Still Garmin Colorado 400T water leakage problem

docjames · Occasional Visitor Joined: Nov 03, 2008 Posts: 2

In October, 2009 I posted " I live in Taiwan. I bought a Colorado 400T during June 2008. I used it for navigation during jetskiing (attached to the handle bar with it's handlebar mount) from the main island to nearby smaller island. During my first ride only 2 days after it was purchased, we ran into a Beaufort number 7-8 wind and one of a friend's jetski perished along with a father and his son. It was a headline news here. Luckily, I had the GPS and I must admit it saved my life. However, after I reached the island just 34 Km from the starting point, the GPS died on me. I later found out that night, water had gone into the battery compartment. I had it sent in for repair and Garmin was kind enough to replace a new one for me. After a very careful inspection, I found a flaw in its design. The O-ring (seal) that suppose to keep the water out would be squished upward whenever I tried sliding the case up. That's why so many of you are having trouble getting the cover completely slide up. If you take a very close look, after the O-ring was pushed up, there are detached parts of the O-ring (supposely glued to it's bottom) that separates and allow water to seep in. I believei it's a design flaw and the company should solve this problem. The only way I can make sure that won't happen again is to buy some camera O-ring grease and allow the case to slide more smoothly so the O-ring won't detach and get squished together. Unlike Garmin's previous water proof GPS, they were manufactured so that the back plate was placed over the seal and tightened by screws. In that way, there's no sliding force on a dry detachable O-ring seal. Lastly, after using the grease, it's hell trying to remove the greased sticky sliding case off for battery replacement. I'm going to wipe the grease off completely days before the warrantee rans out and take another trip on my jetski. I'm sure water will get in and I'll get this GPS replaced with a new one. Come to think of it, it really angers me that Garmin doesn't even make a sound addressing to this problem.

Dr. James M. Shih docjames1098@hotmail.com "

It's a new season for riding jetskis. I went to a nice GPS store where I purchased the Colorado and told them the defect still exist. I really would like for them to exchange the Oregon for me and gladly pay for the price difference. A Mr. Lu, technical director answer the phone and told me that the Colorado is waterproof to the IC board and is waterproof, period, even without the back cover. So I told him that I'll challenge him and put the unit without cover in a cup of water. He told me go ahead and said if it dies, he'll replace a new one for me. Well, it took 3 seconds to kill the unit. Now, I want to address the seal problem again. It's defective. Everytime the cover is slide up the unit, the seal would get drier from the grease they had put on and after a couple times, the seal would detached and water would get it. I told him I'll be riding off shore every weekend from now on. If he doesn't let me make an exchage for the Oregon, which had fixed the problem using a non-sliding cover, they will be replacing a unit just about every single week for me. Guess what Mr. Lu told me? He said if that's the only way to let his company know that this problem exist, I should go ahead and try. Well, I have to warn everybody, if anyone uses this unit expecting it's waterproof function. Don't buy it. I have less than 2 months of warrantee, and I expect they will be replacing at least 8 units before I ran out of warrantee and buy a different model. They have already replaced the unit 2 times for me due to this defect during my last days of riding last year. They'll be expecting to replace more. Oregon is a great leap of fix on this matter. It looks the same, but the cover is not sliding, it presses on to the seal and will not allow water into the unit.
This company's got many hard headed people that just won't acknowledge to a simple problem.

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