A short tale of taking extreme measures to try to fix electronic gear. "N_Cook" oughta especially appreciate this.
So I found this receiver in the dumpster where I live--Aiwa "home-entertainment"-type of unit, meaning probably medium-fi for people whose idea of good sound is lots of thumping bass: has presets for "dance", "rock", "pop", "hall", "arena", etc., etc.
Plugged it in and the display lit up with "AM 12:00", but no response from any controls. OK, time to open it up.
Inside, everything--every circuit board and component--was covered with a fine light-brown powder, with a couple of leaves here and there. Evidently, the whole thing had been submerged in muddy water at some point.
Hmmm, what to do? Got $0.00 in it so far. So I did the only reasonable thing: drug it outside, hooked up the hose, and sprayed it liberally with clear water. Got all the mud out, so far as I could tell.
I took it inside, let it dry for 2 days. Today, I powered it up, and whaddya know? It responded to the "power/standby" switch. Heard the relay click and everything. Responded to every function. Even the tuner appeared to work.
Of course, the downside is that the damn thing doesn't work. No sound; obviously some serious problems there somewhere. And the tuner wouldn't lock onto any signals. But I was surprised that so much of it functioned normally. I expected the display to be toast, or the logic completely blown.
So I'm just sayin', if you ever encounter a piece of equipment that's been in a flood, and if you need to get at least part of it working for some reason, you could try this method.
At this point, it's not worth my time or effort to attempt any further repairs on this unit. But at least it was fun.