Fixing and/or Replacing a Broken PTT Button?

Everything Else Professional Radios
1

Hey everyone,

It seems like the PTT buttons on the DTR series fail pretty regularly. I currently have six radios where the button either gets stuck or doesn’t engage at all anymore. Has anyone had any success with fixing the PTT buttons and if so, do you mind sharing how you went about it?

It seems like one of the problems is that the button comes off of the main board eventually (described here - http://www.amazon.com/review/R1HPGVQGJR6SP6/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00525ZR8I&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=1077068&store=car ) Has anyone fixed it when this has occurred?

Thank you in advance!

  • Z
2

Interesting! I hadn’t heard of that problem before. I wonder why yours are failing so much?

It hasn’t happened to me, but typically my radios are used with the speaker/mics so the PTT buttons don’t get used much.

3

The ones that are broken are a few I purchased from eBay, so I’m not sure why those particular ones broke. However, I’ve seen the problem pop up in various forums and in Amazon reviews, so was just curious if any of you encountered this too. I’m going to open them up today to see what’s going on inside and if there’s anything I can do about it.

4

Might as well. You have little to lose. Please document and photograph what you can, so we can all learn something. This forum is great for sharing good information, and this may be something we can all learn from. If they are prone to fail after years of heavy use but can be re-soldered or a simple part replaced, that would be good news.

5

So after taking a few of them apart, there seems to be three problems with the PTT.

  1. The button broke off of the main circuit board - it might be able to be re-soldered but that might be beyond my skill level for repairs. This is the example that is given in the Amazon review (I’ve included the photo from the review below as a reference, mine looked similar to his).
  2. The tension to snap the button back out is lacking because of a piece of plastic broke off from the top of the inside shell (I’ll have to take photos of this because it’ll be hard to explain otherwise).
  3. The tension to snap the button back out is low because of something else that I can’t figure out.

I’ll keep playing with them when I have some spare time (might be a week or so). In the meantime, any thoughts on these issues?

6

Appreciate the info! Any updates on a fix for this issue?

7

Unfortunately no. With the radios that exhibited issue 1 - the broken button (most of mine), I simply sent those in to Motorola for repair because my skills with soldering are low and I wasn’t sure what ends to connect correctly. With 2, that was one of the ones with 1 as an issue as well, so that went in for repair too. I don’t see any means of easy repair besides super-gluing a small support for the tension piece of plastic. With 3, I’ll have to open that one up again and play with it soon. My guess is that the tension plastic has been warped in some way.