Dead m-401/402/403 battery, possible solution to someone

[lauraiss]

Hello,
I'm new to this forum so sorry if something like this, has been posted by someone already.
I have bought Prosmoke and i like it, but i run into different problems frequently, and last thing was my battery, it just died. Not short life or charging long, not something similar to cellphone or laptop battery but it just does not charge at all, always green light on charger. I live in Europe, so i did not even considered returning product for warranty, as shipping for me is ~20$. So here is what i did:
1: You see, battery empty, green light on charger, clearly no connection between them:

So it is possible that chineese soldering is gone bad as usual. You should take needle or something sharp and pull out battery connection cap (i do not know how to call this thing). Do this by pulling from one of side. Pulling by center hole is useless.

Here You see center cap and rubber thingy half way out. It comes out quite easy:

In following picture You can see little red cable. Yes, it should be soldered to this little tiny iron cap with hole in it, but it is not. This little red cable is one that connects battery essence (electrode n'....) to the connection cap, but as it is not connected, battery does not charge at all.

What i did, was, i took little picking tool, in my case nail scissors and pulled this cable a little out and tried to clear a bit of this red cable covering material. Anyways, by pulling it out, it do touch iron connection cap. Sure, soldering back would be perfect, but i do not have a slightest idea, how to do that in such a small hole. And no, i do not know how to dissasemble battery.
Ok, now when You feel that red cable is out enough you assemble the battery back - first put in the rubber thing, You wont be able to put iron thing with rubber thing on togeather in battery.

Now when You connect your battery to charger, it is glowing red and charging:

Of course, this might not work at first, because cable does not touch metal cap, but it worked for me twice. Why twice? Because there is no soldering, few times screw in charger hard, and cable is being pushed back enough to disconnect again. One tiny little cable, one tiny soldering, but if its bad, battery is useless.
1. I hope this could help someone.
2. English is something i learned at elementary school, sorry for it.
3. It would be cool if this forum had its own picture database, where i can place my pictures.

 

[dormouse]

Wow that's impressive. Hopefully a mod can move it to a troubleshooting section or the M401 section

Those are auto batteries?

 

[lauraiss]

Yes, auto batteries, no button.

 

[dormouse]

And welcome to ECF!

BTW I don't know if you can get the blue foam where you live but I restuffed my first M401 cartridge with blue foam and I am still using it. A couple of times I cut new blue foam for it. In the US the blue foam is Marineland Rite Size U Bonded Foam Sleeve "fits all H.O.T. Magnum canister filters" (an aquarium product)

I cut the foam about 2/3 the inner length of the M401 juice cup, a tiny bit wider (to help it stay in place but not so much that the little foam holes will get flattened). And i taper it a bit on the inner end.

The cheapest way to get it in the US is just buy the cheap precut pieces for 510 at strictlyejuice.com (10 pieces for under $1). Then i can cut those down for smaller juice cups like M401 and Joye 306.

 

[DualChamber]

These Chinese devices fail. They may run for several months or die within days. Always have back up batteries and atomizers. If you are an ex-smoker, the cost is really well worth it.

 

[Paisley]

WOW, thanks for sharing this. I had an M402 auto I thought was dead, I tried your fix and it worked.

Now after 9.5 months of vaping I can proudly say the only hardware I've had die are 2 attys and 1 charger pigtail that seems to have a broken wire.

 

[lauraiss]

Thanks dormouse. About blue foam, i'll give it a try.

 

[MickeyRat]

Well, interesting! Necessity truly is the mother of invention.