720/730 920/930 Battery Replacement Tutorial - Discussion

[pippip]

All went well uutil gently removing battery, it explodeded, flames shooting out.

 

[dhn]

Welcome....sorry to hear that. Are you ok? Is the unit ok?

 

[marksbg]

Just wanted to drop my 2 cents worth in here to say thanks for the doc, have archived it for later use.. much later I hope as I only got my unit at Christmas. but thanks a lot anyway, should help down the track some. Have to go look now and see how hard it is to pickup the right battery in Australia

Mark.

 

[dhn]

Check out this site. It's based in Oz!

 

[marksbg]

Cheers mate, good call! same part number as per the doc too! Hopefully I'll not need it anytime soon but doing the research now saves me running around like a headless chook when the time does come

Many Thanks,
Mark.

 

[penfoldteddy]

Hi, thanks for the info. I have a Tomtom 930T with battery failure, part number on the original battery is the same as yours, except mine has got some circuitry before the 3 pin connection, is this part of the battery or is it a modification, do you have any suggestions that could help please.

many thanks

 

[ollie]

I just ordered my new battery for my Go720 last Friday, nervously awaiting the arrival but after reading and looking at the instructions Canderson gave us I do feel a LITTLE more settled, a little apprehensive tho.

Will the unit still work even if the battery is completely dead when plugged into my computer or automobile lighter socket? I was told ,or read somewhere, that if you keep your unit on the docking station 24/7 it will ruin the battery life much quicker, any truth to that? Appreciate any response I may receive from you VERY knowledgeable people here. Thanks....

 

[dhn]

Keeping it docked does not ruin the battery.

 

[ollie]

Thanks dhn....

 

[ollie]

just received my battery pack and proceded to install. Following the excellent directions Canderson provided I did run into a problem, I don't know how to take the "Mic" wire connector off which will enable me to seperate the two pieces. I am afraid to pull or tug on anything too hard. I did send Canderson a PM and am awaiting his reply.

Looks like my PM did not go out to Canderson, tried twice but no go.....

 

[THX]

I found this Forum through Google the other week, when the battery on my Go 720 started to fail and I was in need of some help.

I downloaded the tutoral on how to do it, ordered a battery "?10"... and a torx tool "?5"... through e-bay and gave it a go.

Stripped it down, as per the instructions. Gently eased off the battery (After draing all the power out of it after seeing the "my sat nav went up in flames" post).

A bit of double sided tape fixed the new battery into place, a quick rebuild of the unit, and after a few hours on charge its as good as new. Checking online I found that dealers were asking fo ?60 to replace a battery, so this forum has already saved me ?45......So I thought I had better join, and maybe I could help someone else out in future as a way of paying something back.

 

[dhn]

Welcome to TTF! Glad things worked out for you.

 

[Arno]

All went well uutil gently removing battery, it explodeded, flames shooting out.

Interesting post came up today in a modeling group where a fellow had a 6 cell battery which wasn't working well. Upon testing he found five cells to be 0.8 volt and the sixth -0.15 (yes, that is minus). The threads been running for a bit and since our cells are Li-ion I thought this may be interesting.

The lithium cells I was referring to are the rechargeable ones. Most
non-hobbyist folk use them but never see them. There are many
variations, but Li-ion (lithium ion) and Li-po (lithium polymer) are the
most common, and are built into mobile phones, cameras, computers and so
on. If a cell in one of these batteries becomes sufficiently out of
sync with the others it is irreparably damaged. If the battery is then
connected to a normal type of battery charger, where the charging
voltage is applied to the usual load connections at the two ends of the
battery, there's a goodly chance of a fire. They are often used in
conjunction with electronic monitoring circuits, sometimes built into
the battery pack, which ensure they cannot be discharged to the point of
damage, and usually re-charged nowadays with chargers that balance the
cells. Many small consumer items that incorporate lithium power only
need a single cell anyway.

 

[Arno]

Microsoft Office 2007 Viewer

I received this eMail notification of a 16:49h EST post and clicking the link it put me in this thread but it may have been moved or it may have been deleted by the author.

ImcI has just replied to a thread you have subscribed to entitled - 720/730 920/930 Battery Replacement Tutorial - in the TomTom Tweak Discussion forum of TomTomForums.com - TomTom & GPS Navigation Community.

This thread is located at:
https://www.tomtomforums.com/tomtom...30-battery-replacement-tutorial-new-post.html

Here is the message that has just been posted:
***************
Here is the battery change tutorial in DOCX (Office 2007) format which is only 417k (yes, kilobytes) instead of the original 4Mb DOC format.
***************

Microsoft has a free (Windows) MSWord viewer for the new DOCX here and for Powerpoint PPSX, PPTX and POTX here.
The viewers work even if there is no previous version of any of the MS Office programmes on the machine.

 

[GarCor]

A follow up an the battery replacement for go 920 & 920T verses other Go units

The AHL03713100 is a replacement battery compatible with TomTom Go 920 (4M00.900), Go 920T (4M00.900), XL 330, XL 330S,

Were as

The AHL03714000 is a replacement for the Go 520 (4M00.001), Go 530, Go 530 Live, Go 630 (4CJ6.000.00, 4CH6.000.00), Go 720 (4M00.002, 4M00.006), Go 730 (4CH7.000), 730T (4CH7.000), Go 740 (4CF7.002.010), Go 740 Live, Go 930 (4CH9.000), 930T (4CH9.000), Go 940 (4CF9.002.010), Go 940 Live

I thought ether would work in all Go units as the spects are the same ( both are lithium Ion 3.7V 1300mAh ) but according to tech support from BatteryShip.com they are different,

 

[mikebarnes0_0]

720 battery replacement

A most useful manual. Over the last 6 decades I picked apart many things I had never opened before and mostly reassembled them in reverse order. However, I am certain that without this manual, I would have been flummoxed. I don’t think I broke the record of 15 minutes. Batterymill highly recommended, I thought I had every tool known to man but found I was sadly lacking in the Tom Tom disassembly range.
Many thanks!
A couple of observations.
It is not strictly necessary to remove the display unit flex cable and mic cable (Step #3). There is enough flexibility to access the 4 screws (step #4). I did not.
Magnetising the tool and screw aids reassembly.
How pleased I am not to be a Tom Tom battery replacement operative!

 

[canderson]

just received my battery pack and proceded to install. Following the excellent directions Canderson provided I did run into a problem, I don't know how to take the "Mic" wire connector off which will enable me to seperate the two pieces. I am afraid to pull or tug on anything too hard. I did send Canderson a PM and am awaiting his reply.

Looks like my PM did not go out to Canderson, tried twice but no go.....

Problem with comms was mine, Ollie. Sent you back a PM today.

As for the small connector, you'll need to draw it out as though you were pulling on the wires. NOTE that I said "as though", as that's surely not how you want to do it. That's just an indication of the direction of travel to remove the connector. Grabbing the side flanges of the wired connector and pulling will get it done, but it is a fairly decent fit. If you're careful, you can work it out one side at a time, bit by bit, with a very thin blade screwdriver. I keep my nails a bit long for stripping wire and pulling connectors and such, and grabbed it that way.

 

[canderson]

Thank you for posting the replacement procedure, very well done. I have a question if you don't mind. When I ordered from Batteryship.com they told me that the battery you listed was not for the 720 and to order 1697461 which is a CS-TM730SL 3.7 1300mah Lithium Polymer. It seems that it's rated the same as yours. Anyhow I installed it with no problems. Before installing the 720 would last only about 30-40 minutes when on battery only. Now it lasts 1.25 to 1.5 hrs with no voice and just sitting still in one position. So my question is how long does yours last now that you have replaced the battery? My reason for asking this questions is that I'm using it for Geocaching in town.

Thanks again
riverjamie

The ones I purchased through batteryship.com show a "Model Number" of CS-TM920SL on their face and at the time I ordered, was the recommended unit under their P/N AHL03713100. It's what I installed in my 720 with good result. NO electronics between the battery pack and the 3 pin connector, just like the original.

Just took a look at their site, and now for some reason, the AHL03713100 shows up for the 920 and XL330 and XL330S models. I can't find any real difference between them apart from the color of the middle wire. They now show a 1697461 as the replacement for the 530, 630, 720, 730, 740, 930 and 940. Guess I should ring them up and see why they're spec'ing a different battery. No idea when they made the change. I might give them a call to see what it is they believe is different.

My results are closer to the 1.25 hour figure under the conditions you describe - about what I got on the unit when it was new.

One thing you'll discover quickly about trying to geocache with this unit -- it will INSIST on snapping to nearest road coordinates until you've wandered off into the weeds (or a parking lot) by a fair distance. If you are searching for any caches near a road, you'll be getting bogus numbers. That's what quickly drove me to using the TomTom only for gross navigation to a site, and using a Garmin handheld for the close-in work.

 

[canderson]

I charged it overnight so 10-12hrs. I've recharged twice since with same results. 1.25-1.5hrs max. Just still no voice. When I spoke to TomTom that said maybe 3hrs?

What nobody has brought up is the brightness of the backlight. Especially outdoors in the sun when it's really useful to crank up the brightness (e.g., when trying to geocache with one), these things eat up a fresh charge much more quickly. That's another reason they don't make especially good replacements for handhelds in that application. Once you get them out of the relative "shade" of the car, the screen contrast can seriously wash out.

 

[affinity]

Great thread and instructions.

I've got a Go 930 and it has had battery "issues" for a long time. However, the bigger problem right now for me is that the USB connector cannot securely hold a connection either in the desktop mount or in the car (on the windscreen or my lap).

Anyway, I used the instructions to dismantle my device and found that I could more easily get a connection via USB once the device was opened up. The battery charged up okay and I did a backup fine. My charge isn't lasting, but that just goes to prove I need a battery as well as the USB connector fixed.

Note that I only removed the 2 external and 4 internal screws -- I did not remove anything else. It looks to me that it could be easy enough to remove and replace the battery without removing any other parts except the battery. My battery is ordered, I'll get a local electronics guru to replace the USB itself for me. I plan on using a small amount of velcro on each side of the battery to fasten it, say left and right side instead of all the adhesive. That way, it can be removed and replaced more easily in the futre.

btw TomTom didn't want to know about the USB connector as I am out of warranty -- they only seem to help as much as they absolutely have to it seems and they referred me to a third party repairer. I'm sure I can get the job done much cheaper and just as well as I now know it is just the connector that is my trouble (apart from the battery).