Upgrading a flooded D80 housing to D90

[Grow Diving]

I have had the misfortune of flooding my D80, and it was all my own stupidity - in fact without a front O-ring, the Ikelite engineering managed to hold out water down to 15m over a 4-minute dive and the housing was only a 1/4 full. That's amazing.

My question - the insurance company has given me a new D90 (hooray, but I had no choice in the matter). I really don't want to invest in a new D90 housing when I have a (probably) perfectly good D80 one. Ikelite's official position is that you don't sell bits of housings separately, but surely this is the kind of service you should be providing - how about selling me a D90 PC board and hotshoe adaptor - connecting it in is dead simple, and also a couple of new push buttons that I can have machined in to match the new position of the D90 toggle button. This is the most sensible way of handling my problem - and I am prepared to take all risk (warranty issues etc.) We have a local person in Johannesburg who manufactures high quality u/w video housings who would easily be able to do the required work.

Actually, having removed and inspected the PC board I see no damage, no sign of even being wet, so it stands a good chance of still working. Is the D80 one the same as the D90 one?

Looking forward to a positive response!! Alistair

 

[Ikelite Staff]

The D80 and D90 housing circuitries are the same. If your electronics are indeed damaged, you should be able to special order a replacement electronics assembly through your local distributor. These assemblies are available as replacement units only and include bulkhead, TTL circuit and hotshoe.

Our pushbutton assemblies are not available for purchase separately. We do offer a small selection of control shafts and knobs:
Camera Control Parts

Also available for special order through any dealer or distributor.

Regards,
Jean / Ikelite
IKELITE Underwater Systems

 

[Grow Diving]

Hi Jean, this is good news indeed. I have looked at the link you provided to the camera control parts, and there are no push buttons like those in the housing back assembly. So I am still one step away from a complete solution. Can you suggest any other way I might get hold of some of these push buttons - the D90 requires, I think, two more than come standard in the D80 housing.

 

[Ikelite Staff]

We don't offer the pushbuttons for sale separately. I'm not aware of any company that does offer them, but I suppose you could check with some of the other housing manufacturers.

You may find that there are other issues with this installation, including alignment of the lens in the port opening and position of some of the rear pushbuttons.

Regards,
Jean / Ikelite
IKELITE Underwater Systems

 

[jdcpa]

There is a used D90 housing for sale in the Photography section here.

Maybe that will solve your problem.

 

[slowhands]

Ikelite does not sell the pushbuttons separately. I have occasionally swapped them from an obsolete housing, if the length matched. The ones I was replacing had corroded stems, and the newer ones worked just fine. The problem is these do have different lengths, so you have to get lucky.

Sooner or later though, you will want a full service of the housing, including replacing the O-rings on the buttons and lubing them. If you send in a cobbled up housing, I doubt very much Ikelite will want to rebuild it. After all it places them in the difficult position of offering further warranty on something you modified. You would probably have to figure out a source for the O-rings and do it yourself, which is not hard but tedious.

So you may be better off to sell the D80 housing on a major auction site and buy a real D90 housing.