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Leaky Spectra Cap

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Muxlow

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Got this radio from a user on here little while ago. Turned it on and had a fail 001
So it sat around doing nothing.. Decided to try and fix it tonight.. After reading around i found the leaky cap problem. Sooafter a look under the hood.. Seems i have that problem

Can anyone on here fix this for me? (in ontario would be good) Or.. Is it something i could do myself with the rite parts?

Here is 2 shots of the board
 

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jim202

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I am not sure that all that you are showing us in the photos is due to leaking caps. Some of it
almost looks like someone has done a repair to the circuit board and didn't clean up after the solder job.
With that said, there are a number of people around that do service work on the Spectra radios. You
might take a look on the batlabs chat site at HTTP://batboard.batlabs.com and look at some of the
selections there. Off the top of my head, I don't know if any of the repair jocks are in Canada.

Jim



Got this radio from a user on here little while ago. Turned it on and had a fail 001
So it sat around doing nothing.. Decided to try and fix it tonight.. After reading around i found the leaky cap problem. Sooafter a look under the hood.. Seems i have that problem

Can anyone on here fix this for me? (in ontario would be good) Or.. Is it something i could do myself with the rite parts?

Here is 2 shots of the board
 

Muxlow

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Hmm.. If its been fixed before i have no idea. When i got it came with the fail.
ANd i cant get onto batlabs.. My user name no longer works.. and it wont let me make a new account due to my email address. Yahoo and hotmail dont work
 

W8RW

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The photo of your board looks a lot like the example given in the write-up on repeaterbuilder for leaking cap damage. Notice how the green solder mask is eaten away. The problem is you might also have damage to inner traces in the printed circuit board. So, you can probably find someone to replace the caps, but that might not fix the radio. Repairing inner traces requires board artwork that is not normally provided in the service manual, or a lot of detective work with a schematic and ohmmeter.

The instructions from repeaterbuilder on how to fix the problem are pretty explicit, but no one else knows how good your soldering skills are. My experience has been that you have to be very careful when removing the old capacitors because it is very easy to delaminate the copper traces from the printed circuit board.
 

Muxlow

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I noticed that too when i took the pix.. That they sure do look liked the ones from repeaterbuilder.
My friends is a electronics wiz. So im going to have him fix it up for me. Is there any places in ontario i can get the parts at that we need to fix it up?
 

Muxlow

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On a side note.. How can i upgrade the firmware from 521 to 6?
And enable zone operation on my radio. Has trunking and all that but cant find how to get the flashcode to see whats all on it
 

zz0468

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On a side note.. How can i upgrade the firmware from 521 to 6?

Change the MLM board to one with 6.something.

And enable zone operation on my radio. Has trunking and all that but cant find how to get the flashcode to see whats all on it

That radio won't do flash upgrades. Reading the radio with RSS will tell you what it has. If you have lab RSS, you can sometimes turn features on via moflags.
 

MOTOROLANUT

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caps

Ditto on Will from Batlabs, He has fixed at least five spectras for me in the past years. Will is excellent in the repair and realignment field. And most important REASONABLY PRICED...LOL
 

jim202

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If the bat board site won't let you make a new ID due to your email address, that may be an
indication that you use to be on the group before and violated their rules. You got yourself
bared from the site.

On the subject of version 6, it is not a software thing, but the version of the firmware on
the MLM board that holds the internal RAM memory software in the radio. The way you
upgrade to a higher version is to physically replace the plug in MLM board. Then you
might even have to obtain a codeplug of a radio that had zone in it. I have done this
to a couple of radios that I currently use.

Word of experience, is to put down on paper each zone and the channels you want in
the zones before you even start trying to change the modes or channels in the radio.
You can loose your place real fast when reprogramming the Spectra. It is not very
user friendly in helping you keep track where you are while programming it.

You can also set up the scan in the radio at the same time you playing with the mode
input. Again, make sure you put it all down on paper prior to working on programming
the radio. The radio will let you have a different scan list for each channel in the radio.
I set mine up with the priority channel as the selected channel and went from there.
the other channels you want to scan would almost fall into place once you get the
hang of what your doing.

Jim



Hmm.. If its been fixed before i have no idea. When i got it came with the fail.
ANd i cant get onto batlabs.. My user name no longer works.. and it wont let me make a new account due to my email address. Yahoo and hotmail dont work
 

boomboy64

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If the bat board site won't let you make a new ID due to your email address, that may be an
indication that you use to be on the group before and violated their rules. You got yourself
bared from the site.

Don't panic, you probably aren't banninated... Because of spam abuse a while back, they turned off registrations for anyone trying to use a "generic" e-mail (HOTMAIL, YAHOO, GMAIL, etc.). To register, you have to use a "real" e-mail address (ISP or Company, etc.). Once in though, you can change it back to your heart's content.

Cheers,
 
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