I became frustrated with my V3 sticks failing due to button/switch issues (when pressed, the switch would fail, or would cut out randomly). So I yanked on the end cap and it came off! Yay. The good thing was that it revealed the problem, and so a solution. Please refer to the pictures. Once it comes apart (do so at your own risk), you can get to the gold contacts and the steel spring contact. They were coated with dried juice, presumably from flooding (inevitable, eventually). This coating resisted an alcohol rinse and dry, it required burnishing the gold contacts and steel mating surfaces with a pencil eraser to get it working again. Once I did that, and reassembled it, it worked like brand new. Yay again.
Downside: The end cap is secured to the body by glue. Once you separate it, the only permanent way to get it to stay together would be by gluing it again. Personally, I'll probably just keep scotch tape on it, because I know it will require dis-assembly again eventually. The end cap is hollow, by the way, and is only a design touch apparently, at least in this version. I'd just as soon leave it off entirely to make the device even smaller.
I know there are at least a few others out there with this problem, hope this helps. I wouldn't of course, suggest trying to exercise any warranty you have after doing this. If someone has any good ideas about how to mod this into an easily torn-down version, I'd sure like to hear it. Overall, this is still my favorite design of PV.
Downside: The end cap is secured to the body by glue. Once you separate it, the only permanent way to get it to stay together would be by gluing it again. Personally, I'll probably just keep scotch tape on it, because I know it will require dis-assembly again eventually. The end cap is hollow, by the way, and is only a design touch apparently, at least in this version. I'd just as soon leave it off entirely to make the device even smaller.
I know there are at least a few others out there with this problem, hope this helps. I wouldn't of course, suggest trying to exercise any warranty you have after doing this. If someone has any good ideas about how to mod this into an easily torn-down version, I'd sure like to hear it. Overall, this is still my favorite design of PV.