Loose Rods, Wobbly Rods, Rod Flex

[NCtoad]

Mine was fairly tight when I got it, but I could rotate the lower rod about 1/10 of a turn or less.  I ended up putting a small piece of electrical tape on the camlock pad and that worked for a while and then it loosened up again.  So I then put a small piece of black friction tape on top of the electrical tape and that has held fine so far.  You can definitely tell if it's shimmed enough if when tightening the camlock it starts to tighten up before turning it very much.  And, as someone mentioned above, my armcuff was slightly loose also making it feel like the lower rod was loose.  I took it apart and put a couple of wraps of electrical tape where it contacts the shaft and that fixed the looseness.  

[dewcon4414]

NCtoad..... one way to fix that is REMOVE the one button ML clip .... drill another hole and put a double button in.  That would stop the lower shaft movement and make it easier on the lock to hold it in place.   Anderson uses a double button with adjustment holes...... and a screw type lock.  

[NSC]

Yep dewcon is spot on

Another method is to replace to cam lock with a Pluggers shaft lock

[A.M]

mine was good and then i went diving...

Water pressure / drag on the shaft and now when I swing on dry land I get a clean flick at the end of the swing;  as if the lock was not tight..

Will make my own CF shaft but in the short term some minor re manufacturing and all will be good.

I have also repaired both my charging leads and looking at modding the handle... The control module chews the daylight out of my hand..

So while ML may do well with repairs, I can not afford 3 weeks or more every time it has a fault.   Takes a week for postage, then they have to find the time to look at it and then send back...  Postage costs too boot.

After sending back 2  ProFind35's I am asking for a Profind25 as a replacement.. Postage costs are just pathetic...

 

[SittingElf]

2 hours ago, A.M said:

After sending back 2  ProFind35's I am asking for a Profind25 as a replacement.. Postage costs are just pathetic...

 

1

What were the issues with the 35's?

[FredC]

Just assembled my 800 and both upper and lower cam locks leave shaft rotation even when fully tightened. I have wrapped several layers of polyprop tape around the shafts and now there is zero rotation. What are Minelab doing to effect a permanent fix?

[TedinVT]

My thoughts on the pretty poor cam lock design and shaft wobble...  Definitely wobbles a bit when hunting in the water due to the drag torque created by moving the coil and shaft through the water.  Not quite so bad when land hunting.  I see the wobble problem where the middle shaft mates with the upper shaft.  It appears that the cam lock design has in internal stop that only lets you tighten the cam lock to a certain fixed point then stops.  It doesn't allow you to tighten the lock any further - possibly to keep users from deforming the shaft diameter??.  If the "nub" in the cam lock was a little thicker (some of you are adding material to make it thicker) that would help.  Alternatively, if the shaft where the "nub" makes contact were a hair larger in diameter (without hindering detector assembly), that might help.  When I get home from my Gulf of Mexico vacation (still without the elusive WP headphones ) I'm going to try putting some of that aluminum tape they use for taping forced hot air furnace duct joints (not the cloth duct tape) around the part of the shaft that the "nub" makes contact with and possibly the whole length of the necked down section of the middle shaft.  Hopefully it will not be too thick that the shaft sections can't be mated and stiff enough that it won't compress when the cam lock is tightened.

[Chase Goldman]

Seems the "wobbly rod" issue is evolving...in a good way.  A couple of users on TNET have reported that ML is now just asking for the middle rod vice the entire detector to be sent in for repair.  The users report that the replacement rod appears to have a slightly larger diameter and the camlock has better engagement.  Either a design change has been implemented or there are a few different compatible designs that ML was using and now they are centering on a design that works best.  I base that supposition on the fact I and many others have had no issues to date and ML is not opting to do a general recall just a fix as you find them approach.  Sounds less likely that is was a quality control issue unless it was a quality issue with a subtier supplier of rods.  Hard to really tell looking from the outside in, but it does sound like ML is getting a "handle" on it.  {Pun intended).

[Nuke em]

How come it happens on some machines and not others ? Both mine are good . Surely they are made in the same place ?

[Chase Goldman]

Just speculation:  One possibility is that they may order the rod stock in bulk from multiple subtiers that manufacture them to a ML spec. The spec may have tolerances due to the machining process involved and one guy may either be making them not to spec, or cheating to the small side, who knows.  ML may have revised the spec to tighten up on the tolerances or as ceased getting them from the guy who was making inferior product. Or it could be an issue with tooling inside of ML's own facility where one line had a machine that was undersizing the rods.  There are a number of possibilities.