Nikon SB-24 stopped recharging properly

[Oki_]

Hi,

I was lucky to find old SB-24 for cheap and I was amazed how well it works in standby mode with ~1h recharges. It was just flashing immediately after waking up, no matter how long it was in sleep. I was testing the battery drain indoors and after 2 weeks the batteries had still enough capacity.

After some days, I noticed that "ready light" never lights up anymore and flash goes to standby after roughly 40 seconds. What is worse, it is not that standby mode we are all happy for, but it just shuts off and does not recharge the capacitor in 1 h intervals as it used to. I tried new set of fully charged batteries, but it did not help.

I found and article describing probably the same issue:
https://canonrepair.wordpress.com/20...-sb-24-repair/

It says that when flash is not able to reach requested voltage a protection circuit shuts it down. It should be possible to tweak that "requested voltage" threshold via trimmer. Do somebody has experience with this issue? Is tho solution permanent, or will it get worse and worse? Thank you!

[-jeff]

Thanks for the link to the article. I have a couple SB24 in the field but both are still working well.

[Oki_]

FYI: I have been gathering confidence for few days and today I finally tried the repair from article, and it worked! "Ready" button is again glowing and standby works as well. I hope it will remain work for some time as I maxed-out the trimmer responsible for charge threshold. The main capacitor obviously lost some performance over the years, so this adjustment is really precious to have!