had a meltdown on one of our R8 receivers over the weekend while set up as a base. reciever was hooked up to a 12v deep cycle battery - group U1 (motorcycle size), with radio also plugged in using a 3-way cable.
end of the day, battery power running down to about 10%, crew goes to shut it down for the day, and finds the receiver VERY hot, cable near the lemo connector fried, and the lemo plug in the receiver just pulled right out of the housing.
brought into Trimble dealer yesterday, seems the low battery may have caused a high amperage surge, but not enough to blow the 15 amp fuse. With a costly repair ahead, I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this. We're going to a different cable system, using one battery to power the radio alone, and using separate power for the receiver.
any ideas or input would be greatly appreciated.
I haven't seen that before; we usually run seperate power to the radio and receiver and have had batteries die and be low on juice before, however no such catastrophic failure as you show.
WOW!!!!
Looks more like a lightning strike than a low battery issue.
Crazy man...crazy. Hard to believe that the fuse didn't blow.
WOW...
Loyal
we are wondering if the fuse should be a 10 amp, maybe that would have saved us what is looking like $5000+ damage to the receiver.
Somethings not right there and I would not blame the battery or fuse. Would really want to see inside that unit to determine where the hottest point was. Does not look like something that happen quickly as the battery went down, but rather a slow heating all day long because of a problem inside the unit that would not blow a fuse.
Not sure what the dealer is trying to tell you about batteries going low causing a surge. That would have blown the fuse, besides doesn't everyone run them things until they die almost every day?
I agree. I wouldn't buy that explanation for a minute.
I've run 35W and GPS base on a 33ah battery down to zero many times, granted most of the time the RF base is in 2W mode.
> Somethings not right there and I would not blame the battery or fuse. Would really want to see inside that unit to determine where the hottest point was. Does not look like something that happen quickly as the battery went down, but rather a slow heating all day long because of a problem inside the unit that would not blow a fuse.
>
> Not sure what the dealer is trying to tell you about batteries going low causing a surge. That would have blown the fuse, besides doesn't everyone run them things until they die almost every day?
> Somethings not right there and I would not blame the battery or fuse. Would really want to see inside that unit to determine where the hottest point was. Does not look like something that happen quickly as the battery went down, but rather a slow heating all day long because of a problem inside the unit that would not blow a fuse.
>
> Not sure what the dealer is trying to tell you about batteries going low causing a surge. That would have blown the fuse, besides doesn't everyone run them things until they die almost every day?
I would agree that something failed.
My thoughts would be that heat did break down something and created a short that turned all the melted down supply wiring connecting the unit into a heater coil.
How the fuse stayed intact is the big mystery. Maybe the short happened between the battery and the fuse.
0.02
Take the battery to the best battery shop around and get it checked
over for dead or weak cells. I do believe they can check cell voltage
on individual cells.
Remember as voltage goes down on a battery, current goes UP to compensate.
Maybe google for "forensic electronics failure". There may be a company/
consultant out there to dispute the local service rep. as to the failure as
well.
At $5000 it's worth some further investigation I'd say.
My 0.03 worth....for what it's worth....
