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Full Member
- Feb 25, 2008
- 195
- 198
- Detector(s) used
- Minelab Vanquish 540. Fisher CZ-21; Bounty Hunter SS II; Garrett Carrot.
- Primary Interest:
- Metal Detecting
I saw somewhere that someone had bought a yard sale SS II and it was dead. Well, here is my recent experience.
In 2008 I bought a Bounty Hunter Sharpshooter II. After about 10 - 15 trips out, it died.
Importing it to Brasil was not cheap so sending it back for warranty work and getting it back again was too much to deal with.
I had plenty of other things taking up my time and didn't have any tools to work on it either so it was stuck into a corner for seven years.
My wife and I are going to a beach front condo for almost two months (Feb/Mar) so I started thinking about detecting again.
Yesterday, I got the SS II out of the utility/storage area and dusted it off (it was REALLY dirty). Went out and bought a couple of 9v batteries (very expensive here, can I use rechargeables instead of alkaline?). Put in the batteries, yep still dead :-)
Opened it up and started a visual to look for broken wires etc. Poked at a few solder joints with pointy tweezers (still do not have any electronics test equipment) was able to make it beep as I recall the power on sequence sound before. Interesting ... so something might work.
A closer visual inspection revealed that there was actually a small segment of foil missing in the trace that runs from the + battery input to the On/Off switch.
Replacing this trace with a piece of stranded wire solved the problem.
Sorry I didn't think to take any photos. But it is pretty easy to see that the segment of the trace that was missing is quite a bit narrower than the rest of the trace.
Anyway, I am hopefully back into the MD hobby again. :-) It target ID correctly on US coins and some gold and silver samples I had available so I will assume everything is working as designed.
52 days of beach combing coming up.
In 2008 I bought a Bounty Hunter Sharpshooter II. After about 10 - 15 trips out, it died.
Importing it to Brasil was not cheap so sending it back for warranty work and getting it back again was too much to deal with.
I had plenty of other things taking up my time and didn't have any tools to work on it either so it was stuck into a corner for seven years.
My wife and I are going to a beach front condo for almost two months (Feb/Mar) so I started thinking about detecting again.
Yesterday, I got the SS II out of the utility/storage area and dusted it off (it was REALLY dirty). Went out and bought a couple of 9v batteries (very expensive here, can I use rechargeables instead of alkaline?). Put in the batteries, yep still dead :-)
Opened it up and started a visual to look for broken wires etc. Poked at a few solder joints with pointy tweezers (still do not have any electronics test equipment) was able to make it beep as I recall the power on sequence sound before. Interesting ... so something might work.
A closer visual inspection revealed that there was actually a small segment of foil missing in the trace that runs from the + battery input to the On/Off switch.
Replacing this trace with a piece of stranded wire solved the problem.
Sorry I didn't think to take any photos. But it is pretty easy to see that the segment of the trace that was missing is quite a bit narrower than the rest of the trace.
Anyway, I am hopefully back into the MD hobby again. :-) It target ID correctly on US coins and some gold and silver samples I had available so I will assume everything is working as designed.
52 days of beach combing coming up.
