Unresponsive Garmin 800 touchscreen? Possible fix.

negativelycra

Putting this here in case it helps anyone else - it would have helped me a lot if I had a crystal ball!


So, for a long time now, my garmin 800 has had a dickie touchscreen. It would register presses, but only in 1 place on the screen. Once in a blue moon, it would work normally for maybe 10 mins, then go back to being borked.

No repairer seems to want to touch them, just Garmin, who charge a flat 80 quid no matter what the fault is. It's also a lengthy turn around, and I didn't want to be going with no Strava so I just put up with an 800 with less capability than a 25...


Until, that is - I decided to bite the bullet. If I broke the whole thing, a refurb is 80 quid, right?

What I did:

Remove the 6 tiny star head screws on the rear of the unit.
Take off front facia. The touchscreen lead will come away with it, it's just a press fit.
Clean the contacts with alcohol (the rubbing kind, not gin)
Put the contact back on
Turned on and... Works perfectly!
Screwed the unit back together
Touschscreen dead.
Unscrewed, repeated etc 3-4 times.. It always worked 1/2 open, stopped as soon as I put the front back onto the body.

Then, I realized - the ribbon cable is very stiff. The connector isn't a sturdy latch.
So, connect it all up, put the screen nearly back, then using a toothpick / cocktail stick shove down on the back of the connector - it seems it's easy for the bottom side to unclip slightly.

Now, I have a perfectly working Garmin again - and instead of 80 quid, it cost me 5 quid for the full set of badly made star drivers from ebay - you need really small ones, search for 25 in 1 torx and loads of sellers have them

Happy cycling