Anyone repaired the joystick on their Garmin 705 - success?
 

the tip of the joystick on my Garmin 705 disappeared a few weeks ago..so, basically I was left with a semi-opaque plastic piece surrounded by the rubber. That seemed to work just fine and I didn't think a whole lot about it. Yesterday I flipped it to change screens while on a ride and the small opaque plastic piece (the size of a small ball bearing?) flipped out and into oblivion. A cursory search of the 'net indicates Garmin will charge me $150 to replace the unit & in the process keep it for a month or so. Seems like for that I could find a used/damaged one & replace that piece and not be out my bike computer in the meantime. Alternately, it would seem a simple solution would be to glue/epoxy/silicone a small piece on the tip of the broken joystick thus rending it water-tight (which I assume it is not now, but I don't know) and allowing it to work properly in all directions (you can still go up/down/left/right, but you'd need something to stick in the center of it to use it to select as a button). Anyone got experience with this here?

thanks in advance!

I've heard others having issues and attempting repair but with little success. In some cases where a switch quit working reliably, disassembling the unit and cleaning the switch with contact cleaner helped for a while. But in the case of the rubber cover being trashed, no such luck. I don't know of anybody finding a replacement switch or cover.

Garmin replaced my unit with a "refurbished" unit that was completely indistinguishable from new and took a total of 5 days between me shipping it and receiving the replacement. I believe replacing a unit with a refurb is their general policy for any unit returned for repair. My current 705 is about 3 years old and I'm considering sending it in for repair just to get a "new" refurb unit before mine goes belly up and they quit servicing them. I believe a refurb has a new case and new battery.

So how much did switching out to a refurbished unit cost you when you replaced yours?

$140 if I recall correctly. That was over a year ago so can't say what it costs now. Call them and I'm sure they'd be happy to tell you.