| Re: How often has your Inspo been serviced?
Alex,
I had mine serviced just a short while ago, but it was the first time in four years. Normally AP wouldnt get their sticky paws on it unless it had a problem that only they could fix. This time sent it in because I am a lazy get and wanted then to sort out the black crap on the connectors and rubber stamp its condition.
Here’s the background;
My old girl is a classic of the 2002 (ish) pedigree and when I bought it, I was told it had never been in to AP for a service. There again, it had never missed a beat so never needed to….. according to the previous owner. just under two years later in my care and the story is not much different. 150 dives without the electrickery missing a beat and I formed a soft spot for those controllers.
So this is where the story starts.
Some months ago the back lighting started to fail, slowly at first and only on one handset. Not entirely a shock to me and completely unconcerned except for the potential loss in resale value should I ever decide to dispose of it.
One fantastic day on the Farnes and a flawless 137 mins of bottom time later I got back in the RIB and went home. At home I washed it off as I do every week in the workshop and decided it was time to replace a cell (date related only). Changed one out and fired up the controllers. Only one of them didn’t fire up. Bollox!
I stripped it out and re-terminated the power supply, pulled out the controllers from the housings and tested the microswitches. All good, working fine but the molex connectors were a bit black and I decided to bite the bullet and send it in to AP for a quick service.
Tony got hold of it at AP and confirmed the repair work was good and a service would be fine with the addition of a new solenoid as the old one was no longer suitable for oxygen service due to degradation. Two days later, a call to Tony revealed that I had two cracked handsets. I was surprised for sure but it was explained that the handset housings are pressure tested and the flaws were very small indeed.
a day or two later I got an email from Zoe explaining that;
“Tony has now completed the service on your lid. Unfortunately, during the final test the comps went Master / Master, but we had a compatible handset, so only 1 new module was needed to get everything in working order.”
Having never had any electronics failures to date, I must assume that the testing AP carry out would highlight any potential weaknesses. I should have asked for a brief resume of the tests that were carried out in the hope that we can benefit in safety from that knowledge. It's likely that we wouldnt learn anything new though. Make you own minds up about it.
The head did come back with some welcome revisions, such as a new battery box with different termination's, a rubber gasketed battery cover and such like.
The bill was painful though.
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