I know this is unrelated to Vex, but the plug in question is similar enough to a Vex battery plug that I’m hoping someone will have a solution. Recently, a family member who shall remain unnamed managed to disconnect the wire from the pin on our lawnmower battery charger. I’m not seeing any natural places to disconnect and reconnect a replacement part. I have a soldering iron, but I can’t see how I can solder the wire back to the pin encased in the white plug.
At the moment, the options appear to be:
Buy a whole new charger (ouch). Don’t know if one can be found on our ancient model.
Find a replacement plug with wire, cut the wires, solder, and insulate with electrical tape. I have no idea of where to go about looking for one.
Cut open the white casing on the plug and resolder the wire to the pin. Hope that I don’t mangle the casing so badly that it can still be plugged back into the lawn mower.
The pin in the plug should have 2 tabs. One on each side. Usually, the wire would be connected to the pin and then the pin pushed into the plastic housing. With small tweezers, you should be able to squeeze the two tabs and push the metal pin out. This would allow you to solder the wire back on with out melting the plastic.
Another option would be to replace all the plugs involved with your own that you find somewhere. Perhaps replace all 3 plugs (one on battery, one on device, one on charger) with deans plugs, making sure they all line up the way they were originally intended.
But trainmania is right, there should be some little metal tabs built into the sides of the pins that hold them into the plastic housing. I usually find I have to push them in with a needle (or two) though, I don’t have any pliers that are small enough.
Finally a followup to this almost neverending saga. Trainmania was right – I saw the tabs and squeezed, but the pin was so tightly lodged in that it wouldn’t come out, even using surgical needle-nosed forceps. Gooped solder on the wire pushed onto the pin cools too quickly for a good connection. Opening the plastic casing deforms it so that the plug can’t be reattached to the mower.
After much procrastination, my husband finally looked up the model & contacted the manufacturer. Seems that they discontinued this model because it was dangerous, and there was a recall on the electrical system. So he brought it in and got a free circuit board, with charger included, essentially a new mower, except for the casing & blade. Although the lawn looks pretty kitchy, maintained for the past 6 weeks by only an organic mower (aka free-range rabbit), our tightwad family is pretty happy about how it worked out.
