Slight leak.

[ivakdiver]

[h=2]Slight Leak and maintenance[/h]

I had a small amount of salt water leak into the battery compartment of a YS D1 strobe. Dried it out, checked itover and it is functional. But,nsome corrosion noticeable around the terminals at bottom of compartment. Any suggestions to prevent further corrosion. A bit of WD 40 on a Qtip? Trying to a avoid sending it to Sea and Sea.​

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[emoreira]

WD40 will do the work. Remove all the oxide of the terminals with a small sand paper and spread WD40.
Dry the excess of WD40, specially where the o-ring goes.
and finnaly, review where the water enters.

 

[Larry C]

You can clean them with vinegar, contact cleaner, etc. Eventually, they may still corrode and need replacement. Sea & Sea repair outlets can replace the contacts for typically about $150 including replacing the cap. Eventually, you'll find that with good batteries, you find your status light not lighting and have to take the batteries out and clean the contacts with a glass fiber brush or a little fine abrasive before reinstalling the batteries and having the strobe work. That's when you'll need new contacts. Mine eventually wouldn't work even when cleaned because the screws holding them in place were too corroded to pass the amount of energy needed to charge the capacitors quickly. That's when I took it in for service.

 

[sooke]

Always store your strobes with all battery caps loose so you don't crush the O rings.

 

[KeithG]

Had my first battery leak this week on one of my ys110. I noticed a bubble coming from the battery cap about half way through the dive. At first I thought it was just some trapped air since it was very small. But the bubbles continued. Strobe still worked fine. Once I realized the truth I turned the strobe off and continued the dive. Back on the boat I dumped the batteries and black goo out of the fully flooded compartment and flushed the battery compartment with fresh water, then filled it with fresh water and recapped it. Back on land I dried it thoroughly, popped a new set of batteries in and was good to go. Just a small bit of corrosion on the t connector in the bottom of the battery well.

Having a sealed battery compartment is a very useful design feature.

Cause was most likely user error fitting the cap as the strobe worked fine on later dives.

 

[bvanant]

Eventually, as Larry says, unless you can get all of the corrosion off (and that means taking it apart completely, you will need to get the terminals and cap replaced. The cap is expensive since it has a teflon separator in it to allow battery off gas to escape.
Bill