Long shot on a blast from the past-BC2500/3000XLT

[Falcon9h]

I picked up a Bearcat BC3000XLT for shts and giggles-I always wanted to find one of these since I never laid eyes on one new-and of course the battery's shot. I'd like to restuff it.

Do you have the specs on what cells it's stuffed with? Very weird 3/4" long ~CR123 diameter. I can do the job if I can get the cells. The battery is NLA at any aftermarket outfit I checked and one greedy seller on ebay wanted 65.00. Uhhh.. no! Paid that for two of these scanners together.

I'm running it on the wallwart and the thing works great on airband, especially.

Thanks for any help you can offer!

 

[Falcon9h]

Welp... I stand corrected. Any oldtimers familiar with these? (I'm one and I'm not🙄)
Anyways ... battery shows full 6-7v at the contacts. Radio doesn't power up. I plug in the wallwart. Imagine my shock at seeing 15v at the battery terminals, but the scanner works fine on that!
So... a regulator or something quit and I got lucky that the radio didn't cook? Or some hack kludge mod to make the thing run on 15v? That's 3X what it's designed to run on.
I'm no component level anything so I'm stumped, completely.

 

[pro92b]

Your 15V measurement is normal for an unloaded direct connection to the Uniden AD70U AC adapter. The radio has an internal voltage regulator that is active when the AC adapter is providing power. Measuring the battery voltage with no load does not test its capability to provide enough load current to run the radio. I think you have a dead battery and that is the only problem.

 

[6079smithw]

This may help... 2x 6V 1100mAh Battery for Uniden BP-2500 BP-2500H BC2500XLT BC3000XLT UBC2500XLT | eBay

I had one way back. Great unit, lost it in a cellar flood.

 

[Falcon9h]

I snagged a 3000xlt on ebay also today. Came with two batteries..they work fine. Something is wrong with the regulator in the original battery.
In addition, volume is extremely poor with the 3000. Havr to turn it up all the way to hear anything.
Any idea for that?

 

[pro92b]

There isn't a regulator in the battery pack. The radio is 30 years old and so are the original battery packs. Bad cells are likely in a battery pack that old.

 

[Falcon9h]

There isn't a regulator in the battery pack. The radio is 30 years old and so are the original battery packs. Bad cells are likely in a battery pack that old.

View attachment 170710

Thanks for the clarification... the batteries I got with the second radio work fine so it's a moot point. The first pack I mentioned was already stuffed with what looked to be newer cells from Batteries of America and they were showing full voltage(couldn't check them under load) so that threw me off.
The 2500 works flawlessly. So does the 3000 but the very poor volume really irks me. Do you know if that's the nature of it or whether there might be a problem? The 2500 has good volume for its era.

 

[pro92b]

Sometimes low audio volume can be caused by old dried-out coupling capacitors. Unfortunately the only commonly available service manual on the web is for the UBC3000XLT and there are pages missing for the audio circuit schematic. The circuit board pictorial below does identify the audio chip as a TDA7233D. The output capacitor is likely C229, both marked in the image below. These are all surface mounted parts which can be hard to deal with if you have no experience with them. Replacing C229 might restore the volume but that's just a guess.

 

[Falcon9h]

Sometimes low audio volume can be caused by old dried-out coupling capacitors. Unfortunately the only commonly available service manual on the web is for the UBC3000XLT and there are pages missing for the audio circuit schematic. The circuit board pictorial below does identify the audio chip as a TDA7233D. The output capacitor is likely C229, both marked in the image below. These are all surface mounted parts which can be hard to deal with if you have no experience with them. Replacing C229 might restore the volume but that's just a guess.

View attachment 170774

Ah! Looks like the ones I see as soon as I remove the cover.And tantalum caps were known to go bad. I'm pretty good so I'm sure I have something I can squeeze in there. Thanks 👍👍👍

 

[buddrousa]

2nd thing is That Scanner uses wideband 12.5 with 4kz deviation new analog systems are 6.25 with about 2kz of deviation less audio

 

[Falcon9h]

Sometimes low audio volume can be caused by old dried-out coupling capacitors. Unfortunately the only commonly available service manual on the web is for the UBC3000XLT and there are pages missing for the audio circuit schematic. The circuit board pictorial below does identify the audio chip as a TDA7233D. The output capacitor is likely C229, both marked in the image below. These are all surface mounted parts which can be hard to deal with if you have no experience with them. Replacing C229 might restore the volume but that's just a guess.

View attachment 170774

Oh, man-I owe you one! I replaced C229+223 and audio now is appropriately loud... thanks, ever so much!

 

[Falcon9h]

2nd thing is That Scanner uses wideband 12.5 with 4kz deviation new analog systems are 6.25 with about 2kz of deviation less audio

In the display WFM or NFM will come up but I think they meant as in broadcast WFM and in comparison what was NFM at the time was not today's NFM. Regardless, the thing works good.

 

[buddrousa]

Yes the Wideband in the 3000 is the same as my 8500 50Kz FM Broadcast Band