Frank_Hassa
Member
I've learned a lot from this forum and have a sense of gratitude and because of this I would like to try to give something back. So I'm going to document how I solved the problem of my bad beeper/buzzer, with photos, showing my own "twist", which involves a hot glue gun.
The first thing I did was to decide that I was NOT going to pay $17.50 for the gen-U-ine Floyd Bell OEM buzzer, and then pay another $17.50 for shipping. I started to order the Radio Shack buzzer online, but their website is a disfunctional mess, and it scared me off, so I bought 3 buzzers from the brick and mortar store up the street for less than $20.00. (Two for each of my SeaDoos, and a 3rd as a backup extra.)
Because I have some USMC experience in electronics repair (they taught us to solder to NASA specs), I wanted all the connections to the buzzer to be soldered, and water-tight. So I soldered the wires to the buzzer and then to the SeaDoos wiring harness. Don't have any pictures showing this.
I used two layers of heat shrink. The black standard heat shrink was to act as insulation for the soldered wire connections, and also to fill-out the repaired area because I wasn't sure how tight the red, waterproof heatshrink would shrink.
The red heat shrink was ordered special from eBay ($5.00 for 4 ft.). It has a thin layer of "hot glue" inside it, so that when the heat shrink heats, the glue melts, fills the void inside the heat shrink (with glue) and prevents any water from entering and causing corrosion. I made the red pieces longer than the black pieces so that they would enclose and block off the whole repaired area and make it waterproof, to the greatest extent possible.
I was also able to shove the red heat shrink over the 3 metal tabs of the beeper, leaving only 1/16" gap of silver metal showing. This gap bothered me, as water could get to the metal and cause it to corrode, until last night I found a 40 watt hot glue gun on clearance at Walmart for $5.50. The light bulb went off and the problem of those 3 gaps of 1/16" was solved.
My wife uses a "low temperature" hot glue gun for crafts work, and I thought about using it to try to waterproof those gaps, but the temperature is so low that the working time is only about 3 seconds before the glue gets hard. The low temp glue guns operate at 10 watts.
In contrast, the high-temp glue gun is 40 watts and the first thing I did was test the glue's working time by squirting a blob on a piece of scrap wood and then started sticking my finger in it every 4 seconds or so. The glue was still HOT and sticky after the 3rd time burning myself and so I figured that was long enough to get it to do what I needed.
So I squirted 3 blobs on the 3 blade connections, covered the gaps with glue and the were all watertight! (At least I hope so.)
This is where inspiration took hold. Because the Radio Shack beeper is about 3/16" larger in diameter than the OEM beeper, it will not mount in between the two black plastic posts (one with a clip), with the narrow end of the beeper inserted into the hole with the little "sound holes" in it. I'd been thinking about how I wanted to mount the beeper. Lots of people said to just use "zip strips", but I didn't like that idea because it seemed sloppy and half-assed.
So after the huge success of the 40 watt, high-temp glue gun, I started thinking about other ways in which it could be used, and I decided that I could cut those two plastic posts off, insert the Radio Shack buzzer into the hole, and if I had a massively huge ring of hot glue around it, it would stick in that hole and not come out.
THEN I decided to go Full Retard and cut the end off the buzzer, so as to maximize the sound the beeper made, by removing an unnecessary plastic obstacle in the sound's path. After cutting it off, I learned that the part that beeps (the "speaker") is a metal plate that seems to be glued from the other side. So that's the only piece of metal facing water. I briefly thought of lining it with plastic, or using a plastic gasket or something, but decided not to because I'd already gone full retard and I don't think they've invented increments of retarded past 100% yet. Maybe someday. Something to look forward to.
Anyways, just as I envisioned it, it worked out. I blobbed a massive ring of hot glue at the base of the narrow side of the beeper, stuff it into the hole, held it there for about 10 seconds and then let it sit untouched for about 60 seconds. Tested it with my finger and the glue was STILL hot and tacky. Primary point here is that the 40 watt hot glue gun gives you PLENTY of working time.
So it's glued in there solid now. I just checked it. Thing about this hot glue is, if you REALLY want to pull the buzzer off, it will tear off, and you can take a builder's knife blade and sandpaper and scrape and sand an area clean so that you can reglue it again.
Okay that's it. Hope this is useful to someone else.
The first thing I did was to decide that I was NOT going to pay $17.50 for the gen-U-ine Floyd Bell OEM buzzer, and then pay another $17.50 for shipping. I started to order the Radio Shack buzzer online, but their website is a disfunctional mess, and it scared me off, so I bought 3 buzzers from the brick and mortar store up the street for less than $20.00. (Two for each of my SeaDoos, and a 3rd as a backup extra.)
Because I have some USMC experience in electronics repair (they taught us to solder to NASA specs), I wanted all the connections to the buzzer to be soldered, and water-tight. So I soldered the wires to the buzzer and then to the SeaDoos wiring harness. Don't have any pictures showing this.
I used two layers of heat shrink. The black standard heat shrink was to act as insulation for the soldered wire connections, and also to fill-out the repaired area because I wasn't sure how tight the red, waterproof heatshrink would shrink.
The red heat shrink was ordered special from eBay ($5.00 for 4 ft.). It has a thin layer of "hot glue" inside it, so that when the heat shrink heats, the glue melts, fills the void inside the heat shrink (with glue) and prevents any water from entering and causing corrosion. I made the red pieces longer than the black pieces so that they would enclose and block off the whole repaired area and make it waterproof, to the greatest extent possible.
I was also able to shove the red heat shrink over the 3 metal tabs of the beeper, leaving only 1/16" gap of silver metal showing. This gap bothered me, as water could get to the metal and cause it to corrode, until last night I found a 40 watt hot glue gun on clearance at Walmart for $5.50. The light bulb went off and the problem of those 3 gaps of 1/16" was solved.
My wife uses a "low temperature" hot glue gun for crafts work, and I thought about using it to try to waterproof those gaps, but the temperature is so low that the working time is only about 3 seconds before the glue gets hard. The low temp glue guns operate at 10 watts.
In contrast, the high-temp glue gun is 40 watts and the first thing I did was test the glue's working time by squirting a blob on a piece of scrap wood and then started sticking my finger in it every 4 seconds or so. The glue was still HOT and sticky after the 3rd time burning myself and so I figured that was long enough to get it to do what I needed.
So I squirted 3 blobs on the 3 blade connections, covered the gaps with glue and the were all watertight! (At least I hope so.)
This is where inspiration took hold. Because the Radio Shack beeper is about 3/16" larger in diameter than the OEM beeper, it will not mount in between the two black plastic posts (one with a clip), with the narrow end of the beeper inserted into the hole with the little "sound holes" in it. I'd been thinking about how I wanted to mount the beeper. Lots of people said to just use "zip strips", but I didn't like that idea because it seemed sloppy and half-assed.
So after the huge success of the 40 watt, high-temp glue gun, I started thinking about other ways in which it could be used, and I decided that I could cut those two plastic posts off, insert the Radio Shack buzzer into the hole, and if I had a massively huge ring of hot glue around it, it would stick in that hole and not come out.
THEN I decided to go Full Retard and cut the end off the buzzer, so as to maximize the sound the beeper made, by removing an unnecessary plastic obstacle in the sound's path. After cutting it off, I learned that the part that beeps (the "speaker") is a metal plate that seems to be glued from the other side. So that's the only piece of metal facing water. I briefly thought of lining it with plastic, or using a plastic gasket or something, but decided not to because I'd already gone full retard and I don't think they've invented increments of retarded past 100% yet. Maybe someday. Something to look forward to.
Anyways, just as I envisioned it, it worked out. I blobbed a massive ring of hot glue at the base of the narrow side of the beeper, stuff it into the hole, held it there for about 10 seconds and then let it sit untouched for about 60 seconds. Tested it with my finger and the glue was STILL hot and tacky. Primary point here is that the 40 watt hot glue gun gives you PLENTY of working time.
So it's glued in there solid now. I just checked it. Thing about this hot glue is, if you REALLY want to pull the buzzer off, it will tear off, and you can take a builder's knife blade and sandpaper and scrape and sand an area clean so that you can reglue it again.
Okay that's it. Hope this is useful to someone else.
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