Vantage Vue battery issues

[PMPhotography]

I've had the Davis Vantage Vue for about 5 years now. 

Never had any issues with it, it's been well maintained and survived 2 house moves! 

Noticed a couple of weeks ago one of the wind cups had snapped off. I've brought it off the roof, done the usual maintenance, replaced the cups and added new C123 lithium battery. 

Since changing the battery I've struggled to get any signal. When the  console receives data it's ridiculous values (68c temp etc).

The station is transmitting on 1. Now here's what I cant get my head around...  

The station transmits for a few seconds AFTER adding the new backup battery, then it dies. 

I left the backup battery out of the transmitter last night, and put the station out again, no data received overnight. This morning its receiving data again, obviously the solar element is working fine. 

It all seems very backwards to my simple brain! Is it possible to have failure of the backup battery component? And I've used 3 different batteries so no issues with them! 

 

Any advice would be massively appreciated! 

Edited March 29, 2019 by PMPhotography

[4wd]

My considered advice is it's probably F*%*$ed
With the VP2 a common issue is failure of the capacitor(s) which hold charge enough that the battery is only needed after especially gloomy days, you can realistically change the capacitor on those but it seems almost a better option to change the whole board.
If cleaning the battery terminals don't help (and maybe try another new battery) you could delve inside as a kill or cure repair mission, it will be interesting to have a look anyway - but assume it's replacement time.
Sending off for repairs is unlikely to be economically viable. Five years is pretty good really.

[The PIT]

I don't know the vantage vue has the same issues capacitor wise. Easy job to replace them on a pro and the super caps are readily available. .

Some of the symptom sound super cap like apart from the sensor values being wrong.

I would take the board out and check for water ingress and corrosion.

[The PIT]

A quick google suggests it does. Pretty shambolic that the issue is still present in a later model. Technically speaking you entitled for a free replacement as it can demonstrated that it is a design fault and present at the time you bought it.

I suspect the issue is the caps are being overcharged. They are rated at 2.7C so unless there's a resistor dropping the voltage they working with a 3volt load. This will explain why they got pop after a year or so.