I have a ac68u with antenna mount broken off the board BUT..

[tearlach2]

The broken one is the one in the red circle connected to the board by a wire into an ipex laptop style connector, the other two are fine and seem to be soldiered directly to traces unlike the one that broke. I can't see any traces going to it on the front or back of the board like the other two, but I don't know how many layers the board is. The wired one which broke was connected to the board by what looked like 4 pins on the back of the connector(antenna mount) that went through the board and stuck out the back a mm or so, and were soldiered, I hope just to mount it. Something hit it and broke all 4 pins off flush. Would I need to try and solder it back on or just glue it in place? It did seem to work ok after it was damaged a year or so ago even though the right antenna was flopping all over the place and I had it leaning against the wall but then I put it away, I opened it up a few days ago to see I might have gotten really lucky with it being the wired one.. would there be some grounding issue?

Part 2 I use an ac86u as main and did have the 68u as a slave aimesh using Ethernet backhaul a couple years ago, but haven't bothered since it made little difference in my small house, however now I want to run a 100 feet ethernet to a freestanding metal garage that gets absolutely no signal and no cellular. Is there a point in using ai mesh if there is a decent gap between both routers? I expect standing in the yard between them I will get no signal from either. I also have a ac66r that I could use as a wired repeater, would using a 68u in mesh mode even make a difference over the 66 which doesn't have aimesh? My only goal is to get YouTube videos while I'm working on my cars, it is a pain in the butt to get out from under a car 10 times to walk to the house and watch a 30 minute video while I'm all greasy then yes probably up to 10 times I've made the trip, it really makes one feel stupid.. needing to re-watch the same 30 second part 30 seconds after I crawled back under the car and immediately forgot. 9 times.

 

[Tech9]

Your antenna is still working because the thin PCB connected cable you see is coax with ground and active pin. The connector soldering is to keep it in place. It's soldered to the ground layer. You can epoxy it back to the PCB as a quick fix. About extending your coverage - you can use either AiMesh node or AP Mode. It will work the same way for your purposes. Your other AC66R can work in AP Mode as well doing the same thing for you. You can use the same SSIDs in AP Mode and your client device will connect automatically when in range to the garage AP.