Recently I received a call from a friend of mine who said the power plug on his GPS had “fallen off inside….” and he asked if I would be interested in taking a look at it. I thought: “Cool, a chance to take apart someone else’s stuff!” Or something like that…

Once I had it in my hands it became obvious that the power plug ‘receptacle’ had become loose inside the unit, so I took out a hammer and smashed it into little pieces. heh. Kidding. Although I think that was one of Frank’s proposed solutions…

Removing the cover exposed this:

In the above image it’s not easy to determine what’s going on with the power plug, so here’s some close-ups:

And from a different angle, you can see the ‘lift’:

So, I whipped out my soldering iron and melted some solder… Here’s a closer look at what I found after lifting the plug receptacle off the PCB board:

Once the receptacle was removed, I ‘tinned’ the 4 feet that protrude from the receptacle. Then I melted the mating solder points on the PCB board. Then holding the receptacle in place, I proceeded to burn my fingers several times (solder in one hand, iron in the other, I’m lucky it was only my hands getting singed…). Eventually I found a method of leaning a light object against the receptacle so I could use both hands for soldering.

Once finished, I re-assembled and tested. Plugging in the power (male) felt solid and secure, and the unit recognized the external power source, charged batteries, etc.

Then Frank told me he had already bought another GPS… Bastard.