XPR8300 dead! Swap RX and TX internals?

[n1gtl]

I have acquired an XPR8300 repeater that has no TX output. It appears to be nothing more than two mobiles, probably XPR4350's. The one used for TX has an added heat sink. Aside from that, does anyone know if both radios are capable of TX and RX? I am planning on taking it apart and just swapping the chassis's and seeing if the one that has been acting as the receiver can become the transmitter and be brought back to life.

I know these things have had fan and heat issues and this is common. I'm not expecting much, just curious if anyone has tried it.

[K0XM]

YES....we just performed this last week and it bought our 8300 back to life.

Read the code plug- save it
read the tuning- save that also
swap the units...make sure to coat the new heat sink placement in compound when you mount it
reload the codeplug and tuning....


One caveat....if there are ANY EID's loaded in the unit before the swap, they will have to be re-loaded


Chuck K0XM

[n1gtl]

Great, thanks. Will be giving that a try!

[n1gtl]

It worked! Thanks!

[K0XM]

No problem.....when we repair ours, we cranked the tx power down to around 25-30w and found the coverage did not suffer...plus I cut the brown wire off the fan so it runs full speed all the time

[n1gtl]

Sounds good. I'm not really sure where it is going to end up. I need to do a little research on RF amps. It may be that I drop it to about 10 watts and drive a QUALITY external amp with it. I know the 8300 series had issues with fans, heat and cooling. I'm sure with the fan ramped up, that extra large heat sink and only running 10 watts, it should be happy.

Thanks again.