GPZ Coil Failure?

[Papasmurph]

Has anyone had any issues with their coil chip failing?

l bought a second hand 19” coil for my GPZ and it worked fine for several months and then out of the blue, it failed.

Minelab suggested that I buy a new coil. After a bit of research I decided to have a dongle made up from my 14” coil and now 12 or so months later the chip in the dongle has failed. Am I doing something wrong? Is there a problem with the detector or am I just very unlucky?

[jrbeatty]

If two chips have failed then it could be a coil problem. 

My two bob's worth anyway - 

[Northeast]

Further to what JR said, did the dongle fail when the 19" was attached or the 14"? 

If the 19" was attached and therefore has been attached whilst 2 chips have failed that would further support JR's suggestion.   

[Papasmurph]

The chip failed in the 19” coil and then in the 14”.  I’m certainly no expert and could well be wrong but chips seemed to fail in two separate coils. I would think it unlikely that both coils were faulty. 

[jrbeatty]

OK. In that case you probably need to get the detector checked out.

[geof_junk]

2 minutes ago, jrbeatty said:

OK. In that case you probably need to get the detector checked out.

And if it is the detector I would think you have a case for coil replacement if all is still in warranty period.

[Papasmurph]

Sadly, just out of warranty

[phrunt]

The chips do appear to fail sometimes, how rare it is I don't know but I'd expect it to be extremely rare, anything electronic has a chance of failure however small that failure rate is.  I bought a few coil cables not long ago from Australia that came off damaged / faulty coils, I ended up getting less than I wanted to get as one of the cables had a faulty chip causing a coil error on that particular coil, it turned out with that one the coil wasn't the fault like with the others it was the chip in the cable.   The guy didn't end up sending me that one cable as he could see it was the chip that failed not the coils like with the good cables pictured below.  I have also heard of another unmodified 14" coil's chip failing at another time too.

It wouldn't be unreasonable to think if a detector blows a chip multiple times like in your situation something external caused it like an intermittent fault with the detector or a wiring issue inside the coil such as a loose wire.  In your case though seeing you had a dongle made up to allow you to use the coil it could even be that which caused the second chip to fail and just a coincidence.

Your best option now is to buy a new coil, and if the chip fails sometime in the future with it plugged directly into the detector ruling out everything else but the detector and this will prove to you either way if it was highly likely your detector or just bad luck with the 19" coil and the adapter failure on the second chip.

One thing you didn't mention or I didn't quite understand from your post was if the dongle was connected to the 14" or 19" coil at the time of the second chip failure? I assume it was the 14" coil connected at the time and not the possibly bad 19"?

I can imagine for Minelab to try troubleshoot your detector to see if it was the cause of the coil chip damage it would be very difficult, intermittent faults are a service agents nightmare.