St4000 Display

[Ken Juul]

We had a bit of rain and wind on the Chesapeake on Sunday.  Chose to take a weather day rather than motor the 6 miles home into 30-40kts and 6-8' choppy seas.  I know the boat can take it (the admiral can't), the last 1/2 mile would have been the seas on the beam in a channel that is 6-8ft deep.  Real uncomfortable and chances of disaster just too high.

Anyway, powered up the nav yesterday morning for the trip home.  The St4000 went into it's belt rotation mode but did not stop.  Checked then panel, looked normal, buttons had no effect.  Disconnected the motor drive cable and sailed home.  Had an nice 8-10 kt down wind, noticed the display was cycling through fault pages, cal pages, etc. so I pulled the control panel to investigate.  The sideways rain on Sunday got me, poured a couple teaspoons of water out of it   Dried it for about 4 hours in the sun, reapplied power, get the familiar Beep, but the display is now dead and the wheel isn't driven.  Any suggestions?  Has anybody taken the control panel apart?  Any troubleshooting advice before I send it in for a rebuild?

[jmnpe]

Hi Ken,

Sorry to hear about "the bath".... A lot of the circuitry in the unit is small surface mounted components, and once water gets in there while power is applied, things tend to go bad pretty quickly with conductive paths forming across very closely spaced integrated circuit leads. Raymarine may can fix it, but techs usually won't repair water damaged equipment because it's too hard to guarantee continued performance.

Some companies offer "flat rate" repair, which usually means you get either a new ( if you are lucky...) or repaired warranty exchange unit. The good news is that that will get you a working unit for less money than buying a new one at retail.

Good luck.

John

[Jon Arck - Past C34IA Commodore]

Hi, Ken

If available, it might be less expensive to buy a rebuilt unit from Raymarine.

Good luck,
Jon

[Ken Juul]

After some careful prying the Circuit board popped out.  It is held in by a dozen pins or so.  Bunch of corrosion on the lower pins of several of the components.  WD40 and a soft toothbrush cleaned it all up.  Don't see any crossed conductive paths.  Applied power, got the back lighting back on the display so things are looking up.  Going to check with Radio Shack about the availability of a couple of the worst components. Keeping my fingers crossed that I can cobble it together until next winter then get a proper rebuild done.