanks for the correction :)

Actually Shapka is a word for Russian Berrete, an army cap, but later people started using it as a common term for a hat, which origially should be "kapa" :)

@David,

Pleasure! I thought at the time - this isn't documented anywhere, and it's so bizarre it needed to be :)

THANK YOU!
you just eased lots of pain for us!

39p spent at Maplins and my Potterton Prima F 60 is purring like a kitten.

Thank you so much.

All the best Simon

@Kim, thanks for the tip, certainly agree on the design!

Hi, Ref Prima 60F
just another note that might help somebody else.
Reading through the comments, somebody asked the question (could the caps be at fault on a 15 month old pcb) Well the answer is yes and the last thing I expected. Mine was about 16 months old and looked like new inside. No sign of the usual bad joints at the base of the plug socket etc. I replaced all 3 caps, but the faulty one was the axial one (wires come out at either end) C7 22uF. Maplin p/n AT04E They don't do this in 100v or 103 degC versions so 63V had to do. Anyway when tested, the faulty one measured 4uF rather than 22uF

The problem with the boiler was: On fire up, it would run the fan for 5 sec then stop then run 5 sec again between 4 or 10 times before firing. It would never try to spark. Basically I guess it needs a few seconds more than 5 to allow enough diff pressure to pull the Air Press SW in

I carried out the flame safety test procedures shown in the manual after reinstalling the pcb and I would recommend this to others.

Given the application and location of the pcb, I have never seen such poor build quality. It is basically designed to fail after a couple of years max.

Regards Kim

Found your page via google when I returned home to find that there was no hot water and the Profile 80e wouldn't fire up.

Noticed some arcing and sparking from underneath the front right hand side of the PCB, whipped it out and found a nasty cracked dry joint.

Fired up the soldering iron and 5 minutes later the boiler was back working and the water was heating.

Thanks for your informative write up, if I do need to change the capactitors do need replacing in the future, I am well up to speed on getting the PCB out for another quick repair.

@Irvine, thanks for the feedback. To answer your questions, it doesn't matter which way round the white thermostat leads go, as it's basically an on-off switch that just happens to be temperature-dependent. Sounds to me like you had a duff one installed. I'd bend your engineer friend's ear :)

As for donations, if you or any of the other 15,000 viewers of this page have saved money and wish to contribute to my hosting costs, that'd be very welcome! Just click the secure PayPal button above (you don't need a PayPal account, you can just make a one-off credit/debit card donation). I'm contributing 50% of anything I receive to the NEA charity (details next to the button).

Hi again
Just to let you know that I have replaced (again) the main control thermostat (£18) and the system now seems fine as I can now adjust the system temerature.
The last thermostat replacement lasted 1 month and since then I have replaced the PCB, but I cannot see how the PCB would damage the thermostat.
Anyway, thats it until next winter!

Read your blog, glad you liked my home town of Stratford-upon Avon.

Hi
It's a few weeks since I used your excellent site and I have since replaced my PCB with a £40 refurb (I was more confident in doing this rather than the soldering approach). This was very easy as I put the PCBs side-by-side and then individually replugged each connection, this took about 20 minutes in all.

I still have a scenario where the main control thermostat does not seem to work. The rads run very hot, adjusting the main control knob makes no difference and does not switch off the boiler until the "physical" click. In all other functions the boiler is now working fine.

3 months ago I had a gas engineer friend replace all three thermostats including the control thermostat. When I replaced the PCB I specifically noticed that the connections to this thermostat used 2 similar white leads.
Question: does it matter which way round these white leads are connected to the thermostat? If it does matter, and if mine are connected wrongly, does this explain my problem?

In addition to the boiler issue, I have recently flushed the pipework systems and replaced some TRVs. I also fitted a MAGNACLEAN filter and can recommend this device as even after flushing, the material collected by the magnaclean was impressive.

Can you once again publish where you wish donations to be sent, your site must have saved £000's by now.

Thanks once again.

@Paul Young, there you go :) Two useful pointers! Thanks guys.

Paul Young
It's not clear from you post which part of the start-up sequence is failing when the boiler doesn't light:
1. Does the fan run continuously ?
2. if so, does the pressure switch activate after a while (you should hear the gas valve switch) ?
3. Do you then get a spark ?
My guess is that the pressure switch is marginal in switching and your trick of opening and shutting the casing is giving it a nudge sufficient to make it switch. Either that or you have a poor seal around the case front (a small strip of tissue paper will detect any escaping air)
The other thing that occurs to me is that the fan itself might be on its last legs and not able to produce quite enough pressure in the casing

Tony M

Hello,
This a very informative blog...thank you.
To add to all the info here, i would advise ...to always check that the front panel of the boiler makes a good seal of the chamber...and that the restrictor in the fan tubes is clean from dirt...the APS won't switch over if you have problems with either of these...and don't forget that fans can age and not function enough to perform correctly.
Thanks.

Hi @Paul Young, I've no particular ideas, especially since it's intermittent. The only advice I can reiterate is to work the troubleshooting chart, from powered off. Good luck!

Can I also echo my thanks, I've learnt a lot about this boiler from your blog.
I have a similar problem ie erratic firing up but I can reliably sort it by opening the front of the boiler which causes the fan to run continuously, leave it 2-3 minutes and shut it and the boiler fires up and stays alight until switched off.

Any ideas ?
Regards

Paul

@mike pimlott, glad you've got heating again. Since it certainly sounds like the board at fault, you might want to consider a refurb to tidy things up at some stage - should be cheaper than a callout.

Thanks for a fantastic forum.
I have just fixed my boiler after suffering for nearly a year.
I experienced similar problems encountered by previous posts. The boiler fan running without igniting.....a sharp tap fixed it for a while...then I left the PCB holder hanging down as that seemed to work best as a previous post found.
A couple of days ago whilst the garage was in darkness, I could see arcing from the PCB.....if I touched the 6 pin holder I could make the boiler ignite and stop at will.....I removed the board and found several dry joints.
I re soldered them and put it back together only to find that nothing would work and I could not reproduce the fault.
I decided to replace the 3 capacitors.....then the orange wire came away from the connector, so I had to solder that.
Still it did not work.
I took it all apart and noticed R15 was loose, so I tried to replace that and ended up lifting the track around the holes.....what a nightmare.
I ended up soldering the legs of the resistor on to the nearest pins further down the track........not a pretty sight.
I tried it once again and it did not work....so I decided to put it all back together and call the plumber, with the intention of replacing the PCB with a new one.

I say put it all back together because I was not putting the cover back on after each thing I did.

Needless to say, as I turned the dial it clicked a couple of times and then roared in to life.

I wish I could say what it was exactly that caused mine to stop but it runs now and cost 79p as opposed to £120.

The board is not a pretty sight but it works.

I hope this helps someone else like this site helped me.....cheers.

Mike

@Steve and @Ian, thanks for the feedback!

Done. Replaced PCB with the refurb one, powered it all up again and Hallelujah, pilot light restarts, heating and HW both on and working.

My comments on replacing the board:
It's a bit more awkward than I thought it would be, for two main reasons. First is that the larger block connector is really stiff to remove, took me some time with the needle-nose pliers to get it off. Second is that the access to the rear two plastic mounts is really awkward. Took about 5 minutes alone getting those off carefully. Everything else was pretty easy really.

Make sure you have handy before you start:
Large cross-head screwdriver
Small straight-head screwdriver
Needle-nose pliers
Maybe something to clip a cable tie if you're using a refurb board that comes with the leads bundled together.

Thanks very much to everyone who has contributed to this thread, this has saved me a lot of time and effort. I can recommend the ebay store I got the refurb PCB from as well.
They are called All Spares Direct:
http://myworld.ebay.co.uk/all-spares-direct1/

Cheers