Helpful Tip: The White Rice Trick!

[sponsonhead]

Don't know if anybody else knew about this, but thought I would pass it on:

Got a GPS, tach or other boat racing electronic device that got immersed in water and doesn't work? Here's what to do!

1) Hopefully you took the batteries out right away and didn't power it up. Remove the battery cover and leave it off.

2) Take said dunked device and a bowl big enough to hold it. Fill the bowl with uncooked, WHITE rice.

3) Put wet device in the bowl, covering it with as much rice as you can. Make sure the battery compartment has rice in it.

4) Walk away from the rice bowl. Leave it for as long as you can....time is your friend. If possible, a MINIMUM of 24-72 hours. Let time be your friend and ally here.

5) Pull the device out of the bowl, re-insert batteries and try to power it up. It just might work!

We did this with one of the team radios on the U-17 that fell in Lake Washington. Got it up and running in about a week. I just tried it with a dunked GPS that hasn't worked in 3 years. It lives!

Give it a shot and let me know if this works for you.

Cheers,

R-19

[PopPop]

Boy Pat, You ain't as dumb as you look (LOL).
Is that real white rice or minute rice?

[Mark 32]

If you're at a race and don't have access to rice immediately, put it on the dashboard of your truck in the sun.

The dashboard trick works pretty well, but the rice one is better

[jtb]

We lose a lot of phones in the water here at work so we keep a zip lock bag with white rice in the shop. It works great, but like he said get the battery out ASAP!

[sponsonhead]

Boy Pat, You ain't as dumb as you look (LOL).
Is that real white rice or minute rice?

Not sure on the Minute Rice or not...we used regular old long grained white rice.

And the reason that you don't use brown rice is because brown rice still has the outside "shell" over its grain so it cannot absorb the moisture like naked white rice can.

R-19

[GuyWithTheCoolBoat]

i wonder if those silica gell beads would work too if you had enough of them???

[Brew56]

When our RC boats get real wet, we take the receiver (and servos) out of the boat, open it up as much as possible and immediately put it on the dashboard of the car with the heater on full blast. This way the air also help you out. Always worked for us in an emergency and got us back on the water within a 1/2 hour.

[propnuts]

Good tip

I went swimming with my Blackberry at Oroville, a bag of rice and 3 days later it was 95% recovered. Best $.68 I ever spent at Walmart.

[Mrs blueskyracer]

I went swimming with my Blackberry at Oroville, a bag of rice and 3 days later it was 95% recovered. Best $.68 I ever spent at Walmart.

Tony, what happened to the other 5%? - Teresa