The Radio Information Board

Has any one here had experience with the 53SL ES locking up during transmit? We've got some radios here that will totally freeze up in transmit, locking up the TG. We're running these on 800MHz, Motorola Type IIi trunking. It seems to vary by individual; there is at least one car in the fleet that will cause *any* EFJ radio to seize up. Sometimes, if we run into this, we swap the radio, and the problem goes away. Some never experience the problem.

Then there's the "Turns Off by Itself" problem. We put three radios in standard crown vic's, wired the power *BY THE &%$@$% BOOK* and they turn themselves off and sometimes cannot be turned back on! I change out the control head, no difference. Most of these radios are running 6.10.6 firmware; I've been trying to extract a confession from them that these issues may be F/W related, but they claim that they've never seen this :^P.

The MICs have a high failure rate, but I think everyone but EFJ know about this.

If anyone else has seen either of these symptoms, I would sure like to hear about it, especially if you've found a fix.

Thanks

Jeff

When were these radios purchased? I just installed about 15 53 SL's in our fleet of ambulances and we had problems also--nothing fitting the description of your problems but I can tell you that if the control cables for your radios were manufactured last summer, the pin length in them may or may not be correct. Our radios (dual head remote mount) did some screwy things also (no audio coming from the speakers, no power up, carrier but no modulation). After a visit from the friendly EFJ engineer, we took the gaskets off the control cable plug so the pins fit inside the deck port better and 99% of our problems went away.

They've corrected this problem but it was still quite an ordeal. If you take the gasket off, nothing bad will happen to the hardware but it may fix your problem.

Okay, we just got word last week about the recessed option plug pins in that stupid high-density plug that they use. It's pretty apparent that cables with certain date codes don't have enough 'reach'. But that's the least of my problems now. I got radios locking up and I'll be damned if I can figure out why. I think sudden Low A+ voltage on transmit may be a possible cause, but I have to test this under controlled conditions. I'm also going to modify the radios to remove the option plug from the equation: I'm planning on finding the ignition sense pin inside the radio, and permanently wiring it to the A+. I think that will at least keep them from turning themselves off for no reason.