[Sideband]

Similar thing happened to me some years ago when a pals central heating controller failed.
Initially he called an engineer who said 'Timers gone mate....haven't got one on me so will have to order one....' He then gave a price in excess of £100 for the timer including fitting to which my mate said to wait until he got paid.

I called that evening and he recited his tail of woe....long story short, I unclipped the timer (it was a plug-in type) and looked inside. It was difficult to work on it 'live' because of it's construction but it was easy to work out that there was a 4.7uF capacitor dropper (an 'X' type cap) feeding a 12V zener diode, a 470uF cap which then fed a controller chip. Fortunately I had a meter and soldering iron on the car so did a quick check of the cap dropper....it was virtually O/C. I nipped home to find a suitable X cap (with a higher voltage rating) and returned, fitted the new cap and then plugged the timer back in. It immediately started working (previously no displays or anything) and all original settings were retained. My pal was delighted and also said the immortal 'Pub?'

The timer operated for a further six or seven years until the boiler was upgraded.