A few weeks ago, I arranged to swap my Columbus with a Kenwood DNX520 with HKP. The Kenwood arrived safely, but the Columbus arrived damaged.

Royal Mail have refused to honour their insurance because, in their eyes, it wasn't packaged properly. My question is whether this damage would be repairable and if so, how much would it be likely to cost.

Thanks

It should be repairable.

I've got Eddie_NL on here to try to get me a replacement as I've broken the fine pin inside one of the connectors.

It means opening up the Columbus (I have links to picture tutorial for this), removing the soldered on connectors (which includes the GPS one as well) and soldering the new one in place.

IIRC Ed quoted me £25 delivered for the part (if he could get it).

I'll dig out the link to the tutorial (which was for reading the HDD with a SSD, but it shows you how to get the main board out).

Thanks for the info Karl. Whilst this is encouraging, I have no experience with soldering and taking the head unit apart would scare me to death!

Me too...

I'm getting my dad to do it (that makes me sound about 12!) as he knows what he's doing.

I recently had motormods in Cheltenham do some auto electric work for me, and whilst chatting they told me they do Columbus repairs. I was pleaded with the work and they seem to know what they are doing. £45 an hour labour rate.

Thanks. I'll look into that as Ed cannot get hold of the spare part I need any more.

No probs Karl. Glad I could offer my help. Don't think thy are too far from you, and they do all the usual Skoda vw mods. They also wired in the speech on the Columbus when they did the front sensors, and really seemed to know their stuff. I wouldn't hesitate to use them again.

Once again, thanks for the heads up. I am amazed that I hadn't heard about them before but their website looks good. I've dropped them an email to see what, if anything, they can do for me. Fingers crossed!

I'll be dropping them a message shortly, but I'm looking at other possibilities first.

Thanks.