I followed this thread step by step last fall. Gave me an excuse to buy a new dremel and some bits. Started with a small wire brush, but that wasn't aggressive enough for the amount of corrosion I had. Switched to a rough stone wheel for the really nasty stuff. Worked well and took the nickel finish off down to the copper base. To prevent the copper from tarnishing, I had to add some di-electric grease to each plate and to the main blocks once it was all back together. As soon as I had confirmed the repair as being successful, I went to get a new seal installed behind my pristine factory glass. Of course, the technicians from Safelite cracked in when removing, so I had to buy another glass. No big deal. Total price with lifetime warranty against leaks was only $150 installed! Unlike the roof to my house, its been leak-free ever since.

Nice write up! Doesn't seem to be very active but repped 2112 up to 3 greenies!

can one of the mods fix the title so it says "GEM" instead of "GEN"? i was trying to find this thread on google, and it didn't come up...

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Google managed to find this in spite of the title, GREAT thread BTW - It would be nice to get the title updated.

I did a portion of this. I took it apart far enough to peek inside of the wireways. There was some corrosion, but I was leery of my ability to get this back together. I sprayed it full of CorrosionX "conformal coating" - look it up,and caulked the plug receptacles - all of them - full of dielectric grease to act as a dam against further water infiltration. I also melted holes into the bottom corners to act as drains and eliminate the "as designed" swimming pool for electronics.

Completely missed the heads-up the first time around.

Will fix now.

Stewart

Thanks!
I eventually found it, but I had to log in and look through my saved threads! I like the drain holes, but the real fix is to re-seal your winshield ;)

Just what I needed, THANKS & great work ...Reps sent :)

hows them drain holes working out for you any more problems?

Wish this was posted around Mid summer of 2016
 

It was about 7:00AM, my brother and I came out of our garage to what sounded like someone trying to steal his 01 F350 7.3, only to see that there's nobody in the truck and realize that the starter is "running away" uncontrollably. Got into the truck and tried to turn the key forwards and back again to no avail. Jumped out of the truck ran into the garage to get the 13mm, at that point we started to see smoke come out from under the hood so the hose was run as well as the wrench. Upon opening the hood and throwing the wrench on the battery clamps I was burned by the heat of the post terminals on both batteries. After getting the batteries out of the truck for the fear of them exploding I told him "get that **** in a big bin and fill it to just under the heads if you wanna save them" (Exide batteries are not cheap). We realized it rained the night before and a few years back our 97 or 98 expedition had the same issue. so he immediately went to the fuse box which was smoking hot, so he started calling around getting dealer prices of up to $1400 for a GEM and a fuse block (we had the GEM independently tested and a dealer told us it was bad. Not exactly happy at that point he pretty much had a melt down because it was his first diesel, he asked if there's anything I could do. After getting the two batteries on charge after they finally cooled off, the biggest pain in the ass was the rivets and trying to keep the plastic cool enough that it keeps its structure. After that it looked like a massive **** storm after getting it open. Found out pretty fast why the truck had no interior lights, window functions, or wipers or GEM function at all

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I pulled all of the traces out of the boards and washed them in degreaser then a baking soda bath for neutralization then allowed to dry and re assembled board after board. The Destroyed traces in panels 1 & 3 which are GEM main power traces were repaired by laying them in frame and using stranded 10 gauge wiring, flattening the strands to lay besides each other, cutting to size and finally soldering in. After all was said and done I brushed Permatex Die Electric grease on each side of each panel and reinstalled panel after panel 1-6. Re- punched the rivets to close the box. Looking at my reference photos I replaced all of the terminals, snapped the top back on and put all of the fuses back in. About two hours go by and he comes home from work and I hand it to him saying "no questions, no bull****, no excuses lets get this thing in and see if she fires". 30 minutes or so go by and its the moment of truth, it fires. It has Lights, It has wipers, The power windows work and believe it or not the truck was running better than ever, even after putting new injectors in. Came to the conclusion that either the IDM or PCM or both were being deprived of power or having unnecessary power sent to places it shouldn't have been. The biggest thing that really pissed me off is months before this occurrence, I took his GEM off of the fuse block and sent it with him to a dealer here in NY to be independently tested and they FAILED IT!!. Got the GEM home that night and opened it, nothing burned, broken off the board, not even the slightest bit of water intrusion. All I had to say was " they had to be bull****ting you trying to sell ya another GEM". Glad to see that I wasn't the only who took on this "Journey" the Information needs to be out there
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Her name was Casper, still on the road to this day.

the design is a real bad one it seems.

Design of the GEM doesn't appear all that bad, as it functions just like it was intended. In my not-so-humble opinion, I think the windshield frame and seal designs are the real turds on these rigs.

thats true! i shouldnt blame the fusebox for a windshield leak, im thinking about pulling mine and going thru it before getting to the fail point of it and sealing it up somehow tho.

Skip, if you can build a water diverting shield over the top of the box and GEM, that could work. Doesn't have to be too big, and it could be a flexible piece of rubber or plastic.

Opinions please. My '02 X has a battery drain as well. It comes and goes infrequently. Now however it's persistent. I have read that unplugging the alternator to see if the drain quits indicates an ignition switch. The GEM however seems more likely. Everything works well other than one quirk; also infrequently, the interior lights will not go out normally, they will stay on until they time out, but only with the engine not running. It's such an oddball "failure" that it could be the GEM. I've had a mechanic look at it before and couldn't figure it out. None of this was bad enough when it was a daily driver, but now it's been retired and every time I go use it it's dead, so now it is annoying.