On Friday, April 27, 2012 12:44:09 PM UTC-7, Paul Hovnanian P.E. wrote:
I'm attempting to diagnose some strange electronics behavior. And it seems
to be coming down to this question:

What types of components have failure modes that are temperature independent
and are self healing over a time period of days?

--
Paul Hovnanian
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Don't anthropomorphize computers. They hate that.

Well, a common problem that is moderately temperature independent and takes hours to days to reappear is cracking solder connections. If the unit or PCB is disturbed, the cracked joint will remake contact and stay good for as long as it takes for the rubbed connection to form an insulating film at the contact point.
I am not sure that this is what you asked, though. Do you mean that the unit fails, and after a few days it works again? In that case, I would look at electrolytic capacitors.

Neil S.