Repairing a 2002 Starboard Keypad 6293

[swinters]

I’m trying to figure out if anyone has successfully repaired or rebuilt the starboard keypad (part #6293) used on the early Nautiques. Mine is on a 2002 Super Air Nautique 210.

My keypad still works, but it’s very intermittent. Sometimes I have to push a button over and over before one of the lights finally comes on, and then everything starts working. Other times it won’t respond at all. Occasionally pushing a button will cause the whole system to shut down and I have to restart it.

Since mine still works intermittently, I really don’t want to take it apart or send it away and risk losing the only one I have.

What I’d like to do is find a second 6293 that is already broken, dead, intermittent, or otherwise not being used. I could then send that one to an electronics repair shop and let them open it up, diagnose it, and experiment with repairing it without risking my current keypad.

Has anyone here ever successfully opened up and repaired one of these? Does anyone know what typically fails inside them or know of an electronics shop that has repaired one?

And if anyone happens to have an old dead 6293 sitting around after replacing it, please let me know. It might be perfect for this experiment.

If we can figure out how to reliably repair these, it could potentially help a lot of us with 2000–2002 boats now that replacements are so difficult to find.

Thanks,
Seth

[SilentSeven]

I think TechBeer was looking into this as it's not the first time it's come up.

He's been super helpful to the community by engineering the Faria gauge repair process, designing a 'pitot delete' speedometer replacement module and exploring repairs to the Faria gateway box itself.

Also...and not sure how current this is...but read the note posted on the 6293 keypad, starboard side BLACK only - Nautiqueparts.com. Maybe help is on the way?

[TechBeer]

swinters Jeff reached out to me a while back about repairing those keypads. I have not done anything because: A) I don't have any good way to test it in the lab, B) No one has sent me one likely for the reasons you cite, and C) mine has not broken yet :-) I think those keypads are mostly electro-mechanical and don't have any active electronics inside to repair. If anyone has a spare that they don't mind potentially getting destroyed I would love to take one apart and see what's inside. I suspect the contacts in the buttons get dirty and stop working.

[swinters]

Thanks, guys. It sounds like we’re all on the same page.

I also reached out to Nautique Parts, and they told me:

“I believe the factory is in the final stages of production of the new key pads but I have nothing concrete.”

So hopefully that means new ones may eventually become available.

In the meantime, let’s hope we can find someone with a broken one sitting around. It sounds like we’re all thinking along the same lines—find a dead one and see if we can figure out a reliable way to repair these things.

[NautiqueJeff]

I have seen the new ones that they'll be shipping. They look nothing like the originals, and require a whole new PME box at over $3,000, plus the cost of the keypads. Not a cheap fix, and does not look original.