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For completeness, fully charged condition of my main battery is 8.22V (from +ve (on aerial end) to -ve centre terminal) with 5.81V from =ve to data -ve terminal (end furtherest away from aerial). There is 0.00V between the two -ve terminals, connected either polarity on the multimeter - this will be what the electronic modules inside the battery case are doing, amongst other things. So they are meant to be fully isolated. As a check I get 840,000 ohms either direction across these terminals - which is about the same as licking your skin across 1cm so it is well insulated.

PS: The broken battery spec link above is:
http://au.farnell.com/panasonic/vl1220- ... L1220-1VCE

It turns out that if you edit any post in this forum it will break any links over a certain link, AND any internal links to other posts on this site, anybody here considered converting to SMF which just works no drama? http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php

is meant to be ...PPS: It turns out that if you edit any post in this forum it will break any links over a certain length, AND...

I have the same problem with my 296 and have verified that the clock battery must be continually charged in order for the unit to keep time correctly. What I am wondering is whether keeping the unit on charge all the time will kill the MAIN battery? Anyone??

So has anyone found a battery with the tabs on them already? I bought two batteries from apex battery and tried soldering the stock tabs on. The first battery popped pretty quick. I have tried to keep the second one as cool as possible, but that isn't so handy when trying to solder.

Suggestions? I'd rather just buy a battery with the tabs to start with if something is available.

Was there a problem reading the posts further up with this info in it and about 5 photos of the bloody battery with tabs? I guess you can lead a person to the info but can't make them look at it, or was that about horses & water or whatever?

I printed out the very informative discussion by VinceS re replacing the internal battery. My beloved 276C has now started showing the symptoms of loosing its date when not in use.
I unscrewed the 8 small screws on the back cover. There is no screw ring on the BNC connector AFAICS!
Garmin here replaced the back cover under warranttee when one of the battery contacts broke off and looks like the techie dod not bother to screw the ring back on.

Short of brute force and ignorance, how do I split the back cover off from the cover surrounding the LCD screen?

G'day George,

Did you read this post?: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7664

If the bayonet plug retaining ring is missing you should be inside by now! The rubber does stick pretty good but cautious force at the screw locations should soon get you sorted.

As a follow up to the above battery repair epistle I have just returned from a few days and 3,000km in NZ, and the 276C GPS is running as good as a brand new one after the battery(ies) revival. It says in the menu it gets the usual range of 8 - 12 hours use off the bike depending on screen brightness. Probably I have in practice used it off power for about 5 hours on brightest setting without getting a power saving dim so it is at least functional to the point that it stays out of my way, as all good tech should! Once, it seems, we have overcome the manufacturer's unwittingly designed in defects!

Hi Vince,
Tx for your reply and pointing me at that topic. I had not seen that one.

Will try and get it open.
This whole thing smacks of planned obsolescence by our dear friends Garmim. It is ridiculous that they do not expect the units to be in use beyond the life of a Nicad battery!
Geprge

Hi, I'm working on a 296, trying to replace the internal battery. I have followed the previous posts and pictures, Thanks, this has been a big help.

But, now that I am inside and got the foil lifted, the little phillips head screws are not cooperating. They are so tight that my #0 screwdriver is not up to the task, even with griping the ribbed shaft with pliers for extra leverage. Phillips bit just rotates out of the head , in spite of pushing in as hard as I dare. I don't think I can apply any more pressure without danger of deforming the shoulders of the screw head socket.

Any suggestions?

sometimes it will help to turn the screw a very very very litlle bit tighter before you turn it loose.
but be carefull.

You can't grap the screwhead with litlle wire cutter?

Had the same problem on my 5yr old 276C. I guess plastic dries out and shrinks with time and it makes screws hard to remove. You need a proper size screwdriver first. Then applying firm pressure down, wiggle it back a forth a bit using a pair of pliers on the screwdriver shaft. Screws will get loose eventually. Just make sure you won't strip them.

I replaced the internal battery in my 296 with a panasonic rechargeable 2020 cell with tabs.I soldered two leads to the circuit board and drilled two holes for the leads to the larger compartment next to it. topgun

Say just by way of completeness a tricky bit we all "forgot" to mention is the ribbon wire that comes onto the main board that has to be removed to get the board out as the cable isn't long enough for the board to clear the antennae bayonet connection. This cable plugs into a flat plug near the end of the board basically above where the bayonet is but towards the centre. You will see on all the earlier photos it was plugged in and magically it wasn't, bit of a WTF moment really, so what one is tempted to do is just carefully pull the sucker out, which worked for me. THEN one might discover the beige coloured bar that goes along the entry side of the white plug thing it plugs into is actually a locking catch. The ends of the bar have little tabs on them and a careful tug at these unlocks the clamp and the ribbon wire slides out easily. You can see this in the earlier pics, once you know what to look for! Installation is obviously reversal of the above, and much easier than trying to carefully jam the sucker back in with the best thin nosed pliars you have available!

The reason I was back into my GPS is that the usb port cacked itself. GPS itself was fine but couldn't upload routes planned on the PC. I pulled it to bits and found the usb port had unsoldered from the board and was loose, did a smicko job of fixing that and it made ..........exactly no difference! Tried again to check for solder bridging / whatever and figured the loose base must have killed something on the board with transient spikes etc and maybe it was time to upgrade the GPS. A similar quality one is still around $1k and frankly the slight improvement in features is not worth the dosh IMHO, especially when compared against the Garmin "refresh" option which was $220 in Oz. Depends if you really want a POI upload feature I guess, and I am happy to keep an eye out for those despicable revenue depleting POI's which, so far touch wood, I have managed to avoid being the victim of! So I did the refresh and, bugger me, they don't fix the internal battery! This time I have pulled a couple of wires to the front side of the board, only easy route was to go outside the ribbon cable discussed in above para so wires need to be about 20cm long. Now the battery is easy to get at just taking the back off if I need to do it again, but the size of the replacement battery is such an overkill I doubt it will be necessary - however it was only a tiny amount more work to get the redundancy option so worth doing I reckon. I considered drilling holes as topgun mentioned above, but took the easy long wire option instead!

Oh, and here's another tip - check for fingerprints on the inside of the screen BEFORE you do the sucker up!!!! (guess who forgot and had to pull the cover off again.....)

Hi everybody,

tsizmo's description worked just fine for me. Hower unscrewing one of the screws I ripped at least one of these tiny resistors off ... the screwdriver slipped ...

a picture of my GPSMAP 276C can be found here:
http://www.naviboard.de/vb/showthread.php?t=48550

sorry, the text is in German, but on the second picture you can clearly see that little guy hanging out in nowhere ...

What I'm asking is, whether someone has a similar picture of that location showing what SHOULD be there, so I can figure out, which devices are missing?

thanks a lot for your help!
Walter

G'day Walter, oh well this is a classic example of "sh*t happens" when taking on a task like this. I looked at my old photos and clipped out the relevant areas off any that covered what you need. Typically the bit you want is not in brilliant focus but it shows what was basically there.

What you REALLY need is the schematic diagram of the sucker so you can find out the resistance value. Good luck finding that, I doubt it is posted. Your two options in my opinion are to contact Garmin and see if they still do a "refresh" service on these which is to swap the unit out for approx 20% original cost per my previous post, or have a go at fixing it. Since it makes no difference for a refresh if you have tried I would do that first.

As you can see the wrecked resistor is similar to several others in the general vicinity. Also you can see others have numbers on them which will indicate their value, unfortunately this may not be a "real" value but a reference to a chart which has the real values. What I would do is unsolder a similar looking one as almost certainly they are all the same value, particularly if they are unmarked as this one appears to be. Resistors are pretty good with heat as it tends not to affect their value much. However mechanical stress is a different matter and tugging at them could change the value. Anyway if you find out the resistance buy a couple of them as it may be easier to replace the "test" resistor than try to solder the tiddly little thing back on. When you are done you need to check carefully for solder bridging, either ensure you scrape clear paths between separate components with a sharp object, without cutting any copper trace lines on the board, or blow the lot off with a solder sucker and start again. Solder suckers are cheap gizmos and essential for this kind of work.

Good luck buddy, let us know if you get a win.

Just by way of feedback the external battery repair I talked about last year was just a beauty. In fact I was getting slightly better performance from the repaired battery than the one that has since come with the refreshed unit.

Hi VinceS,

phantastiic! thanks a lot for the picture! Looks like it's only the littly guy which is still hovering there ... I seem to have luck this time ... I'll keep you posted .


thanks for your help,
Walter