Batboard

Recently I had a wreck and had my HT1250 on the sun visor. When I slid into the ditch it flew out the window and into about 8" of water. When I tried to turn it on it kept going on and off. Well the battery died and I just got it charged back but it comes on for a second and shuts off. I took it apart and dried it off where there was some moisture and cleaned off a little rust.

Is there anything else I could consider doing to get this working? I'm a volunteer firefighter and if I can't get it to work, I have to pay for it and I'm already in a tight money spot as is.

The recommended procedure when this happens is to wash out the inside of the radio if
you've gotten mud and dirt inside, then to allow the radio, with the battery off, to air-dry
until it's all dry. If at all possible, you should do the drying with the front case off the radio. That way you can be sure the speaker, keypad, control buttons, etc. are dried off. If
you've got rust inside it sounds as if the radio's repair was not attempted immediately, or at
least within a few hours of the accident. Also, the drying operation should be helped along with
lots of paper towels and shaking out whatever water can be made to come out.

Time usually heals all wounds with wet radios, I say usually. If not then it goes off to the
Motorola depot to be resurrected, which is usually much less expensive than replacing the radio.

I managed to take the radio apart and there was some rust i tried to scrape off and let it air dry. I was able to get it to power on and transmit, but couldn't get the speaker or any of the front buttons to work. When I checked it again, the larger ribbon cable snap that holds it in place had broke off. So I guess, it is off to Motorola for repair

If you're scraping off rust from the inside of the radio, chances are that the overall internal condition is so bad Motorola's going to charge you an arm and a leg to repair the radio - I'm willing to bet they'd basically quote every part of the radio as needing to be replaced. Might be cheaper just to acquire a replacement radio on the used market.

Usually people won't admit they dunked their radio or they think it is truely waterproof. Only when it starts to do something screwy do they turn it in for service and by then it's probably too late. Water not good, Coke or coffee deadly!

Any electronic gear needs to be opened up, cleaned if needed, and dryed out as soon as possible. My favorite drying spot is the dash of my car. Set the radio up there and turn on the defroster full blast. 15 to 30 min and the radio is bone dry.

I used this technique once when my portable rolled down a hill and took a swim in a lake. I disassembled it with my leatherman, and dryed it. Still plays great to this day!

A quick word about spilling things like soft drinks into your radio or whatever. I was with Simplex in NYC for many years and one of our main products was those big time clocks that hang on the wall and are used by a couple of hundred people to punch in and out of work. If a Coke or similar sweet drink got into the machine it would work okay for a few more days, but then it would grind to a halt. Opening up the unit would show that the semi-dried "gunk" had stuck to every surface it touched, and it didn't just wipe off the way water does. You had to do a major disassembly and put the parts in the solvent tank for an hour or so to get them clean. We made a lot of money on these kinds of overhauls, you can bet. Moral: Water is bad, but soft drinks are worse.

Well... I don't know that soft drinks are necessarily worse for a radio than water, I've seen plain water turn the insides of a radio to green slime in a matter of hours.

The worst thing for a radio is a mixture of liquid and electricity. I've found electronics that have sat outside exposed to rain for months that look as good as new. That's because they've got no power applied. Add a battery, or in the case of a mobile radio power from the vehicle, and you get electrolysis. The voltage causes an electo-chemical reaction that breaks down the metals in the components and copper circuit boards, turning them into green goo, this can happen very quickly.

So the first thing you should always do when anything liquid gets in a radio is remove the battery for portables, and disconnect all power connections for a mobile. Then open it up and get it cleaned out and dried.

As for seeing rust in a radio, that is almost certainly from the steel shields, and will happen just like any other steel object rusts, even if there is no power applied. In the case of an HT1250 you'll notice there are small holes in the shields. Once water gets into those holes you can imagine how hard it is to get it dried out, and the damage rust inside the shield will cause. This is a good candidate for what happened to your radio, you cleaned off the rust you can see, but who knows what's under the shields.

In this case, finding a used radio with the same model number may be much cheaper than replacing the radio through your department, or sending it to Motorola would be.

Good luck. Radio good. Water BAD.