A few weeks back I was the lucky recipient of one of these courtesy of Simone (Thanks very much again for that ). There are great pics of the watch on SImones original thread just down from this one. As he described it - it was in none working condition but cosmetically good. Only problem I could see on the outside was a missing caseback screw - so no biggies there. It's a rebranded Sicura VIP 2000 and it's a great looking watch.
Opening it up I found this...
Nasty battery damage. The "-" contact for the battery is in a bad way. It's not connected to the chip any more (right hand circle) and there's a wire to the left coming from the solar cell which has come away from the board (the black blob at the end is floating just about a circuit track but I'm guessing this is where it should be reconnected.
First I clean up the battery gunk then I re-attach the wire to to the track on the circuit and fix the broken connections using conductive carbon glue. The original battery "-" pad is too far gone so I make a alu-foil one to go over the top (probably not the best material but it's what I had...).
It's alive. Not all is well though. It's running, keeping good time and I can set it just fine - but -The front buttons don't do anything when it's in running mode and there's no light (bulb is fine - I checked it). Also when I push the light button the display goes blank for a few seconds. Same story both in and out of the case.
I have a feeling it's got something to do with the wire from the solar cell as that's also part of the light circuit and I'm thinking it would make more sense for it to be connected directly to the "-" battery contact.
Is there any chance that someone who has one of these could take a look and see where the wire should go? I need help...
More to follow. DB
Opening it up I found this...
Nasty battery damage. The "-" contact for the battery is in a bad way. It's not connected to the chip any more (right hand circle) and there's a wire to the left coming from the solar cell which has come away from the board (the black blob at the end is floating just about a circuit track but I'm guessing this is where it should be reconnected.
First I clean up the battery gunk then I re-attach the wire to to the track on the circuit and fix the broken connections using conductive carbon glue. The original battery "-" pad is too far gone so I make a alu-foil one to go over the top (probably not the best material but it's what I had...).
It's alive. Not all is well though. It's running, keeping good time and I can set it just fine - but -The front buttons don't do anything when it's in running mode and there's no light (bulb is fine - I checked it). Also when I push the light button the display goes blank for a few seconds. Same story both in and out of the case.
I have a feeling it's got something to do with the wire from the solar cell as that's also part of the light circuit and I'm thinking it would make more sense for it to be connected directly to the "-" battery contact.
Is there any chance that someone who has one of these could take a look and see where the wire should go? I need help...
More to follow. DB