Metal detector in a hot car

[Buster]

Being in Florida, I never leave my detector in a hot car down here. It gets rather warm around my area. You can almost see the birds getting stuck to the trees sometimes. I would not think twice about leaving it in the car farther up north, but down here it gets a little hot. I would move it to be on the safe side. But that's just me.....Buster....

[Lt1stone]

I never left a detector in a vehicle for long periods of time. I'm unsure what extreme heat would do to it, but it doesn't seem to bother car stereos.:merrychristmas:

[robert roy]

Padmaster:
I agree with you on that point.
MY concern, living here in Indiana in the winter
is taking the MD out in the cold after its been sitting in
the warm house all night. Leaving it
out in the car all night is not an option,
aince we have so many break in's. To me condensation is as big
a threat as the heat.

That said, one fellow on another forum posted a "HOW to keep your
detector warm" while MDing in cold weather" He uses those hand heating packs to keep the batteries warm. Looks like that could work.

Robert R

[padmaster]

Condensation is certainly of some concern. It will cause premature corrosion.

To elaborate further on the "thermal cycling"......

Has anyone heard of RoHS? RoHS stands for "Restriction of Hazardous Substances". It covers many different substances but the main focus of the directive is to eliminate lead from the circuit board fabrication and assembly process....for obvious reasons. Solder used to contain lead, now it doesn't. This new "leadless" solder creates a much more brittle solder joint than solder with lead, therefore, the thermal cycling process will have a much more profound and negative effect on electronics being manufactured today.

[Lt1stone]

padmaster, I didn't realize they took the lead out of solder. I'll also have to remember the condensation factor too. thanks for the info!

[Jack D]

How I long for the good old days...when I played with my lead toy soldiers, painted with leaded paint. We made "dimes" from pennies by rubbing them with mercury. Somehow we survived.

Back to the subject. Both manuals for my two detectors say not to store or carry in extreme heat (car trunks) and to lay them on the floor of the passenger compartment (if possible).
I'm also versed in electronics, both professionally (for five years) and as a hobby most of my adult life and I know that heat is a major enemy of electronics. At the very least, it can cause tuned circuits to wander off tune and may be the reason some say their detectors over time don't seem to be a good as they once were. Back in the old days (again) and not as critical anymore, the old paper capacitors had wax seals that would melt out and cause shorted caps. Heat can cause batteries to burst. Car stereos probably have higher heat tolerances built-in. Remember the days before car air conditioning? Car radios would wander off frequency as the car got hot inside. That's why your computer has, probably two (or more) built-in cooling fans. One to cool the case innards and another right on top of the CPU to keep it stabilized.

[padmaster]

I think the government should pay us MD'ers to go out and dig up all those hazardous civil war lead bullets