I JUST SHOT MYSELF IN THE FOOT Seahunter34 !!!

[DaytonaGold]

This is regarding a post that seahunter34 posted about his ctx 3030's battery compartment leaking. I quickly defended Minelab by posting that I've had my ctx for nearly two years already with no incident. Well, guess what folks? It happened !!!

Before I get into details let me say that I am very meticulous about my ctx, I baby it because that is just the way I am about most things I own. This means I gently rinse it off after every beach outing, wipe it down and put it away. I always check my battery compartment and clean the seal and o-ring as well. This is why I came to Minelab's defense simply because I wanted to state that if you do these things and take a few precautions these things won't happen to you, ha ha was I proven wrong.

I was in waist deep water for about 45 minutes when I noticed the clouds got really black and scary, lightning was fastly approaching. So I quickly packed up the wife and kid and headed home. After unpacking, showering, getting reorganized from the chaos I remembered to grab the ctx to charge the battery. It was only a couple of hours after being home when I started my cleaning process. I opened the battery compartment and the entire compartment was filled with green murky water...NOT A GOOD SIGN. What ever chemical process took place in there literally took the silver-like plating right off of one of the five pins !!! Now I'm worried about the damage that may have been done to the detector and battery itself. I quickly clean and dry out and amazing it works, however the one pin is damaged and the battery acid clearly damaged the once nice black plastic.

I called Minelab, no one answered, tried again got someone on the phone, got disconnected, They called me back to tell me everyone is at lunch and someone will call you back, still waiting.

I am sorry to Seahunter34, I guess no matter how careful you are this is a design flaw that will most likely get you sooner or later. Take a look at what happened to the pin in the pic.

 

[jimpugh]

if you want it water proof and worry free FIX it yourself......or do like me and buy an ATX leave the video game for land that's all it is really rated for is a lite rain at most.

Garret has put the hurt on Australian cheese......

happy trails
jimpugh

 

[ZOFCHAK]

That sucks! Hopefully, Minelab will take care of it for you.

I didn't like the look of that battery seal from the get go. I actually posted here about how it was going to be an issue, and for the life of me I can't understand why Minelab designed it that way.


http://www.findmall.com/read.php?86,1708344,1708344#msg-1708344


IMO they should have had the battery permanently sealed in the machine and not removable. Those batteries last so long, it would have been better to send it in every few years ror a replacement battery than to send it in all the time for repairs.

 

[RichW]

That's really sad news. The price of Excal's and CZ's has probably just gone up.

 

[nolanation]

That sucks Daytona. I had the EXACT thing happen. One contact was de-plated of chrome through electrolysis. If it wasn't saltwater you would of been fine. It happened to the contact on the CTX and the battery. I sent mine in to get it repaired. Took about 3 weeks, but they replaced the rear end, the battery, gave me new screws that were saltwater resistant ( the original screws had an incorrect powder coating formula on them and caused them to have a white-ish look to them) and actually said they saw a small grey line on my screen, so they replaced that too. Overall good service. I will be going to a specialty gasket shop, and trying out some different gaskets and possibly have one made that seals better.

 

[ML]

That's really sad news. The price of Excal's and CZ's has probably just gone up.

Or the prices of CTX's go down. Yeah, like that'll happen....Mine will continue to be subject to rain, but no underwater activity.