My Kenwood TH-D72 won't power on :(

[Moleculo]

Over the weekend, my TH-D72 went for a swim in the river. It had a mind of it's own and took a dive from my vest clip into the river where I was bending over to pick up something in the water. I didn't think much of it because of it's "water resistant" rating. I picked the radio up, blew off the water and continued to use it for the rest of the day without a problem.

Later that evening, I turned it off, put it on the charger and went to bed. In the morning when I picked it up, the battery indicated that it was fully charged (the charger lights on the radio had turned off) but it would not power on. I plugged it back into the wall wart and tried it - it powered on fine. Well, I thought maybe I didn't charge it correctly, so I plugged it back in and came back in several hours. It still wouldn't turn on when on the battery power.

I put the battery on a multimeter and it tested at full voltage. At that point I got out the manual to find out how "water resistant" this radio really is. Unfortunately, I found the big bold warning about submerging the battery. Since the radio seems to function fine on the wall wart, I figured that I had done something to the battery and ordered a new one. When the new one came in, I attached it to the radio and plugged it in to charge. The complete charging cycle appeared to work, but the radio still will not power on under battery power.

So, now I'm trying to figure out where to go from here. I have one suggestion to try from the TH-D72 yahoo group, but if that doesn't work I might have to send it in for repair

The lesson here is that the TH-D72 is not waterproof, so don't dunk it in a river.

 

[W5LZ]

I'm not familiar with the TH-D72 at all so take this with a very large dose of 'salt'!
How hard would it be to open the case to get access to the rear, or where ever the battery terminals are? I would think that the 'problem' would have to be associated with those terminals, or the circuitry near them (leakage). At that point, I would only feel 'safe' in cleaning up/off that area. Unless there's something obviously wrong in sight. I doubt if I'd go any further than that cuz I hate SMT and it don't like me either.
Can I ask what the user group recommended?
- 'Doc

 

[Moleculo]

I took apart the radio over the weekend and inspected the terminals - both front and back. I didn't visually see anything that could cause this. The suggestion on the yahoo group was the power plug is actually a switch to bypass the battery and something could get into there to defeat the switch. I also looked at that, even sprayed contact cleaner all over the area and no dice.

I guess it's time to send it in.