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7X Upper Gasket Thickness?

Eric K.
over 2 years ago

TL;DR - Looking for information on the thickness of the 47mm top case o-ring gasket

I was having lunch earlier today when my 7X SS started vibrating and showing Assistance Alerts one after the other. After playing around with things trying to figure out what was going on, I realized it was acting like the power button was stuck on. I suspected perhaps it was moisture ingress, so I opened up the watch to investigate. Sure enough, there was a small amount of water inside the case and the power button also had a drop of water shorting out the switch.

In the course of opening the watch, I discovered where the water was coming in. The upper sealing surface was slightly wet with small droplets and the gasket that should be in the groove on the underside of the watch face was not there (!) I guess someone must have messed with this watch before I received it, as I also noticed other signs that someone had been inside it.

Anyhow, I need a gasket for the watch and measuring with calipers it appears to be a simple o-ring type measuring between 47mm ID and 49mm OD, however I'm not sure what the height should be for this watch. I'm fairly certain that 1mm thickness is too much and that Garmin used something smaller like 0.6mm or 0.8mm.

Does anyone know the height of the factory o-ring gasket? I could probably measure the lower gasket and its groove depth, and base the upper gasket on what I find there if I have to. It would be nice to know for sure from someone who has an intact gasket though, since the ability to seal properly depends on how tightly compressed the gasket is when the watch is closed up.

By the way, this isn't a warranty issue. It's a second-hand watch and was dirt cheap. It works perfectly now that it's dried out completely, of course. I just need to install a fresh seal to keep it safe moving forward.

If any of you have been inside your 7X and know the gasket thickness it would be a great help. Thanks!
Eric

  • 0 over 2 years ago

    Just contact Garmin and ask them for sending a new one. Or use sth. like a hot silicon instead of the gasket. :) 

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to sis651

    It's been my experience that companies like Garmin do not generally sell internal parts for their products, but tend towards replacement rather than repair of damaged / defective products.  I will reach out to them on Monday, but I don't have particularly high hopes that I'll get anywhere.  In the past, I've made repairs on older Fenix watches by buying used parts from places like AliExpress.

    Interestingly, I noticed that Garmin has redesigned the button switches on the F7 compared to the F6 series, and each switch is now a separate, small, easily replaceable module rather than directly mounted to the motherboard.  This gives me some hope that Garmin may be trying to move more towards repairability.  If a switch goes bad on an F7, you can just pop it out and slide in a new one - no soldering or highly technical skills required. Of course making use of this repairability depends on the parts being made available to the end user.  I hope to find out more about this when I speak to them next week.

    I hope that your comment about using hot silicone was tongue in cheek, lol. Sourcing and replacing a simple o-ring gasket is a piece of cake once you have the proper measurements in hand.  I did some more measuring this morning, and it looks like the F7X does indeed use a standard 47ID 49OD 1mm gasket.  Hopefully this info will be helpful in case anyone needs to replace theirs in the future.