Cracked Saber battery base plate

[mbnv992]

Ok so I found an old Saber in my cabinet of Radio Mystery the other day. It’s a Saber 3 UHF with crappy transmit ( when you go to TX, it’s very choppy, but only when the radio is held/moved around. When the radio is perfectly still, it transmits great. Also - no issues at all with RX.

Pulled the battery off only to find the metal base plate has a very small crack in it.

A - would a cracked baseplate cause TX issues ?

B - I found a brand new OEM baseplate for a Saber on eBay. Are they difficult to install ?

Thanks !

 

[MTS2000des]

Most of the problems with the microphonics were attributed to:
-Loose modules/module pins
-Case flex contacts
Yes it's possible a damaged battery plate may be an issue, but unlikely.

Easy to install. Just loosen and remove the spanner nuts, remove the philips heads holding the contacts (be careful the rubber parts don't fly away), battery retaining latch and all should stay put, put down new base plate, reinstall all parts in reverse order.

W9CR's site has PDFs of all the service manuals with exploded views:

SABER - W9CR

wiki.w9cr.net

 

[mbnv992]

Awesome ! That’s exactly what I needed to know ! I’d hope you’d chime in this thread ! Was reading the Batlabs forums from years back and saw even back then you were very knowledgeable about Sabers / Systems Sabers. Looked high and low for “cracked baseplate” and didn’t come up with much for answers for my exact question.

This works though ! I’ll pull the case out and see if anything’s loose. If not I’ll order the baseplate and try to install it. The baseplate doesn’t come with any hardware so I’ll just reuse the hardware that’s currently on it. I remember on Batlabs reading that you need spare hardware when installing a new battery plate for some reason.

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

You might want to replace the two battery contacts while you are at it. Also clean the contacts on the base of the chassis and the mating KAPTON of the housing. All these can have poor contact and cause transmitter noise when wiggling things.