Deconstructing the Garmin Etrex Vista
After having opened up my iBook without thrashing it I felt brave and decided it was time to perform some work on my Garmin Etrex Vista handheld GPS.
The Vista is a nice unit and I quite like it (mainly for biking and hiking) but it must be said that Garmin’s service and repair policy stinks. There is a default warranty of one year, and after the warranty has expired, you are charged a flat rate for any repair. The flat rate depends on the model and for the Vista it will set you back about $150. Right, that’s half the price of a new unit.
Now I find over and over that reliability issues with electronic devices and gadgets usually appear about right after the expiration of the warranty period - and the Vista was a prime example of this. The problem that struck me, after about a year-and-a-half of use was the following: just like the other Etrex models, the Vista sports the ‘click-stick’, a small joystick that also can be clicked (as with a computer mouse) and that is indispensible to navigate the menus and maps. So one day, the ‘north’ direction on this click-stick stopped working; that had a couple of annoying consequences, for instance, the fact that I couldn’t increase the contrast of the display any longer, or navigate, yes, north on maps any more. Some googling learned that problems with the click-stick are fairly typical. It seemed very likely that the problem was caused by some bad electrical contact and thus rather simple. No way I was going to pay $150 for this - shame on Garmin for not acting in a more customer-friendly way with a known issue like this - so the Vista was going in for surgery…
(procedure and pics in the extended post)
My partner-in-many-crimes Franz, who also has a Vista with a click-stick problem of his own (!), pointed me to this site, which, besides being a nice Garmin Etrex resource, shows how to open up the device.
First, remove the batteries; then, the rubber band that runs all around the Vista has to get off. It is glued to the unit with some rubber cement or epoxy; pry it off carefully, this isn’t too hard, just very gooey. Underneath, some sticky transparent tape is revealed that seals off the seam between the two case halves. It has to go as well; the Vista now looks like this
and the sticky mess that you must have accumulated like this:
Now the two parts of the case have to be separated. They just latch into each other, so no screws are involved. It took me some time to get it open, you just have to exercise some patience and resist the temptation to apply brute force, as the latching tabs are all plastic and not looking too strong. The tab at the bottom part of the device was playing hard-to-get on me, but a lot of wiggling around did the job.
There is a ribbon connector connecting the upper half of the case (with the display) to a board in the lower half, so when the case halves separate, care has to be taken not to rip out this ribbon; once you feel the upper case half come off, gently rotate it 180 degrees and put it down.
The ribbon should be detached by carefully pressing on the plastic latches at the edges of the connector that keeps it attached to the board in the lower case half. When you’re done, you should see this (no photo of the unit with the ribbon still connected as I didn’t have extra hands available):
Here’s a close-up of the flimsy ribbon connector - another typical problem with Vista’s is the ribbon becoming loose, so keep this in mind when you reassemble it:
Two screws attach the board with the display and the click-stick to the upper case. Undoing these reveals the probable culprit:
The click-stick is essentially a spring-loaded bidirectional switch; crap build-up and contamination on the metal surfaces is propably causing a bad electrical contact so I figured to use some contact cleaner spray on it:
It ’s also possible that the ribbon connector itself is responsible for a bad contact - the metal pads on the ribbon should be cleaned as well, and often times just the act of detaching it and then reconnecting it again may solve things. After giving the click-stick a good coat and cleaning off the excess, it was time to put things back together.
The tricky part turned out to be fixing the ribbon back to the connector in the lower case; this worked best by initially leaving the display board detached from the upper case, guiding the ribbon in the plastic connector and latching it; then, while carefully holding the board with the ribbon in the connector, the two screws fixing the display board to the upper case can be inserted - having three hands here would definitely ease things, but again, with some patience it will work.
(the photo shows the display board with the screws attached to the upper case, but it should preferably be detached of it while refitting the ribbon as it’s close to impossible to close the latch otherwise)
The rest is easy: the two case halves can be simply pressed together; at this point I tested out the device and I found myself pleasantly surprised to see that everything was working again, including the click-stick, in all directions. So it was time to wrap up and I used electrical tape to seal the seams, then put a little bit of epoxy on the rubber band and put it back on… voila, the Vista was running like new again!
Update 9/8/06: as Tim mentioned in the comments below, you can buy a new click-stick if necessary on Digikey, search for part number 401-1131-1-ND. Replacing it will require some desoldering and soldering…
Update 3/29/07: Make sure to check Tom’s comment below in case you have a problem with the connection from the LCD itself to the board (as opposed to a problem with the ribbon connector).
November 21st, 2005 at 18:09
Misschien kunt ge een link sturen naar Make?
November 22nd, 2005 at 10:57
Hi,
is the unit still as waterproof, or will opening it up possibly cause some problems ?
I have the model below this one (looks very similar) and have a problem with the little joystick too.
November 22nd, 2005 at 13:15
I tried to use epoxy on the rubber band thingy and didn’t have luck. It only stayed for about a week. I’m thinking rubber cement might be a better approach. Thoughts?
November 22nd, 2005 at 15:53
Good overview! A few of our members have eTrex Vista GPS units and will likely read this.
Thanks for documenting it!
November 22nd, 2005 at 16:55
PhastPhrog: I used insulating electrical tape that I wrapped around a couple of times - should give decent resistance to rain/water
AxsDeny: rubber cement should give better results indeed - I didn’t have it lying around so I used epoxy; what helps probably is if you try to leave as much as possible of the originial goo on the rubber band and reuse it.
November 22nd, 2005 at 20:10
Nice1 Now if someone could just write up how to add a memory card, since Garmin seems to so slow at it…
January 11th, 2006 at 12:06
Well I took mine apart to see if it was fixable. Its a real pain getting the ribbon cable back into the connector. Put it together and nope still bad, so apart it came again, tried this like 5 or 6 times and now no display.
It does though still work with the laptop, but that is no good for geocaching.
So now it sits on the shelf waiting till I can afford to send it to garmin or buy a new unit.
From what I read on another site about taking these apart the 2 halfs are supposed to be grazy glued together, I could see on one little spot where mine had been done, the rest of the unit had no glue on it.
Someone wanted to know if it was still water proof? Well I doubt it was water proof to start with, if they were I would think we would have see the unit screwed together with a rubber seal.
January 30th, 2006 at 17:27
I had trouble with mi e-trex vista, last december i was traveling across south of venezuela (Gran Sabana) the wheather was raining and the GPS did resist but I had to cross a river (Kukenan) swiming at midnight, the GPS did not resist and now i’m tryng to repair - conclusion - e-trex vista is hard rainning resistant but not river resistant
August 21st, 2006 at 15:24
Your fix saved me big bucks! I did break the tabs so I had to use superglue. If it can last 2 more years then I am happy with it … don’t mind sealing it up with superglue
September 8th, 2006 at 5:33
This part can be purchased from http://www.digikey.com the Digikey part number is 401-1131-1-ND it costs $2.10 in quantity 1 It is an ITT part P/N TPA513GLFG You will have to desolder the old part and put the new one on but that’s pretty easy.
Just type in 401-1131-1-ND into google, you’ll find it
September 9th, 2006 at 19:50
Thanks Tim, that’s a good tip…
October 17th, 2006 at 9:50
I dropped my Legend and blacked the screen out. I could down load waypoints to my computer so I knew it must just be the display. I took it apart, but couldn’t get the ribbon back in the connector so I put it in a desk drawer. While surfing, I saw you blog entry on the Vista. Your blog encouraged me to get it back out of the drawer and try again.
I was able to reinsert the cable by taking the two screws out of the LCD panel, but couldn’t get the screws back in without pulling the ribbon back out. So I left out the screws. Any tip on replacing the screws without pulling out the ribbon?
October 30th, 2006 at 9:17
@theoldman: that’s indeed the ‘crux’ of the repair and quite tricky. I needed a couple of attempts (connect cable, after this put in the screws that attach the LCD) to do this. A third hand/second person and/or using tweezers may make things easier.
January 2nd, 2007 at 6:09
First of all, thanks for posting these instructions - very very helpful. Having successfully completed the operation, I have a few valuable (I think) suggestions.
I was very careful when removing the several layers of tape - and was able to replace them instead of shaping new ones. I cut the tape at the bottom, so there is a potential weak spot re: leakage, but I don’t use my unit in the pouring rain, so I am comfortable if I am a bit more careful it should be fine.
Second, based on the discussions about the challenges of reinserting the ribbon cable I decided not to disconnect the ribbon cable - the LCD unit could be positioned off to one side so that the screws were accessible. I cleaned the unit as described in the instructions and tested it out before resealing the tape edges - it worked fine. So in my case I don’t think the connector was causing my problems with the joystick.
Ohter notes: it was not clear where to spray the contact cleaner into the joy stick - but whatever I did seemed to work.
And when opening the unit after removing the tape, it seemed like one should press in the latching tabs - however they do not bend but could easily break (as mentioned in the instructions) - next time I would try to lift the chassis over the latching tab - if that is possible
Thanks again!!
March 7th, 2007 at 17:24
Very useful instructions indeed, Thanks. I was about to purchase a new unit, but fortunately found your post and now have my GPS working again.
In my case, the problem was that the screen displayed horizontal blank lines most of the time, due a faulty connection of the ribbon cable. But I had not excessive trouble reconnecting the ribbon cable, as you mentioned, it is better to detach the LCD panel first, then I reinserted the cable and gradually pushed the latch using a thin rod while maintaining ribbon inserted.
March 15th, 2007 at 14:30
Thanks alot.
March 29th, 2007 at 7:09
Thanks very much for the helpful information. In my case, however, the problem was the connections between the actual LCD glass panel and the display circuit board (not the ribbon cable). There’s an elastomeric connector of sorts that makes these connections. The glass LCD panel and the circuit board are pressed together and connected (electrically) by an elastomeric connector. The force keeping the pieces together (electrically and mechanically) is applied by, you guessed it; yet more tape; black in this case! I was able to apply uniform (and careful) pressure to the tape thusly reestablishing the connection. Care must be taken here because the LCD glass panel is very fragile. I did not attempt to disassemble the LCD / pc board or remove or replace the tape because this section of the device is very delicate, I merely pressed the tape down. For now it works but I imagine that it may fail again in time as the tape once again looses it’s grip. I suspect that subjecting the unit to higher temperatures may hasten the failure.
After having removed the display board from the front (top) plastic shell of the unit to work on it I found it pretty easy to reassemble the unit by putting the two screws in last as was noted in the original post; this worked great and is the best way. In other words; connect the ribbon cable, orient the display board on top of the main pc board (as it would normally sit), place the plastic shell (top cover) on top, and flip the unit over so that it sits face down on the table. You can now lift the back of the unit (which is now facing up) and twist it slightly to expose the holes in the display board that accept the screws. You may have to move the display board slightly into position so that it seats properly and the screw holes line up. Use needle nose pliers to place the screws in the holes and tighten. You can then snap the case together and continue assembly.
June 12th, 2007 at 1:29
Any idea how to add a connector for an external antenna?
June 18th, 2007 at 19:39
Thanks for the info on the Garmin Etrex VIsta. I have an Etrex Legend that has a click stick that stopped moving North a few months ago. Today, (one week before I leave for vacation to geocache) the click stick (still clicks-sound), but it won’t move my cursor. I think I’m going to have my husband try and take mine apart following your instructions. Thanks.
June 21st, 2007 at 6:43
@Fred: no idea, really. Although one would be tempted to say, just hook up the external antenna in parallel to the existing one (you’ll need to find the contacts for the latter).
@Michelle: good luck with it. If it doesn’t work, you can always blame this site instead of your husband, I will probably not mind as much as him ;).
July 20th, 2007 at 19:36
Good site, thank you, it saved me 150$ for a new GPS.
I still have one issue though - rubber cement does not work well for me. What is the original goo that was used? Is is possible to buy that stuff at some place?
Thanks.
P.S. In case that you rubber band expands for some reason, and / or is too lose, I found that gluing some tennis racquet grip tape underneath works great. And unlike for the rubber band, rubber cement works great for the grip tape (cut the grip tape appropriately and glue it to the housing).
August 7th, 2007 at 22:16
@Mario: no idea. There are hundreds or thousands of different epoxies or glues out there, you could try ask someone on the Gamin (or MotionBased) user forums.
April 7th, 2008 at 10:27
Update on the switch part. As of today, the digikey part number is now 401-1130-1-ND (C&K part TPA511GLFS).
May 1st, 2008 at 6:14
Amazing! Did exactly as written and it worked!! The ribbon cable was a bear–especially the black locking thingee. The patience of JOB is required but the results are great. Getting the screws in after that were not a cake walk, especially with old hands that Author has worked on. Thanks for the great instructions.
Johnny Edmundson
July 25th, 2008 at 6:10
Scotch make a permanent double-sided tape. catalog number 137.
August 10th, 2008 at 18:26
Thanks for this page! I was just able to repair my Legend using this information. The best method of reassembly was to attach the LCD to the mainboard first, then just set the LCD loosely in the front case. Now, fold the mainboard and LCD together and gently move the mainboard to the side (still parallel to the LCD) a little bit — there is some play in the flex cable which allows this. This exposes the two clickstick screw holes. Using a magnetic screwdriver (or turning the unit upside down), you should now be able to easily reinstall the screws.