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garmin forerunner booboo…

garmin forerunnersit wasn’t too long after buying my garmin forerunner 201 back in 2005 that the charging pins started to become corroded from sweat. the pins are located under the watch and remain in contact with the skin, getting soaked with sweat during every run.

corroded garmin forerunner pins

i sweat a lot (as in look-like-i-jumped-in-a-pool kind of sweat) and have had things stop working on me before because of that. see what happened to a sweaty waist pack and to a sweaty mp3 player.

in 2008 i decided to buy another forerunner, the 305 this time because i wanted a heart-rate monitor as well. i seriously though garmin would have fixed that and put the charging pins on the side of the watch, but to my surprise when i got my new 305 i saw that they were on the bottom, touching the skin, just like the older model. sure enough, after as little as one year the pins on the 305 started to become corroded as well.

cleaning corroded pins with pencil erasersearching the internet i found others who were also having trouble charging their forerunners due to corroded pins. someone suggested cleaning the pins with a pencil eraser, and that seemed to help.

garmin forerunner pins covered with bandaidin order to prevent further corrosion i’m going to wear a a wrist band under the watch. (i tried covering the pins with band-aid, but it didn’t survive even one run and in the end the pins were wet regardless.)

i wonder if this is still a problem with the latest models.

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{ 2 comments… add one }
  • Laura July 31, 2012, 7:24 pm

    I’ve never had that issue… but mine is only a year old. Hope you can figure it out. I hear Garmin is great about replacing things, have you tried calling and explaining what’s going on? Maybe you could get a replacement!
    Also stopping by to say thanks for signing up for the virtual run!

  • Hannah August 7, 2013, 9:35 pm

    I stumbled across your blog while looking for blogs by runners– I’m a collegiate runner myself– and I’ll have to try that pencil eraser trick. Sometimes, I stand there for upwards of 10 min. with my Garmin charger, trying to get it to work! Thanks for the tip!

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