donate broken sovereign coil?

[z8chase]

hey guys....im sorry to sound like a bum but my disability payment is gone for this month already because of bills.
does anyone have a broken sovereign coil that theyd donate?.....ill gladly pay shipping.
i honestly dont care what kind it is.....i have a coinsearcher coil on my sovereign xs-2 now....and its good...but its not waterproof and i honestly dont want to try to make it water proof without having something to fall back on. i saw a few weeks ago someone on here had a water proof coil but it had broken and he didnt know how to fix it...but i know how to fix them....im trying to teach my son...(14 years old in april) some of my electronics knowledge because i have an associates in information technology and certified radio tv repair.....and i want to pass it along to him and id teach him the fundamentals of detector repair and still try to come up with a water proof coil even if its broken.
also i need some broken and bad coils to try to modify.......Ron has pretty much set the standard in repairing and modifying the 550 and 180 meters....and i want to experiment with some coils because i pretty much have nothing else to do...i work when i can...but i am totally disabled and have 5 kids....so you know where my money goes. haha.
but on a serious note....if anyone had a broken or bad sovereign coil theyd donate.....send me a pm and ill gladly pay shipping via paypal or money order or whatever.....or i might even be able to afford a coil if its really cheap. i need it....and i want my legacy to be passed down to my son because our generation is slowly fading away and our children have lost sight of real adventure and a sense of accomplishment....all they seem to care about is cellphones....internet and ipads and game consoles......i want my kids to get out and enjoy real fun....before we have nowhere left for them to go someday
thanks guy in advance...i really appreciate it

 

[Fisherfinder]

I'll keep my eyes open z8,.....


I did see a short while ago a sovereign coil with a ruined cable on fee-bay.

The guy was willing to throw in a connector.

In the end it went for a low price.

Here is a picture of it

I'll keep my eyes open for stuff like that.

 

[z8chase]

thank you finder
if you see anymore anywhere please let me know.
i want to water proof my coinsearcher coil but that would mean cracking it open and trying to use epoxy and taking a chance on scratching the enamel coating that keeps the coil from shorting out.....not to meantion having to wait till its totally hardened and then sealing the case back....then after i get it all back together it may not work at all.
so i really really need a spare coil....even if it has no wire at all or connector....as long as theres a coil and case to work with.
my son asked me today when im going to take him detecting again....its been so wet and rainy then snowing all the same day and its a nasty muddy soupy mess everywhere around here right now and i seriously dont want to risk getting my coinsearcher wet and ruin it.
hes also begging me to teach him some of my electronis know how....im still learning detector basics...but as far as electronic circuitry im pretty hard to follow.....i won eastern regional in my state of kentucky....and then went on to win state championships back in 1987 for radio and tv/pc repair for my old vocational school....but they dont even teach that stuff now in alot of the schools around here.....my old school has no electronics repair whatsoever anymore....just computer basics and stuff like that...no trade teaching at all anymore....theres only 1 radio and tv repair shop within like 100 miles of here at all.
and you know....our generation..(late 30's to 50's in age) is the last of a dying breed....and we are the future of our children as far as teaching them the trades and the "common sense" knowledge that it has taken us to survive and to provide for ther young generation.
Its sad to think of what 99% of what would happen to our kids if they were to try to survive if there was no computers or cell phones. I honestly dont think they could make it, and if we dont share at least 1/4 of what we know....they will be overwhelmed if something were to happen in the world that stopped the easy life that weve worked so hard to provide for them
well as always ive rambled like an idiot again....haha....but i think most of us would agree on this issue
but thank you finder for the info and please give me a yell if you run across anymore sweet deals. i cant afford much....a friend of mine LORDS20 sold me my dream detector....(minelab sovereign XS2) and by todays standards its a dinosaur....but since i was a kid i wanted a minelab after seeing my grandfather dig his guts out with an old sears GEB an off brand of the whites discriminator back in the day.....and he would get so dishearted at digging pop cans and nails....but every so often he would rip a great silver or wheatie out of the ground and i was hooked....but i swore that somehow i would get him and myself that perfect detector...(to me it was any minelab) and we would tear up the country bringing out the gold and silver....but i never made it before he passed away in 1998 on my twin daughters 1st birthday....and so i gave up until about 5 years ago when i bought and old garrett master hunter cx....and the race was back on......but i still swore id have me a minelab or die trying....and now im disabled and i have the worst of days and the best of days.....but im going to leave something for my son to enjoy after im gone......so now its time to stop writing because ive went overboard with my novel....hahaha
have a good evening finder and everyone else reading this book of rambling....and if you find a broken or bad sovereign...(or any brand coil for that matter but i seriously have to have one that is compatible with my sovereign) that someone might wanna throw away or donate.....send it my way and ill gladly pay shipping
thanks to everyone that happens across this post
your friend and detector bud
Terry Harding

 

[BillF]

Terry,
I was an electric motor winder for years. I have seen detector coils made and the wire used is the same as what we used for motor winding. The varnish on this wire is extremely hard and the odds of you "scratching" it and causing a short is pretty slim. We will take a 1/2" thick bundle of wires and slide them down through a 3/16ths or smaller slot in an iron core. Not much worry about scratching these wires and this is on a 480v motor.Your biggest concern should be how are you going to get this wire out of the epoxy? Or do you need to, not exactly sure what you are trying to do.
Good luck.
BTW, what state are you in? I went to school with a Terry Harding.

 

[z8chase]

im in kentucky bill

 

[BillF]

Not the same Terry, unless you moved there from Washington state.
Good Luck.

 

[z8chase]

thanks again tommy.
you cant imagine how much that will help.

 

[z8chase]

-- moved topic --

 

[Buggaman7]

Your very much welcome hope you can do some good with it.
Later "TOMMY"

 

[Critterhunter]

If a Sovereign coil isn't working first problem to look for is a short in the coil cable or a squashed pin in the plug. Most cable shorts are going to be right behind the plug somewhere. If the coil has no shorts in the cable or a bad plug, then the next most common thing to look for is going to be a bad pre-amp circuit inside the coil. If you know how to check resistors or capacitors that's pretty much what it has on it, because an off the shelf IC chip to boost the RX signal a bit. The original Sovereign coils had a different pre-amp in them. Later ones use a newer IC and a slightly different lay out, so if you have a bad pre-amp then I'd upgrade the entire thing to a newer one. Schematics for both pre-amp circuits can be found searching the web.

I wind brushless electric motors for my scratch built RC planes. Yes, very unlikely to scratch the varnish off the wire used for winding, but it can happen much easier with some wire than others. Point is though that a short in the TX or RX winding is very unlikely since most coils are encased in epoxy and there is no possibility for the windings to move around or rub a short in them. The Coinsearch coils aren't filled with epoxy, thus not rated waterproof. Neither are the 5 or 6" Excelerators. I would suspect the old solid S-12 white coil might not be filled with epoxy either but never held one in my hand to see how heavy it is. Just about all other coils are going to be epoxy filled. EIther way, if the coil isn't epoxy filled it'll be much easier to fish out the pre-amp, but if it is epoxy filled I've seen guys cut open coils using an angle grinder. Some then will either chip out the pre-amp or use a substance to disolve the epoxy where it is to get at it.

Good luck with finding some affordable fixable coils so you can get your kids into the hunt. Shame most kids these days live in front of their smart phones or computer/video game screens. I grew up on video games and computers too but always found time to explore the outdoors as well. Good reason why kids are overweight these days. We ate just as much junk food and drank pop by the gallon too. It's not the food making them fat.

PS- One coil I fixed have me flustered. I found a short right behind the plug on one or two wires. After soldering them up again I checked all the rest of the plug pins with an ohm meter from front pin side to back of the plug side where they soldered to the wires. All showed a complete circuit, yet when I fired up the machine it was still acting up. Started wiggling the back side of the pins and one snapped right off with little effort. It had a crack in it inside the plug and, while it showed no resistance with the ohm meter, if it was wiggled the path was broken here and there.

I couldn't find the same plug at radio shack with the right amount of pins, but I did find a plug there with the same pins in another plug, so I knocked out the bad pin with a finishing nail and replaced it. As I was knocking out the pin, another 1 or 2 pins fell apart. Obviously somebody had tried to repair this coil before and used way too much heat soldering the wire back onto the pins. The metal at the pins between their head and their tail where the wire gets soldered is very thing. Too much heat will cook it.