Originally Posted by
Anti-thesis
The detector may has never been dropped or hit in any way. If it is "broken" it is due to the manufacturing build and isolated to my particular unit. The following is from another board...
A friend of mine asked me to take a look at his Passport 8500 radar detector. After about 3 years of use it started to give him false laser warnings. It also appears to be a common problem for many aging 8500s.
The problem itself is as old as the electronic world: lousy power filtering. Escort uses cheap capacitors that tend to degrade over time. The problem is accelerated because radar detectors are exposed to direct sunlight and high temperatures. Cheap electrolytic capacitors just dry out and cannot effectively filter the noise on the power line. The noise reaches the laser sensor module, it gets amplified and triggers alerts.
Fixing is relatively easy: open the device, unsolder the cover shield that screens the laser detector circuit, and replace the faulty capacitor. You can use anything that matches or, even better, exceeds the capacitance of the faulty capacitor. When you're done, let Escort know that using quality capacitors in their $300 device wouldn't hurt their profits much, but will surely improve customer confidence. It should also be mentioned that the total price of all components that make the guts of the 8500 is at most $50.
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