It was time to do some surgery on my Garmin Edge 305 GPS unit.

In case you’re wondering: the image above is of an extremely tiny internal component of my GPS. All that detail and resolution comes straight out of the fantastic MP-E 65 mm f/2.8 1–5x lens, Canon’s gold standard for macro-photography. No microscope was required in creating this image.

This lens is my tool of choice for shooting small electronic components and MEMS devices (yes, I sometimes have to do this for a living).

(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).

This is the backside of the opened up computer.

The tools of the trade. The only special tool needed is a Torx T8 wrench (I presume the Torx screws are there to deter people from doing this), but these are readily available at e.g. Fry’s.
I further used a guitar plectrum to pry open the cases; opening up the cases and shields and undoing a bunch of small connectors is the most challenging part of the whole procedure, but some patience and calm is all that’s needed (oh yes, and taking pictures to document stuff doesn’t hurt and can help you put things back together afterwards).

Here you have both cases and metal shields spread out over my couch. I’d recommend being careful with the shields – they are very thin and easily bent.

The drives. My old Fujitsu on the left is not getting fully retired yet, as it will now serve, together with a new enclosure, as an external USB drive. And of course, the new 100GB Seagate Momentus is kicking ass as we speak!